This discussion is a little exotic to me, as I’m not used to living in places with strong gun cultures and I can’t fathom wanting to take a gun to Starbucks.
It does make me uncomfortable. I can’t tell who is unstable and who isn’t, and I have no interest in getting caught in the crossfire when someone gets into a fight because the other guy cut in line at Target. I’ve worked retail, and people get into altercations all the time over stupid stuff. I’d prefer it if guns were not in the mix.
Then they shouldn’t have a gun, felons are federally prohibited from owning firearms, but since when have “laws” stopped a determined criminal?
then they shouldn’t be carrying, ignorance of Jeff Cooper’s Four Rules**** is no excuse, and this is a violation of Rule 3
unless they have some cheap, low quality Raven/Jiminez/or other “Saturday Night Special” which is even too unsafe to use as a doorstop or paperweight, this just doesn’t happen, modern guns in good repair DO NOT “just go off” for no reason, the only time the gun discharges is when the trigger is pulled.
a proper, well designed holster should be designed to retain the firearm and protect against unauthorized access, I have a Bianchi paddle holster that has a locking tab that retains the gun, you just can’t draw it straight from the holster, you have to activate the unlock system to draw the gun, it’d be nearly impossible for a kid to access my gun without me noticing something is up and denying access
**** Four Rules of gun safety;
1; All firearms are always loaded (treat every firearm as if it’s loaded)
2; never point a gun at anything you are unwilling to destroy
3; know your target and what is beyond it
4; keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire (also informally referred to as “keep your booger hook off the bang switch…”)
Have you met people?
Those are great best practices, but why would I assume any given stranger is following them? I worked at a video store for years, and about 1 in 5 people are unable to rent a video without screwing something up. There are an enormous number of irresponsible people out there, and they don’t all have signs on their forehead to distinguish themselves from the normals.
And that’s it, isn’t it?
Open display of guns is very common in the area where I live. I will be going hunting tomorrow and will have a rifle in the truck and be wearing a pistol. I usually leave the pistol in the truck when I go into a store but if I left it on no one would blink an eye at me. It is deer season and duck season, soon to be elk season. But even when it is not hunting season guns are seen everywhere.
The local high school scholarship foundation raffles off guns each year during the annual fund raising dinner. In the gym, at the high school. The AK-47 with the pink stock was a big hit a few years ago. They have since toned it down a bit, this year is was a .22 rifle with a pink stock.
If you won’t go into places where guns are allowed, if you won’t visit a house where guns are displayed, well you just aren’t going anywhere except back to paranoia city where only the gangs have guns. And if you call the police every time you see a gun displayed they are going to get real tired of you, real fast.
Well we aren’t talking injury rates, for one–but I would be surprised if injury rates from car crashes are similarly much higher than injury rates from gun shot wounds. In fact I suspect as a ratio more GSWs are fatal than car crashes percentage wise, but I don’t think researching that fact is germane to the discussion. I brought up death risk vs driving a car. If you want to discuss injury risk vs driving a car, my assumption is that similarly you have a much greater chance of being injured in a car accident than via gunshot from a person who is legally carrying guns in public. Even if we factor in accidental gun deaths and legal gun deaths the number is still lower than car deaths, the only time gun deaths eclipse it is if you factor in suicides. The CDC report you linked to noted there were around 500 accidental gun deaths in the year of the report, and then the discrepancy between gun deaths in the CDC report and the FBI report was around 3,000–I’ve made the assumption that is the “legal” differential (the FBI report lists gun murders, so we’re guessing the CDC report that just lists deaths is including people killed in self defense and people killed in legal police shootings.)
Note again we’re only talking about people legally carrying. The whole premise of the thread is “would you avoid a place where guns are not banned”, so people who break the law are outside the parameters of the discussion since they don’t care if a business or college campus bans guns. I’ve already given your position the max benefit of the doubt really, by factoring in all gun murders, but in reality only a subset of gun murders are committed by people who are legally carrying at the time.
As for not wanting to be killed legally, note that for your death to be legal you’d have to be doing something gravely wrong yourself, so you have full control of that regardless of the status of gun carry in your location.
I can’t do the last thing–I live in a state where there is a long history of legal open carry and concealed carry. Almost no businesses post “no gun” signs, so the assumption is it would be legal to carry in every business I shop in and many places I go for work. I would have to move to another State to change this, and that would be considered irrational by me.
Of course, this is true for any mode of transportation.
And I brought up reasonable precautions, and said that I find the precautions described to avoid people legally carrying fall outside of what I consider reasonable, due to the low risk of such persons doing me harm. I also said people are free to live their life with the risk mitigation tactics that work for them. I don’t mind if you are afraid to enter a shop where someone has a legal firearm on their person. I just don’t have to think it’s a reasonable risk mitigation, I can view it as unreasonable and paranoid. It doesn’t impact me how you live your life, though.
No, not the same.
Depends on the type of miles - urban/country/freeway/, busy/time of day, speeds, etc. Different variable per type of public transport.
Each incremental mile traveled increases the chance that you will suffer a transportation injury or fatality. What you’re talking about doesn’t refute that, it just adds some granularity. Some types of miles are higher risk than other, but any transport mile is more dangerous than no miles at all, so each mile added to any mode of transport incrementally increases risk.
And most of us know someone who has died on a car wreck. Probably quite a few people. It’s incredibly common.
But driving provides great utility. IMHO, carrying a gun into a restaurant provides nearly no utility.
Out of interest, have you ever been wrong in your entire life?
Of course the types of miles matter, of course the time of days matters on roads. Etc.
Look at some actuarial tables.
Sure I have, but not in this scenario. I stated that the more miles you travel the increased risk. I didn’t say that your “rate per mile” would go up. You seem to be confusing the absolute risk of an accident with the individual “risk per mile rate”, which can go up or down based on the type of miles driven (12:00am-4:00am drive time, highway vs rural vs city streets, rush hour vs other times etc.)
Learn basic math before telling people to look at actuarial tables. Every mile you travel increases your risk of having a transportation accident. I never said it increases your “risk rate per mile”, that’s a different measure. What you’re essentially saying is that driving one mile of low-risk mileage actually reduces my chance of having a transportation accident versus not traveling at all, since I can’t believe you’d think something so foolish I’ll just assume you had misread my earlier statements and let it pass.
In the public library it was a condition of my employment that I be with open carry, as it was legal and we had a lot of gun rights activists. Where I work now, guns are banned, but I just assume there are the same number of guns around that there were elsewhere. It’s a nonsensical question.
I agree, but in this scenario we aren’t talking about choosing to carry a gun into a restaurant. We’re talking about choosing to enter a restaurant where someone might be carrying a gun. I think the utility in avoiding restaurants where people might have guns on their person is minimal. Plus the ability of someone unfamiliar with concealed carry to even notice a person carrying concealed is very low. I’d wager everyone in this thread has been near a CCW holder who is carrying and not known it, unless you’ve only lived in a few of the cities or states where such permits are extremely rare, and never traveled outside of them.
I have a carry permit and I carry whenever I feel the need to do so. I always have a weapon in the glove compartment of my car, so I can choose whether to take or leave it based on circumstances when I arrive at a location.
I have no problem going to places where the law prohibits carrying. In Georgia, those places are any government building or facility, any place of worship, on the grounds or inside any school including private ones and bars (unless the bar owner specifically allows carry permit holders to carry). It is also illegal to carry within 150 feet of any polling (voting) location. Nuclear power facilities are also off-limits.
It is legal to carry if you have a carry permit anywhere else. If a business or facility that isn’t mentioned above has a “no weapons” sign or something similar, I will still carry my weapon if I feel the need to do so. If it is noticed and I am asked to leave, I will comply. As long as I do that, I am not violating any law. I am simply violating their rule and/or policy. But I only carry if I feel that my safety or freedom or the safety or freedom of those I love could be at risk.
If a business has a posted policy that no weapons are allowed, I will only patronize them if I have no other alternative.
I have been, injuries and accidents both. And I haven’t been making a lot of assumptions.
However, I wonder if the number of gun-related casualties - to clarify, injuries as well as deaths, including accidents - if the number increases with the number of hand guns in an area.
I live in Texas near a large city and have a concealed carry license. I do not always carry but I generally have a weapon close by. Personally, I feel that carrying a gun is a lot of trouble, but I concede these are trying times. My wife and I were out recently and was about to enter a jewelry store when I noticed the “gun free” sign. We chose not to go in the store. To me it is absurd for a jewelry store to prohibit concealed carry. Might as well have a sign that says “Come on in and rob us… there are no guns here”. I respect their right, but where is the logic there? If I were a store owner I would offer a discount to those who DO carry.
Always get a kick of the term ‘carry’ as no one wants to say the word ‘gun’.
Sort of like how some liquor stores are called ‘Package stores’ because we don’t like to discuss the contents.
There’s a distinction because almost everywhere one can have a gun on one’s private property, but carrying them publicly requires a permit in the majority of states- the permit isn’t for a gun per se.
I’m reading between the lines a little, but what I got from your statement “I feel that carrying a gun is a lot of trouble” is that carrying a gun RESPONSIBLY is a lot of trouble! If you are like me, the “responsibly” part is implied and anyone who carries legally has moral responsibility to protect others from accidental harm.
Like you, I also keep a weapon close by (in my car) and choose whether to carry it when I leave the car based on the situation. BTW, you should have seen the salesman at the Volvo dealership when I test drove my car and, after we returned to the dealer’s lot, I ran to my old car and got my Glock 19 to see how well it fit in the center console and glovebox! I told him that I considered having a handgun readily accessible was as much of a safety feature as any of the technology that they have. I guess there aren’t a lot of people with Carry Permits and NRA memberships who also buy Volvos?