It’s never a like-to-like comparison between cars and guns.
I’ll start off with an analogy: my shirt was likely made in some Third World sweatshop with deplorable conditions and serious safety issues. But I’d have to do some serious researching to figure out how to buy shirts without that baggage, and in the meantime, I really need to wear shirts.
Continuing with the analogy, I have given up watching football due to the brain-damage issues. I don’t want to derive entertainment from watching people cause permanent, severe, irreversible brain damage to each other. And unlike shirt-wearing, I don’t need to watch football.
So back to the subject at hand. Due to government overregulation (no, seriously, it’s called zoning), only a small fraction of Americans can live in places where they can get by without cars. We’ve done a lot to make driving safer - fatality rates per 100K when I was growing up were about 2.5 times what they are now - but most of us need to drive on a regular basis.
But most people don’t have to carry guns. I can see the need if you live or work in an inherently unsafe place, or if you are being stalked by an estranged SO. Or maybe if you live out in the boonies where the nearest cop is 20 miles away. But the threat represented by guns is a gratuitous threat to most of us. Maybe it’s a smaller threat than driving is, but like I said, we’re stuck with having to drive. There’s nothing that similarly requires people to carry guns around with them everywhere.
Re. “concealed” permits: IIRC, way back in the early 20th century when anti-carry laws were being established, the rationale was banning the carry of “concealable” weapons- handguns and sawed-off guns that could be hidden in a pocket or under a coat. Thus a permit to carry became known as a “concealed” permit (although I doubt that meant you could carry a long gun down the street).
The thing about guns is, you can easily spend a lifetime never needing one. But if you DO ever need one, you’ll need it right there that effin’ instant. IOW, hard to say beforehand who’ll ever need a gun.
Carried guns would be threat, gratuitous or otherwise, if the experience since carry laws were loosened had been a surge in random impulse shootings- “road rage”, etc. But that simply hasn’t been the case. Apparently the overwhelming majority of people are not going to commit random murder just because someone took their parking space and they had a gun handy. And of course if anyone premeditatedly decides to obtain a gun and shoot someone with it, a ban on carry isn’t going to do a lot.
Not exactly a great comparison, imho, but I see your point. Criminals DO pay attention. Some more than others of course. They don’t want to get caught, and they surely don’t want to be shot. Like I said before the garden variety armed robber really does not want any confrontation, they just want the stuff. That is not to say they wont use deadly force to get it. I would speculate that a potential robber would take a moment of pause if he thought there might be some armed customers, however with a sign explicitly BANNING armed customers he would know the odds are no one armed.
Regarding hijackers on airlines, I would suspect they, too, would take a moment of pause if they thought they could be put down. We would never know it though because they did not commit the crime. There is no real way to track those crimes that did not occur.
It also applies to more than guns. For instance, without a GA Carry Permit one cannot carry a knife with a blade of 5" or more. There are a few exceptions if you are actively hunting or fishing, but that butcher knife you carried to the park cut the picnic watermelon could get you arrested. I got my permit more to ward off any possible questions about the legality of my knives/guns.
I rarely carry, concealed or open, but the last time I did was about 6 weeks ago when I bought a vehicle from a small car dealer. He insisted on cash (legit dealer, just a bit odd), so I had almost $5k cash on me and his lot is in an iffy part of town. I felt more comfortable armed in that situation. YMMV.
Again–none of what you just said have anything to do with this thread. This thread is about whether or not you’d avoid going around places where gun carry isn’t banned. It’s not about whether you personally carry, or have a need to carry.
I pegged the risk to people in the scenario at 2.65/100,000, this is based on the gun murder numbers given by the FBI. I use that because for purposes of avoiding gun carriers I exclude suicide numbers because a person carrying a gun near you doesn’t meaningfully increase your risk of completing a suicide–having a gun in your house does, but that’s not germaine. This is an IMHO “poll” type thread, so it’s based on personal situations. I explained that in my personal situation, gun ownership and carry is common around me, and is not widely prohibited. So being around someone carrying is largely synonymous with “going out of my house.” So the utility is probably equal to or even greater than car utility for me, to be around people with guns. Actually higher, since I could live without a car, it’d be expensive to hire taxis every day but doable, but I’d have a lot of troubles in general due to not being able to go into most buildings where I conduct my daily life.
But let’s be honest, those 2.65/100,000 firearm murders largely represent people killing someone they knew. So your risk, anywhere in the United States, from a person who happens to be carrying a gun, is so minimal that I find it fundamentally bizarre and paranoid that anyone would leave a business or place they otherwise wanted to be in over a person simply carrying. Brandishing, kitted out in combat gear, rifle slung over shoulder or etc I can see leaving, but a holstered gun? No. Fuck, how do you know it’s not just a plainclothes cop? Do you run anytime you see a cop?
But like I’ve always maintained–in a free society I more than welcome everyone to respond to risk as they wish.
Has anyone else looked at the stats for gun casualties (that would include injuries and accidents, as well as homicides) by states, and compared it to the state’s gun laws? The CDC does track some stats by state, but I’m not sure where there’s a comprehensive description of gun laws by state.
I think this is germane to the thread, because it might shed light on the effect of the general public carrying guns on public safety.
I would never allow the legal status of carrying a gun affect my plans except to take note of it and lock my weapon away in the glove compartment of my car should I have one on me that day. It quite literally is the absolute last thing on my mind, well behind completing my business at said location, be it buy what I need or contemplating what I want to eat/drink.
Guns are fairly expensive and keep their value well. A store where the customers are carrying is simply a store with a higher bounty for someone who is armed and confident in their ability to defend themselves from other armed people. And unlike the law-abiding CHL citizen, I’m gonna draw first. Hypothetically speaking.
Obviously, that’s your choice. I my situation I was looking for a specific classic car, difficult to find locally. He had exactly what I was looking for and at a phenomenal price. All of that made the risk worthwhile to me. The fact that I could legally carry a weapon made it an even easier decision.
I also don’t think it’s a bright idea to be in a place that allows carrying firearms and primarily exists on the sales of alcohol. I’ve seen enough bad scenes with just the alcohol and the rage a 200lb-ish great ape can bring. The state of Texas agrees with me.
Other than that, who cares? You’re going to be outside at some point in transit to/from the location. Imagining that you’re not in danger from a lot of other more likely deaths in transit (or sitting at home) doesn’t seem to be a rational way of looking at the problem.
Fortunately, this is not an issue here. When I travel to the US for meetings I assume that many people I see on the streets in downtown Houston have a gun. While this is a bit disconcerting there is little I can do about it other than hurry back to the office or my hotel room.
No, it has everything to do with this thread, and your protestations otherwise so you can “win” won’t change that. You are the one who chose to bring up car injuries and gun injuries to compare them. Pointing out that you can’t make that comparison is perfectly on topic.
The point is that people don’t have to carry guns, and, thus, the fact that they do carry them is suspect, so it makes more sense to be scared of them than it does to be scared of people driving cars, since they need them–and have to pass a test to prove they can drive them, which is not always the case with guns.
Now, this is less so in a place where you can show that guns are needed. But that’s not where puzzlegal lives. Guns are so rare that someone carrying them openly is automatically suspect.
You keep on wanting to call her paranoid for not being more scared of cars than she is of guns. But it doesn’t wash. Not where she lives.
This is why proponents of gun rights coined the term “hoplophobia”. Surprisingly, the vast majority of people who carry are NOT yahoos, Dirty-Harry wannabes, paranoid, compensating, delusional, or any of the other slurs dished out by opponents of carry. Gun owners and carriers are overwhelmingly normal.
Yeah no. Not in my experience. Granted I’m in Massachusetts not Texas. I have a number of friends that do carry, police officers, armed security and paranoid nut jobs. None of them I’d describe as overwhelmingly normal. If they where normal they wouldn’t be carrying, it’s rather unusual for someone to carry around here.
None of the people I know who carry are particularly dangerous and I don’t feel threatened by them carrying guns. Well except the one who is currently facing charges for threatening someones life in a road rage incident, he shouldn’t be allowed to own a gun much less carry one around with him all the time.
It depends where you are. Community norms matter. In Japan, people who carry guns are almost all dangerous criminals. In Texas, many completely normal, non-criminals choose to carry guns. Where I live is in between, but yes, carrying a gun openly here would automatically make you suspect, and the people who choose to carry, openly or otherwise, are biased towards the paranoid, overly macho, and outright criminal.
I sort of understand where you are coming from. I like to carry a pocketknife, and it drives me nuts that people now thing that is a suspicious thing to do. I can’t even carry my pocketknife on an airplane. Of course, my pocketknife is extremely useful for everyday activities. I use it to cut fruit and cheese, to trim my nails, to tighten the little screw in my laptop that tends to get loose, to open boxes, and for several other odds and ends. Unlike a gun, which you generally hope you won’t use. But there are some similarities.
Even boytyperanma admitted he lives in Mass, USA, I live in Arkansas, but you live ‘somewhere’ in between so your claims as to the norms are suspect it seems to me. Name 3 adjoining states as your area if your location needs to be that vague for your comfort. No problem. But give us some idea.
If you make claims about your location, they are useless for arguments sake unless you identify it, you could be in Sweden for all we know. Downtown Manhattan, NY would be a lot different than Lincoln Nebraska.
As far as I can see, you are arguing from a non existent place or from out of the country. Like Canada for example.
How can we believe your ‘norms’ for your area without knowing where it is?
I live in the U.S. I prefer not to say more. If that means you will ignore me, so be it.
But your comments about how I could live in Sweden suggest that you actually agree with me. Different places have different norms around guns, and normal behavior in one place is suspicious behavior in another.
You miss my point about why your location is important to the discussion at hand and your comments and assumptions on your location but your first sentence did not miss the mark at all.
