I support the open carry of firearms everywhere, including bars and your child’s soccer game. The adult carrying the firearm is the person who needs to be responsible.
You probably don’t go to any of those places, though, because you are far too busy looking for the cites to back up your claims about how common handguns were in colonial America and how they fit into the Founding Fathers’ concept of the right to keep and bear arms. It’s been weeks since you made those tantalizing claims, and you keep showing up in gun threads, but still no cites. A person less convinced than I of your intellectual honesty might say you have no such cites.
I like guns, but I don’t go around demanding that everyone must assume my benevolence. You have a CCW? Lovely, you have a clean record. I quote the average financial advisor: “Past history is no guarantee of future performance.” You may feel sure that you have only the best motives, training, and impulse control. NOTHING requires anyone to assume the same. “…quick Google search comes up with several day care shootings, so…” we must trust Bob!?
IF all Birdsong was doing was* thinking to himself* that “female students Sluts and Whores because they wear blue jeans” then he wouldnt be rude. Concealed carry means keeping that fact to yourself (and your partner.) It’s not rude as the potential gun-a-phobics have nothing to worry about as they have no knowledge. It is rude to intentionally expose your weapon to stangers.
Carrying your gun when you go drinking is not rude, it’s stupid.
How does that make the toddlers safer at all, though? Anyone who wants to die shooting up a daycare center is not going to care whether history will remember them as licensed weapons owners. Not that you even need guns to kill toddlers if you’re a deranged murderer, anyway.
What amazes me is that liberals say that drug prohibition can never work (true, by the way) and think that gun prohibition somehow can!
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Not to be a jerk, but - yes. You must trust me because your other option is to carry a gun yourself if you don’t. Cowering in fear at the thought that someone without a badge (but with government blessing) might be armed is also an option.
Past history also doesn’t guarantee that a daycare or a soccer game isn’t the next target of some drugged up psychopath.
Obviously I don’t understand the problem. People that think not allowing law abiding citizens to carry is going to stop a criminal… these people confuse me. “Whoa, I was going to murder a bunch of kids but that’s a gun-free zone. I guess I’ll go home and rethink my life”
This is why I’m such a poor debater on this topic. I really can’t figure out the other side. Very few arguments make any sense at all, to me it’s like arguing with a young earth creationist sometimes.
(And a preschooler is not going to accidentally get my gun off my hip. It’s just not within the realm of possibility)
If it is a place that provides an illusion of safety, discovering you have a gun in such a place may rob people of that illusion and they will be unhappy with you as a result.
That is simply a strawman. I think most people don’t want a ban on guns, they want regulations on what guns are readily available, who can own them, and where they can be carried. This is very similar to how we treat cars. To drive on public streets you need to be licensed and insured. Your car needs to meet minimum environmental and safety standards. By your argument, that can never work. because criminals would ignore the rules. But it does work, albeit not perfectly. I do not think we would be safer if those laws and regulations were repealed. Do you?
I wonder, though, how common were they, as opposed to rifles? And how effective would they have been for a “well regulated militia”?
So… to shoot on public ranges, we need to be licensed and insured?
Common enough to be carried by officers, common enough to have been supplied by the French in military quantities. Quite useful for cavalry or naval units.
And yes, even the cavalry was militia based. But this is a hijack.
In that era, pistols were common enough and considered militarily important enough that the British supplied them in quantity to their Indian allies in the Americas. There is an article in this month’s issue of Man At Arms magazine (a publication for collectors of antique weapons) about those very pistols.
(Assuming a known carrier…) No, my other option is to not trust you and to be made very uncomfortable by the situation. You may not care that you are making multiple other people extremely uncomfortable and feel that your right to be armed just in case the Luby circumstance occurs trumps any discomfort that you cause. That is your right. But yes that would be being a jerk.
And just to clarify, the issue is not whether or not you believe that you present only an extremely small risk, or whether or not you can convince us of that, but whether or not it is reasonably expected for parents who do not know you or your history of mental stability and responsible gun ownership to be made nervous by someone showing up to daycare or a soccer game with a gun.
Claims all backed up of course. But the gun lovers fight any and all attempts that we who feel less comfortable around a bunch of people carrying into every inch of society. I do not feel safer if I am in a room of people with guns. I do not think we are safer by having more and more people with them. There are all kinds of people .stupid people,people with hot tempers,cruel people ,people who like to dominate others and many others who should never be allowed to have guns. Yet gun nutters fight any and all attempts for our side to have respite from them. The childish slippery slope argument has so much traction with you guys. If the government is allowed to stop anybody at all from having automatic weapons, it will result in all guns being taken away. C’mon ,get a pistol grip. No intellectual dishonest at all here. Just your emotional reaction .
I’ve read this twice and still don’t see your cites. None of your posts in the other gun threads contain them either. Clearly, you have a definition of “backed up” that differs substantially from the common understanding of those words. Perhaps, just perhaps, it might be possible to give your posts to these threads any weight at all if you’d just admit you pulled those claims out of your ass.
Gonzo, I’d like to see your claim that handguns were invented by Samuel Colt backed up. And that there were no handguns in the American Revolution. Also the one about the second amendment not applying to handguns because of A and B.
I would not make the same assumption. I might assume that they could appropriately use their weapons in a calm situation, at a firing range, or some similarly controlled environment. I would definitely not assume that a person with a gun could handle it appropriately in a frightening or panic situation. Some criminal or nut walks into a daycare or soccer game with a gun and starts threatening people, I only want to be ducking or running from one set of bullets not two, or more. As much as I appreciate the good intentions of the legal gun carrier(s), I absolutely do not trust the ability of the average person to safely handle a gun while under this kind of pressure and while freaked out parents and children are running around and acting unpredictably. I’ve been in a frightened crowd, and it’s easy enough to get trampled in such a circumstance. The last thing the situation needs is more weapons in the mix. It seems a nice fantasy to think that having a gun would offer more control/power in a situation like that, but I don’t happen to believe that people and crowds work that way.
I wouldn’t necessarily consider the person unstable, but I would distrust the judgment of someone who thought it appropriate to bring an unconcealed weapon into a daycare or soccer game. It suggests a kind of bravado and disregard for others. I certainly wouldn’t trust their judgement in using the gun or in having had appropriate training.
If I saw someone wearing a gun in a holster, much like when I see someone talking on a cell phone in a car, I would remove myself and my child from the area. The person may think they are responsible, may think that they have the calmness of mind and physical coordination to handle the weapon/vehicle when something goes wrong in a split second – but I don’t. And I would feel irresponsible thinking “Oh, well, they probably are responsible people and can handle it.”
rivulus,
For your consideration is more of Bob’s response:
Now I can see how you could spin that as mere poor judgment, bravado and disregard for others. And certainly it is all of those things. But it is hard for me not to see that magnitude of fear over the drugged up psychopath that is waiting to massacre the soccer team and daycare group and who will only be stopped by his heroic gun play as potential evidence of a less than complete presence in reality.
The real world risk of being involved in a mass shooting is near zero, massive media attention to these rare events aside. A rational person recognizes that this risk is negligible and does not live in constant and unremitting fear of its occurring. Certainly not in so much fear they’d force others to “cower” to relieve it. (It makes much more sense to live in fear of catching and dieing from influenza, honestly, and I’d still find someone who refused to shake hands and always wore a mask to be more than a bit odd.) Yet, every mass shooting had someone show up there with a gun, and many times that perp was legally entitled to own and carry the weapon. The rational response to seeing someone with a gun in a day care or at a soccer game is to appreciate the fact that your children are at much greater risk than they were before that gun was observed. (Still very small but orders of magnitude more than before.) Bob fails to understand why others do not share his irrational fears. He feels that their discomfort is immaterial (his fear is so great) and is centered only on reducing the discomfort his irrational fear causes him. Yeah people like that being armed near my kids scare me.
You have a good point in that, and anyway I don’t think that legal carriers often actually get into shootouts with crazy people or criminals in places like kids’ soccer games to save the day for all of the soccer moms. If your kid plays soccer in a place that is known for violence or gang activity, then I could understand it. But why would you allow your kid to play soccer there?
You can say, “You never know what might happen,” but then what precaution do you take for the bad driver on the freeway? Most people are much more likely to be injured or killed by a car than a gun.
So then, you keep away from Police Officers as much as possible?:dubious: