Miscellaneous > Not at the Dinner Table

Anti-Gun Laws Having The Opposite Effect (Clearly)

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Qwerty:
What if every man and woman carried a concealed weapon? Do people honestly think there would still be shootings like the recent movie shoot-out?

There wouldn't be. Because what's the only thing that can stop someone with a gun? Someone with a gun.

12 people were killed and 59 remained injured because no one had the ability to do a thing about it. They had no choice but to lay helpless between the theatre seats while being shot at by a maniac.

Apparently government doesn't understand that the reason there are so many gun related crimes In the U.S. is because we don't allow concealed firearms. They must not realize that criminals don't follow laws.

In essence, the feds are amplifying the problem they supposedly are trying to prevent. Not a surprise, really.

I think if it's clear enough to a 15 year-old that this is a huge hole in the system, then it should be clear enough to grown (perhaps not mentally) men.

Also...

"Switzerland's government issues every adult a gun and trains them to use it; Switzerland has the lowest gun related crime rate of any civilized country in the world."

Luigison:
Colorado state laws regarding guns:

* State Permit to Purchase? No
* Assault weapon ban? Only in Denver
* Open Carry? Yes
* Concealed carry permits? Yes
* Castle doctrine? Yes
* Make My Day law? Yes
If every man and woman carried a concealed weapon someone may have been able to stop some of the recent deaths in Colorado, but the killer was almost fully covered in bullet proof armor, used a tear gas type canister, had about 6000 bullets and had an automatic AK47 that could shot 60 bullets per minutes. 

While your Switzerland quote seems pertinent, the US is different from Switzerland in may key ways.  I'm not going to get into that though because each country is different and people can pick and choice statistics for or against gun laws.  For example, Azerbaijan does not allow its citizens to own guns and has a tiny fraction of the gun related homicide rate of the US while Zimbabwe also does not allow its citizens to own guns, but has a higher gun homicide rate than the US.  If we want to us statistics for or against gun control we should use more that just one or two data points and consider other difference that could account for the result. 

CrossEyed7:
In a broad sense, I don't object to the logic of "If we outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns." The theater was a gun-free zone, which in the end only meant that none of the victims had guns.

HOWEVER, this theater being a gun-free zone had nothing to do with the government. The theater owners chose to enact a rule banning guns on their privately-owned property. Permit laws and whatnot may or may not affect public school shootings, but it could not have had an effect on this shooting, or any other shooting on private property, unless we were to enact laws making it illegal to not allow people to bring guns onto your private property -- which is not an avenue I think most sane Americans want to go down.

PERHAPS it's possible, though, that if we did ease up on gun laws and people got used to concealed weapons being legally carried at schools and other government buildings, private property owners (malls, churches, theaters) might feel more comfortable and ease up on their privately-enacted weapons policies in time, though this could take a generation or more.

BUT, all things being equal, if someone gets shot in my store, I'm less likely to be legally liable for it if I had a rule banning guns outright posted clearly at the door. Now, it's possible that if a good guy had had a gun in that situation, he might have shot the bad guy before the bad guy shot the innocent guy -- but even if that happened, that could potentially open as much or more legal trouble. If the good guy shot the bad guy too early, there's still a murder/manslaughter to clean up, and the victim(s)' family(s) can now try to make the argument that I fostered a dangerous environment by encouraging everyone to bring their guns to my CD store.

Target isn't going to be okay with people bringing guns into their stores. Whether or not it's safer in an individual store, it's much safer legally for the corporation to not be encouraging everyone nationwide to bring in all manner of weapons, and rather than get into drawing lines of saying exactly which types of knives and guns and crossbows are okay to bring into which stores, it's much easier to just issue a blanket weapon ban. Same with other chain stores. Now who wants to be the one store in the strip mall that doesn't ban weapons? If your customers do bring their guns to your store, now they can't finish the rest of their shopping.

Qwerty:
I see what you're getting at. With the way most people are about things like that, a store like Target or a movie theatre wouldn't exactly be comfortable with allowing guns in, or at least not immediately, in these times, but all in all, I think, in a general sense, even outside this recent tragedy, that a nationwide concealed weapon permit could and most likely would prevent many fatal incidents.

bobbysq1337:
The people making the laws do realize that everyone has the right to bear arms according to the second amendment, right?

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