Any sane risk assessment includes both the odds of events from doing/not-doing an action but the magnitude of those events.
Most people who carry concealed firearms (correctly or not) will rate their chances of a bad outcome happening to them as a result of carrying lower than the chances of a bad outcome happening to them as a result of not carrying.
Additionally, they’ll consider that the worst outcomes from carrying are likely not as bad for them as the worst outcomes associated with not carrying.
Someone concerned about the risk to themselves as a non-firearm-carrier might want to support studies from unbiased sources examining actual risks, controlled for a variety of factors such as type and amount of training.
You’re unlikely to need a gun for self-defense at the supermarket, but you want it with you just in case.
You’re unlikely to be attacked by someone carrying legally at the supermarket, but you want to know they’re carrying and avoid them just in case.
People in this thread seem to be saying that only one of these two positions is irrational (but not agreeing on which one). Why? They’re both people worrying about a low-probability event.
I don’t object to you wanting to know who has a gun. It’s information that I like to have, myself.
What the pro-gun side is up against here, though, is a no-win situation. If we carry concealed, then you don’t know we have a gun and you believe that situation to be wrong. If we open carry, then we are perceived as being “cowboy” or some even worse shit. The other side can’t bring themselves to tolerate us carrying at all.
But most of the folks arguing for position 2 in this thread seem to oppose legal open carry as well as legal concealed carry (even though open carry is giving them what they want - the ability to see and therefore avoid a legally armed person). So something else is going on.
The question is, does the smoke alarm accurately symbolize the gun in this metaphor? I think it would be more like a set of fire sprinklers that can damage the interior of the house. And randomly destroy other houses if used improperly.
Largely, my rationale for thinking the way I do is twofold:
Practically, open carry leaves people open to undue harassment from everyone from well-meaning public to cops to anti-gun zealots. This is an additional risk.
Statistically speaking, and again limited data is available, CCW holders are as or somewhat less risky than the general public with regard to gun crime, so knowing who is LEGALLY in possession of a gun doesn’t actually give you any useful risk assessment information.
Exactly. A person who is bad at risk assessment and perhaps nervous (to the point of thinking a gun is necessary at a supermarket) can have unpredictable responses to situations.
That said, guns don’t fire by themselves. But once fired, the bullets can go through walls, ricochet or simply hit the wrong target.
Can’t they make the same argument? “The chance is very small that you’ll shoot them. But so what? Better safe than sorry.”
Why do you take a gun with you on shopping trips, despite the low-probability that you’ll need it, but then criticize others for avoiding your gun-carrying self despite the low probability that the gun will be turned on them? It seems like you’re both trying to avoid very low-probability risks.
Because the risk of Crafter_Man shooting someone is lower than the risk of someone attacking Crafter_Man. As he states -
Both are low-probability. One is lower than the other.
I doubt you are doing gun carriers any harm by avoiding them, so feel free as far as I am concerned. But it is rather like be scared of black people because you are afraid they are going to mug you.
As I understand it, the rate of gun crime per population among legal carriers of firearms is the same as the rate of gun crime per population among the general populace.
Which seems to imply that any given pedestrian has approximately the same odds of whipping out a previously-concealed gun and shooting you as the legally openly carrying guy does, counter-intuitive though it may seem. The fact that you can see the holstered gun doesn’t tell you all that much from a strict risk-assessment perspective
As usual, standard disclaimer about relative lack of statistics on CCW holders.
But if you see me carrying a gun at the supermarket, how can you possibly know that I’m bad at risk assessment? For all you know, I’m packing heat because I have the Boyfriend from Hell stalking me, and even though I’ve filed a restraining order against him I have no way of knowing if or when he’ll show up, or what he’ll do to me if he does.
Or maybe I’m carrying because I just finished a session at the shooting range and need to pick up something for dinner before I drive home, and the gun’s more secure carried on my person than it is locked in my car where it’s more vulnerable to theft.
Seems to me that if you see someone carrying, all you can know for sure is that they’re carrying. Trying to deduce anything beyond that is silly.
So what’s the threshold at which a risk is sufficiently low-probability that worrying about it suggests that one doesn’t understand “even the rudimentary principles of odds & statistics” (as Crafter_Man put it)?
I’m took it to mean “The average citizen is not carrying a gun to the supermarket, so the fact that someone is distrusting of a person who carries a gun to the supermarket does not indicate that he regards ‘the intelligence and responsibility of the average citizen’ with ‘utter contempt’.”
No direct ones, as far as I know there’s never been a formal study done. I’ll have to dig out the thread I did this research for, but I compared reported gun crime rates in the two states I could find published stats about CCW holders in, and those rates tracked somewhat lower than the general rates for the same crimes in those states.