While I agree they need to be, there’s no reason to believe they will. The biggest issue with firearms used for defense is that they escalate situations. It’s why I think allowing firearms in bars is stupid. Bars are much more violent than ordinary public places, there’s a reason why a “bar fight” is a cliche, and people with a weapon handy when they’re angry tend to use it. I’m a firearm owner, but if I were king, I’d probably require a psych test to establish that an applicant has no temper issues and has decent impulse control before they could get a CCW.
I’d like to helpfully remind gun rights supporters that it’s Friday, and no one ought to waste a weekend going down this particular road again. (Sorry Gus, it’s just a sentiment that pops up periodically from a new person each time.)
That’s an awfully polite way to dismiss a position out of hand without actually addressing anything. Does liking firearms means you have to check your rationality at the door? In what world would Chad Oulson still be dead for texting in a theater if a retired police officer with anger issues wasn’t carrying a pistol in a theater? How is this not a clear-cut case where the presence of a firearm escalated a minor dispute into a death?
I’m not arguing that we should ban all pistols. I own several. I’m not arguing that CCW permits shouldn’t exist, though I personally think many of the people who apply for them don’t have any remote need to carry a weapon on their person. I’m arguing that some people are not stable enough to carry weapons. It’s not much different from arguing that mentally ill people shouldn’t carry weapons, and I hope no one is arguing for that as a matter of constitutional principle.
Not dismissing. Just acknowledging that the position has been addressed in prior discussions. I see rationality came up in sentence two. I think I’ll bow out.
I’m actually pretty concerned about a similar issue, specifically in Florida. I’ve been keeping an eye on anecdotal stories to see if the media blitz from the Stand Your Ground law the last few years has caused people to mistakenly think there’s a lot more leeway now about when you can use a gun in self-defense. I worry that due to desperate shrieking about blood in the streets, that people think there has been a fundamental change. I’ve seen a few news articles about clear cases of manslaughter and murder where the defendant tried to claim protection under SYG. It’s hard to tell whether they believed that beforehand or were just grasping at straws after the fact.
Gutmacher’s 300 page book is considered “essential,” and yet only some small portion of gun owners in Florida has ever read it. That’s scary, because the laws are too byzantine to merely apply common sense (or what one heard on TV) to situations like this.
Sarkus
3231
You assume that a psych test would actually work. I know of at least two school shootings where the shooters had psych evaluations prior where the conclusion was they weren’t a threat to harm anyone. Psychiatry/psychology still has a long way to go.
It becomes a question of argument by anecdote, till someone runs out anecdotes. I don’t mean to dismiss your point, but someone can just as readily find an example of how a gun ended a home invasion - or prevented some form of tragedy. Did having a firearm exacerbate this situation? Absolutely and tragically so. That said, I think gun owners simply accept the risks of living in a gun owning society.
jpinard
3233
So we should have laws stating handguns are fine at home and stand your ground is valid there, but outlaw it in public.
We should not have to live in fear that the idiot next to us in a bar or restaurant is a hair trigger away from ending our lives if they get mad. We will never get away from planned assaults, but the road rager who pulls his concealed weapon, or the angry person in a bar, or the angry idiot who didn’t get the close parking spot he wanted…
If everyone in this country looked at the beautiful little baby who has lost her father for popcorn… It’s just unbelievably sad. There have been cases in Florida where stand your ground was used, not accepted, but because it’s a difference of no jail time vs. life, an individual only ends up with 8 years for rage killing someone. It’s a travesty of justice.
olaf
3234
Everything I have read says concealed handgun permit holders commit crimes way less than the average citizen.
Everything I have read here in this thread says that everything you have read is likely to be highly anectdotal in nature due to the challenges in conducting gun research in the US.
Have you read actual US studies that compare criminal records of CCW holders vs the wider population? I’d be surprised if such a thing actually exists.
ShivaX
3236
http://www.beaufortobserver.net/Articles-NEWS-and-COMMENTARY-c-2012-12-22-264494.112112-Texas-study-Concealed-carry-permit-holders-commit-less-than-1-of-the-crimes.html
http://hhshootingsports.com/WireShots/archives/2225
No one is forced to report nationally, so exact numbers are often hard to determine, but the less than 1% seems a fairly constant figure, with CCW holders committing significantly less crimes than the general populace.
Some people say CCW reduces crime rate, which is suspect at best, but it certainly doesn’t increase crime by any stretch of the imagination.
Edit: Most states seem to report around a 5 times less chance of a violent crime by a CCW holder.
So, if <1% of crime in Texas is conducted by someone with a CCW, what % of Texans have a CCW? Are they over-represented or under-represented?
In fact, if you take this site’s 550,000 Texas CCW’s number against their 26 million population, 2.2% of Texans have a CCW, so they would seem under-represented.
ShivaX
3238
In Texas a CCW holder is 13 times less likely to commit ANY crime than the average citizen, iirc.
Roughly 5-6 times less likely to commit any sort of violent crime iirc.
Not sure what relevance the % of them having CCW is, maybe we’re just crossing wires on that.
Edit: From that first link:
The Texas Department of Public Safety published a list of crimes committed in Texas in 2011 by everyone convicted and by those convicted who also held CCL’s. The bottom line: Concealed carry permit holders commit less than 1% of the crimes. If you want to be exact, they committed two tenths of one percent of the crimes in 2011. And not all of those involved firearms or violence.
The data show that 63,679 people were convicted of a long list of crimes. Of those 63 thousand, only 120 were CCL holders.
ShivaX
3239
And in relation to CCW or whatever, unless I’m mistaken the guy in the theater would be able to carry regardless because a federal law allows ex-military and law enforcement to carry regardless of local laws. I could be off on that, but I do recall seeing it and anytime you read up on a state’s carry laws, ex-military/law enforcement are always exempted from the rules (ie they basically get CCW no matter what the laws are). Since he was an ex-cop he could’ve carried even if the state said otherwise, barring certain federally restricted areas (schools, post offices, federal buildings and I think state capital grounds).
Houngan
3240
Why would you live in fear of that? The oncoming car in the next lane is much more dangerous than a person with a gun, and I encounter thousands of them every day. I don’t live in fear of people swerving into my lane, though. You think that there’s some future state where the US could be a safe rubber room, but that’s not how reality works. The good news is that if you’re white and you live in a mostly white neighborhood, you’re already somewhere with the same safety as most of Europe. The bad news is that if you live in Camden or Gary or Oakland or D.C. in the wrong neighborhood, you’re in a situation closer to an Eastern European nation. A BAD example of an EE nation, at that.
Rather than talk about banning guns from CCW holders, which yes any cursory Googling will show you are much more law-abiding than the average person, let’s talk about why there is such phenomenal violence in poor black neighborhoods compared to everywhere else. Ideas? Camden has a murder rate around 50:100k, compared to the national 4-5 or Europe’s 1-2. Why can’t the richest nation on the planet do something about that?
You’re ignoring the use of cars, again.
There’s also absolutely no evidence CCW licence holders are more law abiding. They are far less likely to be convicted. That’s all that can be said with the data available.
I’d also note that excluding sectarian violence, the gun murder rate in Northern Ireland, which has far more liberal gun laws than the rest of the UK (especially Scotland), is not significantly different from the rest of the UK. It has a significantly higher gun accident rate, but in line with regulated EU countries and not the US.
In risk analysis, it always feels better to be in a situation you have some control over. As long as you’re not an argumentative hothead in real life, you will never get shot over a parking space. On the other hand, if you’re rich and white, you still have to worry about over- and under-medicated mentally ill young men shooting up your kids’ school. If you have to live your life in a state of fear, you should at least focus on the right things.
ShivaX
3243
Except all the evidence that they are. Other than that, none at all.
Tim, I know people who are far from “argumentative hotheads” who have been attacked over parking space issues. In one case with a knife, even. (He legged it like a scared cat, which doesn’t work versus a gun)
ShivaX - What evidence? Let’s see it - as I said, all the studies focus on conviction rates, since it’s another aspect of American gun policy where you can’t do proper research (conviction rates are safe, since it’s based on data which is public, basically - otherwise, the data for study isn’t there!). There’s no current way of knowing cause and effect on this, and therefore making claims based on it…
Sarkus
3245
In most states getting a CCW requires a very extensive background check so, if anything, a CCW holder has been vetted to a degree that many gun control advocates would like to see applied to gun owners in general. The issue with gun violence in the US isn’t about CCW holders.
ShivaX
3246
So we’re going to assume innocent people are actually guilty and that CCW holders magically get off for crimes they commit?
Yeah, I think I’ll just put you back on ignore rather than keep responding to whatever it is you’re doing.
