Dude, I didn't see the dates, and gun control is guaranteed to get me riled up. Oh yeah, and I'm on drugs....Hydrocodone and Flexaril. So, I talk too much. In fact, I just spent an hour on the phone to the Ukraine. My wife's gonna be pissed when she gets the phonebill!!!

'Sides, now I feel that I've "contributed" to the discussion!!! ;)

Oh, BTW, I've been carrying for well over 10 years now. My weapon of choice is either a Glock 19 or a CZ-75 as an "I need a gun right now so I can get to the trunk" gun. I carry not because I'm afraid, but rather because "you never need a gun until you need one really badly." For me, it's just a piece of my daily kit...cellphone, wallet, handkercheif, pocket constitution, pocket rules of evidence, carkeys, handgun, spare mags, comb, and mints.

Although I currently live in a state where CCW is pretty much forbidden (Yay Maryland!), I intend to move elsewhere and conceal carry once college is done. For me, it's a question of preparedness and common sense. If you have a gun, and are properly trained in its use, then you have a better chance of survivng an encounter. As a result, I plan on habitually carrying a firearm. I've talked about this with a lot of people, and many of my friends worry that I'm being paranoid or would be compelled to use in situations where I shouldn't. They think at most I should only wear it when I feel the need to be protected.

Honestly I look at it differently. If I get to the point where it becomes a force of habit, then I decrease the chance of not having a weapon when I need it. And if I get the proper training to know how and when to use the weapon, then I'll know when to draw, and when not to draw. I can always choose not to draw, but it's very hard to conjure a gun out of thin air if I should need it.

I read that academic review of how both sides use fallacious arguments to support their cause, and I think it's mellowed me out a bit. I think that every state should be "shall issue" out of common sense. Criminals don't particulalry care about laws, and if people want to defend themselves with a gun then they should. So make the laws help those who want to follow them in the first place.

"Just in case" means exactly that
 

If you knew you were going to get into a gunfight, you wouldn't bring a handgun, you'd bring a shotgun and a bunch of friends. Handguns are for the unexpected, uninvited bad situations that can and do happen anywhere, every day, but always to "someone else". Well that "someone else" is a real person, it might be you some time. Just because your chances of getting hit by lightning are pretty slim, people do in fact get hit by lightning.

Well, someone's brought THIS one back from the dead! Diggin' deep, are ya?
Skimming the thread, this comment stood out to me. I live in Iceland, and the cops do not carry guns here. In fact, pretty much no one carries or even owns guns here, other than goose hunters. There has been one murder in the last two years, and that's pretty much normal. Total lack of gun culture, and I love it. I feel so much safer here than in any city in the US.

I'll bet a years wages that murder wasn't committed by one of the goose hunters

Nope, it wasn't. However, the incident was very isolated/localized. The weapon was a 22 caliber rifle that was used by a jealous ex-husband to shoot his wife's new boyfriend (and later himself) while the guy was changing his tire by the side of the road. It's been suggested that the shooter messed up the guy's car on purpose, so the man would have to stop to fix it... and the guy just walked up and shot him from behind. The man wouldn't have had time to respond anyway, even if he had had a gun.

The last murder that took place (2 years ago) was a stabbing, which is much more common here.

Dude, you guys should ban knives!

:lol: Yeah, maybe. But there isn't even a ban on guns, really... people could own guns here, if they wanted to (believe me, fads take VERY quickly in this population... once one person has something "cool," everyone else has it within a week). It's just not in the culture. And I love that about this place... never have to worry about it.

Just got my license and handgun but have yet to carry it anywhere but my car and motorcycle. It just feels too uncomfortable when walking and sitting. I guess I need to buy bigger jeans now. :)

It is comforting having it next to me in my car though.

I have had four years of additional CCW experience since I last posted to this thread, and I am now far more in favor of CCW.

I don't think the argument that carrying may put you at increased risk holds any water...even if it does, it should be a decision for individuals to make based upon their own circumstances. If I know I am going out drinking with the guys and may end up brawling (I am in a military town) I won't carry.

If I am going for a walk with my wife after dark, absolutely.


I trust my judgment far more now, and I can say with conviction that I don't think anyone will be able to take my weapon away from me and shoot me with it. Nor do I think my carrying will escalate the situation....You don't shoot at someone who isn't already presenting a lethal threat.

Concealed Carry is about letting me take responsibility for my own safety, because nobody else will.

Oh, and Samcol, send me a PM if you are having trouble carrying comfortably.

sam, you know that you can open carry in indiana with your license, right? that might make it less uncomfortable.

Yes, I've considered that, but open carry definetly gets some 'looks' I'm guessing.

In California, surely. I'm not sos sure in your neck of the woods.

In Indianapolis and parts near chicago, most certainly. more rural areas, alot less likely.

As far as Cali goes, having looked at alot of the laws there, open carry in unincorporated parts is perfectly legal. Also, I believe that one can open carry a handgun as long as there is no magazine in the pistol, although in urban areas you'll certainly be laid out prone and arrested til they realize you didn't break a gun law, so you'll probably get charged with disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace....if you're not outright shot.

It's not the gun culture that is the problem here, it is the crime culture.

Open-carry defeats the deterrent-purpose of conceal-carry, and could be argued to invite trouble. I recommend against it in pretty much any situation. As far as carrying so that you and your girlfriend can walk around in the dark, that could be considered "looking for trouble" if you did end up having to use your weapon on someone. Avoiding potential trouble is always the first step to any self-defense situation -- a carried weapon is not to be a first resort after you place yourself in a potentially unsafe situation.

how is it that simply open carrying is 'looking for trouble'? Is wearing an expensive watch, ring, or necklace 'looking for trouble'?

It is more an issue of common sense.

A night on the town with an expensive watch visible, no.

A trip home on the subway at 1:30AM, yes.

Hell yes, wearing expensive shit is trouble, in the wrong areas at the wrong times. When I worked in the Philly ghetto last summer, I removed my wedding ring, gold bracelet, nice watch, etc... I wanted to be as low-profile and blending in as possible. I even kept my car as crappy-looking as possible so that no one would be tempted to check it out (my mother always taught me to store all valuable things out of sight, e.g. not leaving a purse or camera on the passenger seat for people to see). It's common sense.

In my city, the tasers the cops carry in addition to their guns are much more noticeable than their firearms. I find this sight comforting--the police here are trained to reach for their Taser first. The only police shooting in the several years I've been here only occurred because the mentally ill man they were trying to subdue attempted to attack an officer even after being Tasered several times. Though the incident was saddening, the community/police response after the event was amazing: the police held several town meetings to figure out how they could better respond to calls involving mentally ill residents.

Though I could carry a concealed handgun in my state/county, I have no desire to. I know people who do, and largely the reason is self-protection. But given the relative safety of where I live, that reason doesn't really hold water, at least not in my book.

I'd much rather own a Taser.

You're absolutely right, but you'll get serious looks and most people around here would call the police.

My little brother used to paint-ball, and he was walking from a wooded area to a pay-phone with a friend to get a ride home. Someone mistook a paint-ball gun (with the paint-ball feeding apparatus, which makes the toy look nothing like a gun) for a real gun and the police arrived very quickly. Several squad cars and a helicopter.

The culture here is just different, that's all. We, and when I see 'we' I mean many, many Californians, don't like guns. The more metropolitan the area, the less people like guns. A lot of it can be blamed on the gang violence of the early to mid 90s, but really it's just about the possibility of a violent death from multiple gunshot wounds going up when there's a gun around. Having been shot myself, I can attest to the possibility of being shot going up if there's a gun around. SJ really isn't a city with a lot of crime, anyway, so it makes little sense to carry. Even though a lot of our cops are racist, they do manage to keep things pretty safe. We're the safest city over 500,000 people in the whole country, so far as crime.

This post has been brought to you by the City of San Jose.

CARRYING CONCEALED FIREARMS (CCW) STATISTICS

Violent crime rates are highest overall in states with laws severely limiting or prohibiting the carrying of concealed firearms for self-defense. (FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 1992) -

The total Violent Crime Rate is 26% higher in the restrictive states (798.3 per 100,000 pop.) than in the less restrictive states (631.6 per 100,000).

The Homicide Rate is 49% higher in the restrictive states (10.1 per 100,000) than in the states with less restrictive CCW laws (6.8 per 100,000).

The Robbery Rate is 58% higher in the restrictive states (289.7 per 100,000) than in the less restrictive states (183.1 per 100,000).

The Aggravated Assault Rate is 15% higher in the restrictive states (455.9 per 100,000) than in the less restrictive states (398.3 per 100,000). Using the most recent FBI data (1992), homicide trends in the 17 states with less restrictive CCW laws compare favorably against national trends, and almost all CCW permittees are law-abiding.

Since adopting CCW (1987), Florida's homicide rate has fallen 21% while the U.S. rate has risen 12%. From start-up 10/1/87 2/28/94 (over 6 yrs.) Florida issued 204,108 permits; only 17 (0.008%) were revoked because permittees later committed crimes (not necessarily violent) in which guns were present (not necessarily used).

Of 14,000 CCW licensees in Oregon, only 4 (0.03%) were convicted of the criminal (not necessarily violent) use or possession of a firearm. Americans use firearms for self-defense more than 2.1 million times annually.

By contrast, there are about 579,000 violent crimes committed annually with firearms of all types. Seventy percent of violent crimes are committed by 7% of criminals, including repeat offenders, many of whom the courts place on probation after conviction, and felons that are paroled before serving their full time behind bars.

Two-thirds of self-protective firearms uses are with handguns.

99.9% of self-defense firearms uses do not result in fatal shootings of criminals, an important factor ignored in certain "studies" that are used to claim that guns are more often misused than used for self-protection. Of incarcerated felons surveyed by the Department of Justice, 34% have been driven away, wounded, or captured by armed citizens; 40% have decided against committing crimes for fear their would-be victims were armed.

Hey, Ron, thanks for posting. Look up the crime statistics for San Jose, CA. Now look up how many people in San Jose have guns. Either San Jose wasn't included in your report, or we're an island.

Ron....interesting stats, but its customary here to post a source(s).

Are they from FBI Uniform Crime Reports, DoJ Bureau of Justice Statistics? NRA? unsourced news reports?

How credible are your stats? I have no idea until I know the source.

looks like he pulled them from gunfacts.info which pulls its stats from a variety of sources including FBI and DOJ

sorry, dk...I dont consider gunfacts.info a credible unbiased source. The site author clearly has an agenda.

It would be like me posting Brady Center stats, like these:

* for every time a gun is used in the home in a legally justified shooting, there are 22 criminal, unintentional and suicide related shootings.

* the presence of a gun in the home triples the risk of homicide in the home

* the presences of a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide five times
http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/f...earm_facts.pdf

----

* one out of three guns is kept loaded and unlocked....

...as a result

* nearly all child unintentional shooting deaths occur in or around the home; 50% occur in the home and 40% occur in the home of a relative or friend
http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/f...s/pdf/home.pdf

----

* in 2004, 30% of all women murders were by intimate partners

* a gun in the home makes in 6 times more likely that an abused woman would be murdered than other abused women.
http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/f...c_violence.pdf

I think sleepyjack nailed it with his helmet vs brick analogy.

I mean shit happens.

I think more people die from smoking related diseases, car accidents, or natural causes than gun crime really.

to get behind the psychology of people who commit gun crimes, there are those who are doing it out of pure hatred and wont waste any time with thier supervillanesque drawn out victory speeches to give you any time at all to be a hero and save yourself and the pretty neighbor girl. No chances are, the psychological profile of that guy will enable him to blow your head off without saying a word.

those who hesitate before killing people, who engage in dialogue, are more likely to be talked down or escaped without incident. those people are just in the wrong state of mind, much like people who own guns and start dialogue before suicide. some people can be talked out of it.

Its just aiming for the non lethal approach, whichmean taking the higher road for a lot of people, that proves your respect for life. the low brow "shoot-em" route seems crass and continues to drag our species back down the evolutionary ladder away from the "perfect" uptopian society that has been fantasized about in so many sci fi future films.

I'm sure most of these people wouldn't have ever turned to gun crime if they were part of a social group that actually cared about them (that means NOT GANGS, since thats more about money/drugs/hos in the way they portray themselves)

I dunno, most people who are advocates of guns seem to think that the typical guy commiting gun crime is about as evil as everything they've seen come out of hollywood.

in reality its usually either the mentally ill, the social outcast, or someone who's poor upbringing never stressed the sanctity of being mortal.

considering this debate over guns, gun control, or even the minute of concealed guns have been ongoing since like the civil war or some crap in some form or another, I think my opinion is just another one to go floating off into this stupid internet of insignificance. Certainly not going to change a damn thing.

thats fine, although unlike the brady campaign, the stats and info put in to the gunfacts is pulled from a large variety of sources including the FBI uniform crime stats, but immediately discrediting the information without considering the end source of the info is shortsighted.....IMHO.

I'm not sure what you mean "unlike the brady campaign...."

The Brady Campaign fact sheets also footnote a "large variety of sources including FBI uniform crime stats."

Like these stats from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports:

* Concerning the relationships (if known) of murder victims and offenders, 22.4 percent of victims were slain by family members

*Concerning the circumstances surrounding murders, arguments (including romantic triangles) comprised 27.1 percent of reported murder circumstances
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/offens..._homicide.html

So why do you think gunfacts.info (a self-proclaimed libertarian singer/songwriter with no discernable background in public safety, law enforcement, criminal justice, etc) is more credible than the Brady Campaign?

As I've stated in numerous other posts, the brady campaign has one objective, and that is to remove firearms from the general population. They firmly believe that the only ones that should have firearms are military and police, therefore they will skew numbers to promote their cause. It's probably why I don't consider NRA stats credible.

You are absolutely wrong about the Brady Campaign's objectives. They have never supported a total ban on firearms and I think you know that.

They support background checks, registration, mandatory safety locks, etc. They did support an extension of the assault weapons ban as did Pres Bush and many Republicans (but not enough)

If you have any documentation that supports your mistaken conclusion about their objectives, please post it.

Are these FBI Uniform Crime Report stats I posted skewed?

* Concerning the relationships (if known) of murder victims and offenders, 22.4 percent of victims were slain by family members

*Concerning the circumstances surrounding murders, arguments (including romantic triangles) comprised 27.1 percent of reported murder circumstances
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/offens..._homicide.html

Sarah Brady quotes -

http://thinkexist.com/quotes/sarah_brady/

Sarah Brady's personal views do not represent the policies of the Brady Center and she is the first to say that...aside from the fact that some of those quotes are bogus:

Quotes falsely attributed to Hilter, Sarah Brady, and Janet Reno

Quotes of questionable authenticity

Paul Helmke, the former Republican mayor of Ft Wayne, Ind, is the president and spokesperson of the Brady Center, not Sarah Brady.

Well, they do use her out front of the organization a regular basis don't they? Her views would have to be in sync with theirs. Put another way, if the spokesperson for MADD was pro-alcohol or the one for PETA pro-meat, would they be credible or remain in those positions?

In fact they do not use her out front on a regular basis...and when they do, she reads an organizational statement.

Again, aside from the fact that some of those quotes are bogus and none provide a primary source to confirm the authenticity.

Gimme a break....lets try to stick to verifiable facts.

You should ask them to remove her image from their front page.

http://www.bradycenter.org/

:rolleyes:

Why should they remove her image? She was the founder of the Center.

Do you see any of those (undocumented and unnsubstantiated) quotes you cited anywhere on the Brady Center site?

Its easy to make Sarah Brady the boogywoman...but its a cheap shot and simply demonstrates the extent to which gun supporters will demonize opponents.

Suppose they were true. They would be directly at odds with their message of universal fraternity for all firearms owners. They would not acknowledge them but hope they go quietly down the memory hole.

Suppose? So you have nothing factual to discuss or contribute. Thats what I thought :thumbsup: