But see, the *last *thing a store owner wants is for a random civilian to start shooting at the robber. It’s better to lose the merchandise - which is probably insured - than to die in the crossfire.
I don’t mind using the word gun or specifically identifying mine by make and model- Glock 19. In Georgia, instead of a concealed weapon permit, we have an “Carry Permit”. It can be Open Carry (visible to others) or Concealed Carry.
But I’ll glady say that I carry a Glock 19 when I feel the need!
snip mine
But what if they’re not?
Why would you assume there are no guns in the store? Could “gun free” not apply only to customers, not the owners?
Why would the owners see your gun as a potential source of protection, rather than a potential threat?
Why would an owner think a customer’s gun would be more effective than a silent alarm to be tripped immediately if a customer was noticed to have a concealed gun?
(I don’t suppose that you would randomly decide to rob a jewelry just because you happened to have your gun handy.)
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I don’t assume that. That is irrelevant to me as the sign prohibits me from entering when armed.
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Because legal concealed handgun license holders have had a thorough background check. A CHL holder cannot have had any criminal history.
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Silent alarm? That’s a joke in Houston. These days robbers hit very fast. They are in and out within 3 minutes or so. Incidentally, I don’t care about the jewelry at all. I care about my life and, in this case, my wife.
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No I wouldn’t. If I am willing to abide by the sign that prohibits guns, doesn’t it seem reasonable to assume that I am not a robber?
It’s easier to exclude all funds than to only exclude illegal ones. Does a shop owner who sees a customer with a gun even check determine whether the gun is legal?
In what circumstances do you feel you need a gun? I don’t think I have ever felt that need, and you want to talk about paranoia…
Sure, if you are going to the range to practice, or to the woods to hunt, you need your gun. But that’s hardly relevant to going to a restaurant or a shop.
To me it is not about the merchandise. It’s about life safety. Again, I acknowledge it is the storekeepers right to prohibit guns. I have no problem with that. The question was whether or not I would patronize a place like that. in my case, no.
It is obvious you have never been in that situation. I hope you never are, but if it happens to you, you will know.
Not at all. I was a plainclothes LEO for 20 years. At one time or another I carried guns in my belt, back pocket, boots, ankle holster, shoulder holsters, as well as belt holsters. I even wore a fanny pack once. More often than not I had a primary weapon and a backup. I get no thrill nor do I get a sense of empowerment of carrying a gun. It is literally a pain in the butt.
I don’t particularly care about an establishment’s gun policy. It has not bearing in my decision to go there.
I’m from Canada and this is a topic I had never given much thought to.
But a couple of years ago we were on a road trip in the US and stopped in at a restaurant. My wife noticed people carrying weapons in the restaurant and felt uncomfortable about it so we left and went elsewhere. Didn’t see any guns at the next place so we stayed.
I don’t recall what state we were in, except it was somewhere between Arizona and Montana or Idaho. Anyways, I don’t think I’ll get her back there again.
Oh yeah, the waitresses were carrying revolvers on their hips. They looked hot!
I’m not the person to whom you were directing these questions, but still feel compelled to answer.
Over the years, I have learned that I am about as far from the typical gun owner and Carry Permit holder as a person can get.
I have never shot, much less killed, a living creature in my life with the exception of a rattle snake in my grandma’s garden. I don’t believe in hunting, especially for sport. I volunteer twice per month as an adoption counselor for a local animal rescue organization. I’m also non-religious and I’m gay.
I learned how to shoot when I was 9yrs old and a neighbor asked me if I would be interested in trying out for a target shooting team. The charitable organization that she was involved in was sponsoring a team of six boys to travel around the Southeast and compete in tournaments. Almost 400 boys between the ages of 9 and 13 showed up for the tryouts and I knew I didn’t stand a chance. Somehow, I landed in slot number 4 and the other five boys on my team were 12 or 13 and I was just 9. I spent most of my teen years competing in target shooting tournaments.
The thought of buying a handgun and getting a Carry Permit had never even entered my mind until October 1998. There were five brutal attacks on young guys near my apartment, killing one and leaving two others with brain damage. Cops soon figured out that four of the five victims were gay (and the straight one was very ‘metrosexual’). Further investigation and similar crimes in nearby communities led the police to the conclusion that these were gay bashings! In all, there had been 19 of these attacks (six of which were murders) in the North Metro Atlanta area in the first nine months of 1998. They put out the alarm to everyone in the area, but particularly men who were gay, to be hyper-vigilant, travel in groups, park only in brightly lit areas, and a list of other precautions.
In early October of 1998, a very good friend of mine was attacked by these same monsters! He survived but he spent five weeks in the hospital and has several medical and neurological issues that will affect him for the rest of his life. The day after he was attacked, I went to the Fulton County Courthouse and filed for a Carry Permit. Then I went to a gun shop and bought my first handgun. In Georgia, you can purchase a gun after a brief waiting period but you can’t legally carry it on your person unless you are on private property without a Carry Permit.
I got my Permit a few weeks later and, while I had been waiting, I met several other guys who had a friend or partner that had been attacked and wanted to form a neighborhood watch group. We started out as nine gay guys with guns and permits walking the streets of Midtown and Buckhead from dark to daylight on Friday and Saturday nights. Two months after we started our ‘patrol’, the cops cracked the case. The gay bashings had been part of a gang initiation!!! The Atlanta where I grew up no longer existed and where I lived was longer a safe place. So I kept carrying my weapon whenever I left home.
In 2004, I was at a drive-up ATM hidden behind a bank after 11pm one night. I pulled up, put in my card and as I leaned out and started to enter my PIN, I caught a glimpse of a zipper toggle sticking out from the cement column next to the ATM (and at the rear of my car). I knew it was a person with a coat on and the only reason they could have been there was to mug me! I entered the wrong last digit to my PIN and started swearing at myself out loud about having too many PINs to remember. I reached into the console and pulled out my gun while I was ranting, then I popped the clutch and floored it to put some distance between me and the criminal waiting to harm me or steal from me. He took off in the opposite direction, I jumped out of the car and told him to freeze or I’d shoot him in the back! I called 911 on my cell and held him until the cops arrived. After I showed them my unfired weapon and my Carry Permit, they had no problem with what I had done. The following day the bank’s security tapes supported exactly what I stated to police and the little fucker went BACK to prison for 3-5 years! Without a gun, he would have gotten away (or I might have chased after him in my car and ran him over) and most certainly would have harmed someone else rather than being in prison where he belonged!
Even though I have never shot or killed an animal or person, I could and would kill anyone who threatened my physical safety or that of anyone I cared about. I would also protect a stranger who was being victimized because I feel that is the only moral thing to do. I’m glad that I haven’t had to do anything so extreme and final, but I would not lose a moment of sleep if I am put in the position where I have to do it!
I don’t understand your distinction between “there are no guns” and “there are no guns”.
Beelzebubba,
If I ever lived in a place where people who looked like me were routinely attacked, I might carry a gun, too. But most of the people who carry guns are straight while males who live in places where it is unremarkable to be a straight white male. Is the general violent crime rate so high in all those places?
I used to live in NYC. I had a couple of frightening interactions with strangers there. And I did not feel like escalating the violence of the situation by displaying a gun would have been a helpful thing to do. I suppose those situations involved crazy people, not sane, deliberate theives. One guy mused aloud about whether to mug me & my husband, but ended up not doing anything until we were back on a more populated street. My husband never insisted on taking that particular shortcut again.
In Texas a business owner can prohibit those with CHL from carrying a gun inside their businesses if they display the appropriate sign. In my opinion it would be absurd for a jewelry store, for example, to post such a sign. Why? Because criminals can read too. Not very well usually, but well enough to know that most probably any customers inside will not be armed, therefore pose no risk to them (the robbers) should they decide to hijack the store. Not only no risk, but additional “revenue” because they can rob the customers too. Does that mean the employees are not armed? No, of course not, but its all about weighing the odds. Odds are that no one in there will resist the robbers.
Imagine you are going to rob a jewelry store… or a bank… or a fast food place…or convenience store… or anything else for that matter. Would you choose a place that openly prohibits customers from carrying a gun or a place that welcomes CHL holders, knowing that any customer in there might be armed and could blow you away?
As for me, I try to abide by the law. I could carry a gun inside a prohibited place and they probably would never know it, but I don’t. I simply go somewhere else. Having said that, I will add that it depends on where I am. If I am in Dime Box Tx, or Giddings, Tx or Llano, Tx or Kerrville, Tx it is a whole world away from Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio.
Different areas have different rates of gun crimes, and different rates of suicide. Maybe different rates of accidents as well (although gun fatalities from accidental discharge are low, according to the CDC document you linked to around 500 a year.) But when making individualized decisions I think the general knowledge of what areas are higher crime versus others is something people who live in an area have a decent handle on, and would obviously factor into your considerations. Translating aggregate statistics into individual behaviors isn’t an exact thing, but like I said, it’d be difficult to slice it in any way that would suggest people legally carrying guns present a greater risk than driving in a car. Maybe you can find a way to structure the data so that it is, but I think you’d have to do a lot of digging. Either way, this thread is about personal behavior–my personal behavior is I don’t care if people are carrying open or concealed, and it doesn’t impact my decision to enter a business or other building. I consider it an unreasonable imposition on my life to live it otherwise. And again–everyone is free to evaluate risks and comfort levels for themselves.
What sort of criminal weighs the odds that another customer could be armed before deciding to rob a store? That’s like saying hijackers avoid KLM flights because Dutch people are big.
You keep making this comparison, but it’s silly. the benefits of driving a car are so enormous in the US that it would be worth doing if the risk were much higher. (As it used to be.) The benefits of carrying a gun are???
The benefits of being willing to go to a shop with people carrying guns varies quite a lot by geography. There are some parts of gun-country in the US where it would be really restrictive to avoid shops with people openly carrying guns. There are other parts of the world (including most of the US) where it would be really weird and remarkable to see a gun on anyone but a police officer. Personally, I’ve never seriously considered the question because I can’t recall EVER seeing a gun in public except on a police officer. As I said above, if I walked into a restaurant and saw a lot of people carrying, I might walk on out. Because it would creep me out. Is this such a dangerous neighborhood that they actually need that? Are they drinking? Are they sane? But if I lived in a place where that was the norm, I’m sure I would get used to it.
That’s not what the thread is about. You should be asking “the benefits of going to the supermarket are??” or “the benefits of going to a restaurant are??” almost no business (actually none that I’m aware of) post “no gun” signs here where I live in Virginia. Virginia is a state with legal open carry and concealed carry. I’m not evaluating carrying a gun vs driving a car, I’m evaluating becoming a hermit and patronizing no businesses in my geographical area versus doing so with the knowledge people in them may have guns.
We’re comparing like to like with the statistics. Driving deaths demonstrate how dangerous it is to drive, at around 11/100,000 deaths per year versus how dangerous guns are in general to non-gun carriers. The 2.65/100,000 murders represent people who are killed by others around them who have guns (legally or not, we don’t know.) I’m giving the “fear of guns” side the greatest benefit of the doubt–we’re assuming that a business allowing people to carry inside significantly impacts your chances of being in the 2.65/100,000 to get murdered by a gun, and even assuming that you’re altering behavior based on something less likely than dying in a traffic accident, I’m also assuming those killed were all victims who themselves weren’t carrying or didn’t own guns, so I’m basically assuming all gun murders in the United States are just random people going about their lives unarmed who are killed by people legally carrying.
The thread is about whether you’d avoid places people have guns, I didn’t read it to only mean “open carry.” Open carry is legal but rare here. Concealed carry there is no way to know at first glance if someone in a cafe or supermarket has a gun or not because they are carrying concealed. So the only places I could be sure someone isn’t legally carrying a gun would be a place that posted a sign saying no guns allowed, and there are no local businesses I’ve seen to post such signs. I guess Starbucks has made it known on a corporate level that guns aren’t welcome, but they don’t have signage up. And of course I also wouldn’t know if someone has a gun on them in contravention of the sign.
I’ve already said I wouldn’t become a hermit to avoid guns. I happen to live in a location with fairly strict gun laws, so the incidence of legal guns, concealed or open, is very low here.
I’m less concerned about concealed carry because that’s not a public statement. In non-gun-country, anyone who feels the need to announce that he is carrying a gun is likely to have some issues. And I’ll avoid him, thanks.
Cultural norms matter.
That being said, gun country has higher rates of gun deaths than non-gun-country. I’d rather stay in non-gun country.