I agree there. It's useless just to show it. If you pull it, shoot instantly and don't miss.

-edit-
I may have misinterpreted your response, my response was concerning defensive purposes only. For a bad guy, it makes sense to have the gun drawn during the robbery. That way people will take you more serious. A LOT of armed robberies take place every day. The overwhelming majority end with nobody being shot. Based on the statistics, its safe to say that in almost all situations, if you follow orders and don't try to be a hero, nobody will get hurt.

Of course, if you have data showing the number of armed robberies, along wtih the number of shootings that was broken down between victims that complied and those who didn't, I've love to see it.

What difference does it make? A CCW permit is worth as much as traffic school when it comes to training and experience required to earn it.

The point is when you start shooting you put everyone within range at risk. Even people sitting in their homes are at risk. Your right to protect yourself does not include allowing you to hit a bystander with an errant bullet.

Care to back that up? I see people openly carry all the time in Phoenix. I prefer open carry because it makes a statement. Concealed carry should never be legal. People on the street have a right to know if the guy next to them is packing. Business owners should also have the right to not allow weapons of any kind in their stores and concealed carry gives someone the opportunity to sneak in with a gun.

that may be, but i like being alive and would rather not pin my hopes of staying alive on the odds against someone who's already committing a violent crime.

I've never looked that up personally, in fact, not sure i've read that anywhere. i'll see what i can find. the only foreseeable issue might be in classification. I don't think law enforcement adds a subcategory of homicide related to robbery. but we'll see.


What difference does it make? Do you think the criminals give a damn whether they hit an innocent bystander? I assure you that law abiding citizens who are licensed to carry DO give a damn. THATS why they (they as in most, not all) go to the range regularly and a hell of a lot more than some cops do. less than 1% of all shootings by legally licensed carriers EVER hit an innocent bystander. compare that to how many are hit by criminals.


Open carry is perfectly acceptable by most everyone in arizona, thats why my wife and I will be moving there after her kids graduate high school in a few years.

Open carry in any rural area of wisconsin will hardly go noticed, however, if you carry in any heavily populated area, you WILL attract the attention of law enforcement and if someone freaks out and dials 911 about 'man with a gun', you'll get cited for disorderly conduct. I've read too many stories of people getting harrassed for doing something that is perfectly within the law(open carry) because some freaked out anti-gun person doesn't want it to be legal. Believe me, I'd much prefer open carry in all 50 states myself. It just isn't going to happen with all the people who hate/fear guns.

I posted this story a couple of days ago. Sadly, this man died today.

Yeah, if he had had a gun maybe they would have shot him while he was trying to pull it out.

and maybe he could have shot the bad guy, or at least scared him away. half a chance is better than no chance at all.

What proof do you have that he would have a better chance to survive if he has a gun? And please don't say "common sense", because there seems to be a very definate divide in what is or is not common sense in this thread.

We don't know enought about the situation to make judgment calls like "if if had a gun he would have survived". We don't know that. What if the theif was a well trained gun expert, and the man who was robbed was only a novice? We simply don't know....so it's all speculation, which does none of us any good.

his corpse should be enough proof. he's dead now, he MIGHT NOT be if he had a gun.

again, half a chance is better than no chance. he might still have died, but he might have lived also. As it stands, he's just dead.

He might have survived without a gun. There were a thousand times a thousand variables at play in the scenereo that led up to this man's death, and pretending like we know having a gun might have effected the outcome is silly without some fundamental understanding of both the situation above, and general situations involving armed robberies. You can't just claim a statistic and therefore it's true. I could just as easily have said, " he would have had even less a chance to live had he been armed", and without proof, it would have been just as true as your statement. I'm from Missouri, show me the proof.
The victim might have lived if the robber with the gun was on heroin, so we should legalize heroin!!!

Edit: I'm an anti gun, hippie from California, and you are a gun loving guy from Texas...are we walking cliches?

Will, he is dead. He did NOT survive without a gun.

whats not to understand about the situation above will. he's dead. he was unarmed. If he was armed, he might still be dead...MIGHT, but he might now be alive.

how is less of a chance to live when you're dead?

thats irrelevant, although if the robber was high, he might have missed. I'll grant you that.

about a hundred years ago, you guys were gunslinging gold panners. what happened? :lol:

Well, like I said, we are talking about statistics here. The odds are that I would have responded now, but I could have read the post and decided to check back later to see if Filtherton reposts. I might not have tripped on my rug when I walked in the door from work today. I did trip, but there are odds that I might not have tripped. If you believe in time streams, all things that can happen do happen, but we'll leave that alone for the purpous of this conversation.
If the victim was made of steel, the he have survived. If the man with a gun had a stroke, the victim might have survived. Having a gun is just another variable, no more important than the next. It does not validate or invalidate your ascertion that the situation above shows that guns can protect people.
As usual we are talking about a hypothetical situation in which the outcome of the story above might have been changed by our variables. The man is dead, saying "if he had a gun..." is moot. He didn't have a gun. Before the moment of death, there were many different variables that could have effected the outcome, be the variable the victim having a gun or the robber being hit by lightning.
It's no more or less relevent than having a gun. The man obviously didn't have a gun, and he died. What I am saying is that putting those two facts together - the victim dying, and the victim not having a gun - does not prove your point; the point that guns save people.
The 60s I suppose. I'm not sure why the 60s created such a fundamental change here in hippyland, but not there in Texas. Maybe it's because we in California are closer to Vietnam, geographically.

A meaningless point. Last week I covered a story where an old man died after being accidentally run over by a car. He didn't have a gun either, but the outcome wouldn't have changed if he DID have one. Just because the guy, without a gun, died does not mean the gun would have helped him one iota.




The gold ran out ;)

They were already being held at gunpoint. Pulling a gun out while being held at gunpoint by someone who is already planning on killing you has a very high probability of ensuring that you die sooner. Unless of course, the guy who got shot also had a hypothetical premonition to go along with his hypothetical gun and pulled his first. Unfortunately for the victim, american law doesn't allow for preemptive strikes.