I would have thought the answer was obvious - a cop carries a handgun when on duty, it is part of her job. I assume that cops not on duty do not wear their uniforms, so either she was on duty of going on or off duty - in either event, carrying a gun is expected.
Why do you believe police carry guns?
I’m not a cop, but I assume that they carry guns because it is part of their profession to arrest potentially violent criminals, and they may get a call to do so at any time while on duty.
At least here, when not on duty cops don’t carry guns.
Hmm. If you’re right, it means that law-abiding gun-carriers look exactly like criminal gun-carriers until the criminal decides it’s time to commit a crime. As such, it’s irrational for me to assume any gun-carrier I see is law-abiding, and when I’m trying to figure out the risk they pose, I shouldn’t limit myself to stats on law-abiding gun-carriers. Is that correct?
Daniel
(Edit: in a case like this, the criminal would probably point the gun at another mother and start yelling at her for messing around with the criminal’s husband behind her back. In any case, if you’re right, I need to keep an eagle eye on anyone carrying a gun to see whether they’re a criminal or a law-abider, since I can’t otherwise tell. Right?)
No, actually, that’s pretty much SOP in lawsuits where one half of a marital duo is claiming injury; the other half joins the lawsuit seeking loss of consortium, on the theory that the damage done – physical and/or psychological – has so impaired the prime plaintiff as to make that person incapable of providing some or all of the services usually provided in the marriage – sexual, yes, but also companionship, household chores, whatever the plaintiffs’ attorney believes s/he can make a case for.
Makes perfect sense where the injury is (say) a car accident that leaves a partner paralysed or the like.
It is an absurd claim where the “injury” at issue is the wrongful removal of a license to carry a firearm concealed, which it appears the “victim” wasn’t even in the habit of doing.
We got those claims all the time when I was working in auto insurance claims. I called them the “not getting any” cases.
LHOD:
Anybody you see could be a criminal whether s/he is visibly armed or not. That guy across from you on the bus? He could be a child molester. The woman who works in the cubicle next to yours? She could be starving and neglecting her aged mother while cashing the old lady’s social security checks. The waiter the last time you went out to dinner? Maybe he beats his girlfriend. The guy who spotted for you at the gym yesterday? Maybe he’s a rapist. The kid down the street who smiled and waved at you? Maybe he set a homeless guy on fire.
Until they start carrying “I’m a criminal” signs, you can’t know who is or isn’t a criminal just by looking at him.
True. My point, though, is that people dismissing fears about open-carry by citing stats on the crimes committed by legally-carrying open-carriers are off on a non sequitur. We spectators don’t know whether the person we’re looking at is a criminal or not; we do know for certain that they have a gun. Rational informed risk assessment may only be based on the information that we have, not on information about whether they’re law-abiding.
It’d be interesting to know about the visibility of guns in the possession of criminals prior to the crimes’ commission.
Daniel
Late response: I didn’t say I was opposed to open carry, I just said that people who open carry 100% of the time with the intent of changing people’s minds are probably not going to achieve their goal.
I understand the point that the open carry folks are trying to make. With that statement however comes the potential of situations like what the soccer mom in question got herself into. These things happen to activists for right or for wrong.
LHOD,
My personal experience with the criminal element is that they, barring situations where they are drunk or high, typically don’t openly display weapons. I was surprised, in fact, to learn that a good percentage of them don’t routinely carry a gun unless they have immediate plans of using it. AFAIKT, this seems to be because many of them already have arrest records and are known to the police and they may also be under the supervision of a parole officer. Carrying the gun around just to have it can result in having parole revoked or charges being filed just for having the gun if caught with it. Given the lives these people lead, they have interaction with LE much more often than “regular” people do, so their chances of discovery are significantly higher than you’d think.
That’s why such claims need to be sorted out, either by pretrial discovery (depositions, for example), where the claimant puts up (credible evidence of injury) or shuts up (withdraws the claim); or subsequently at trial, where the claimant has to prove to a jury the merits of the claim(s).
There’s a large gray area between car-injury-paralyzed and silly-ass-opportunism. Take psychological injury, for example: Say a woman was unjustly accused of shoplifting, held by store security against her will, verbally abused, threatened with prosecution and imprisonment, forcibly strip-searched, and so traumatized by the experience that she became housebound from fear of strangers and had disabling flashbacks to the guards pawing her whenever her husband sought intimacy. Should the husband not be permitted to recover for his damages? True, he himself has suffered no physical harm. But his wife can no longer shop or otherwise carry out duties which require her to leave the house (loss of household services); his sex life is diminished or entirely extinguished (the most common understanding of loss of consortium), and he has to suffer the misery of seeing the person he loves mentally crippled by PTSD (mental anguish).
I make no judgment on the merits of the pistol-packin’ momma’s husband’s claims, since I don’t know the entirety of the underlying fact pattern. Like you, I find it facially ludicrous; but without knowing more I’m not in a position to judge.
So–and forgive me if I misunderstand what you’re saying, I’m really trying to stick to the thread here–are you saying that, if I see someone with an openly-carried gun, they are likely to be law-abiding, and that statistically the stranger with a gun carried openly is highly unlikely to be a criminal?
Again, I’d be interested if there are any statistics on this. I could imagine that someone openly carrying is less likely to commit a gun crime than someone with no visible gun (on the assumption that virtually everyone intending to commit a gun crime is concealing the gun), but I don’t know if that’s true.
Daniel
Yes, you pretty much have it. Remember that for most criminals, by that I mean criminals other than crime of passion murderers and the like, the gun is a tool of their trade. If you are on your way to hold up a liquor store, you don’t want to make problems for yourself or attract unwanted attention on the way there…nor after you leave.
Again, getting caught with a gun is very bad for a convicted felon or parolee. For somebody with a clean record carrying without a permit, it may be no more than a misdemeanor. For a convict, it’s quite possibly a trip back to prison.
Loss of consortium is thrown in on every civil suit where the plaintiff is married. It would be fun to depose them and grill them over the exact details.
A theoretically on duty 24 hours a day trained cop compared to a soccer mom that wants to carry to a kids soccer game. Hardly the same thing.
Just think what might have happened if someone shined a laser pointer on her.
She might have been temporarily blinded?
Or she might have gone into Ultra Jason Bourne mode…