Carrying guns leads to confrontations....

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'm surprised you don't have any supporting evidence other than anecdotal, Tero.

[FBM]

I'm sorry, Tero, but that's really quite a stretch. I've carried handguns for years (before I came to Korea, anyway) and it never made me any braver, more aggressive, proud or anything else but a little more confident that I would have an effective response to whatever loony that might pop up. I grew up in gun culture, and I have never met anyone who fits the type of person you describe. But I didn't keep company with gun nuts, just gun owners. The image you and several others here paint is that anybody with a gun is just itching for the first opportunity to shoot somebody with it. It's just plain ludicrous and untrue. There are a few, yes, I won't deny that, but I don't deserved to be caricatured as a wanna-be murderer just because of the sub-culture I grew up in. You and the others who espouse the position you do are painting with a very wide brush, damn the details. It's stereotyping no different from racism, sexism, etc. Sloppy, faulty reasoning. Sorry for saying so, but that's what it is.

[Tero]

But you are not an idiot. Some 50% of the population is not very smart.

Code: Select all

"There's no firm, solid evidence that the growth in concealed weapons permits has contributed to a drop in crime rates," said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston.

Among the reasons most criminologists think crime is dropping, he said, are better policing strategies, an end to the crack cocaine epidemic and high rates of incarceration. Even the fact that more Americans have cameras in their phones, and are able to capture crime as it happens, may have contributed.

http://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapito ... /11204311/

When you allow guns into bars, shootings will go up.

[Tero]

Clarification. I'm not saying FBM or Seth is going to be dangerous to me. All the Zimmerman idiots with heroic ideas in their head are.

[Coito ergo sum]

You are flat out wrong FBM and the numbers are clear.....this is an American problem - not a human problem. And the American kids suffer for the idiocy in a way no other civilized nation tolerates....

Among the world’s 23 wealthiest countries, 80 percent of all gun deaths are American deaths and 87 percent of all kids killed by guns are American kids.

The Center also reports that the number of firearm deaths of kids younger than 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in the next 25 industrialized countries combined. We average more than 4,000 dead children annually. For comparison, as of last August we had lost 4.680 American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan since the wars there began in 2001.

fucked up country

Are those raw numbers, or per capita comparisons?

Also, 4,000 out of a population of how many million?

Oh, and these statistics aren't relevant to the topic anyway.

They also ignore the fact that in the US almost all the gun homicides occur in places where there are strict gun laws, particularly inner cities. States with open gun laws in the US have very low gun homicide rates. California, New York, (Detroit) Michigan, and (Miami) Florida, are where the gun crimes are. Yet, the antigunners are adamant that the US is "fucked up" because guns are freely available in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Vermont, Maine....and the list goes on and on. There is a severe myopia among some non-American folks, and they seem to judge the US as if it is "England," or some other blip on the map that Utah can carry around its back pocket without knowing it was there.

[Tero]

So there shoukd be no national police force to enforce gun laws, which we should not have?

[mozg]

I'm saying that the gun carrier will behave differently when carrying a gun. They can even lure the criminal into attack, then shoot them at the last second.

Hi, I'm mozg, and I lawfully carry a concealed firearm.

I do indeed behave differently than I did before I started carrying my Glock everywhere. I am a lot more conscious of avoiding any confrontations than I ever used to be. Other people are right far more often than they were before I was carrying a firearm full time. I know that because I am carrying, I have deadly force on my person at all times, and that in any confrontation or argument, it is absolutely my responsibility to do every possible thing I can to de-escalate the situation. I apologize. I walk away. I say 'You're right, that is your parking space.'

I do this for a couple of reasons.

One is that I really do not want to shoot someone, so I do everything in my power to avoid being in a position where it is necessary to defend my life with lethal force. While I am absolutely certain that I will, if it is necessary, use such force if I am in fear for my life, I also know that I will spend the rest of that life wondering if I had done everything I could to avoid killing a person. The firearm on my hip is for the instance where every other possible avenue for extracting myself from or avoiding entering a situation in which I need to defend myself has failed.

The other is that I know full well that despite the stand-your-ground provisions of the law regarding lethal force and self defense, if I ever do have to defend myself and I shoot someone, every single thing I did leading up to pulling the trigger will absolutely be scrutinized for any shred of indication that I didn't do everything I reasonably could to avoid using lethal force. Every second will be analyzed. Did I confront the person? Did I escalate the situation? Was I rude? Hostile? Did I provoke the attack? Could I have avoided or de-escalated the conflict?

I don't want to lure anyone into attack because I am not a psychopath.

[Tero]

You've obviously done some thinking and training.

The average gun carrier goes by gut feel and serotonin levels in their brain. We have these mechanisms so that we can make fast fight or flee decisions. Complex evaluation of cosequences is not done on the spot with gun in hand.

Serotonin levels
http://www.dana.org/news/brainwork/detail.aspx?id=13182

[FBM]

"average gun carrier"

Never seen one.

[Coito ergo sum]

So there shoukd be no national police force to enforce gun laws, which we should not have?

We don't have a national police force. Whether we should, I suppose, is a matter that can be debated.

Who said we shouldn't have gun laws?

[Tero]

Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms?

I meant national, not state laws.

[Tero]

"average gun carrier"

Never seen one.

Well, duh, they are concealed of course.

But we can substitute two:
1 white male with pick up, high school diploma
2 ghetto male with clunker car, no diploma

Average those two and you have it.

[Coito ergo sum]

Clarification. I'm not saying FBM or Seth is going to be dangerous to me. All the Zimmerman idiots with heroic ideas in their head are.

You're assuming you know what was in his head.

[mozg]

You've obviously done some thinking and training.

As has everyone else I know who lawfully carries a firearm.

The average gun carrier goes by gut feel and serotonin levels in their brain. We have these mechanisms so that we can make fast fight or flee decisions. Complex evaluation of cosequences is not done on the spot with gun in hand.

That's why all the thinking and training beforehand. If you do find yourself in that situation where you have only seconds to make that choice and fire or not fire, everything you trained and practiced for should be so well oiled in your muscles that you default to your training.

This is why I don't get people who fault us or think that training makes us crazy. I've spent thousands of hours and thousands of dollars not being an irresponsible fool looking for a confrontation, and there are always people who think that I'm a horrid person because of that training.

Either way, someone's going to think I'm a terrible person. I chose the way I can live with, and so did everyone else I know who carries legally. Including all those pickup truck driving redneck yokels that people here are so quick to stereotype.

[Tero]

It's irrelevant what was in Zs or Martin's head. However, I would not weep over Z if he went and confronted M with no gun in pocket. He had no authority to confront anyone. Only to report them.