PP here. No one in our family has ever had a gun (other than a long ago hunting rifle), and I'm not planning to ever have one. I also try to avoid times and situations where crimes usually occur in our city. Your attempt at humor, however, does not change the fact that there are places where it would be helpful if someone other than criminals and in your words "gangsta thugs" had a weapon. |
If you still think that, you haven't been paying attention to the thread. It's a RWNJ fantasy to think he can break up a crime in progress with a gun. That gun is actually more likely to be used against him, mark him as the gunman when the police arrive, and/or cause death or injury to bystanders. |
I respectfully and strongly disagree. |
Do you have stats to back up your claim that increased conceal-carry rates increases crime? Or are you just voicing an opinion? The raw stats show overall crime has decreased as conceal-carry rates increased. |
Yes. It is undeniable that violent crime increases when guns are banned (happened in England, etc.) and that increasing gun ownership is correlated with decreasing violent crime rates. Gun ownership in the U.S. Is at an all time high and violent crime has been dropping for decades. |
I personally know of two people who were in terrible car accidents, but survived because they were not wearing seatbelts. True.
But try pinning that statistic on any sort of policy or even psa to discourage folks from wearing seatbelts. Why? Because the exception isn't the rule. |
According to the FBI, only 3% of active shooter incidents have been stopped by civilians. https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/september/fbi-releases-study-on-active-shooter-incidents/pdfs/a-study-of-active-shooter-incidents-in-the-u.s.-between-2000-and-2013 |
60% of the incidents ended BEFORE the police arrived. Perhaps if more responsible American citizens were trained and armed, many, many LIVES would be SAVED while the police were on their way. Think about it. |
I'm perplexed by the four examples OP gave us. If I'm repeating, I apologize -- it's a long thread.
In the first one, witnesses heard an argument, heard shots, and saw someone running away. The fleeing man was apprehended, but no charges have been filed. In the second, someone driving erratically crashed into a gas line, and shot at EMS coming to help. After much back and forth gunfire, the guy passed out and was taken to the hospital. In the third case, a guy with a toy gun was shot several times, kicked in the face, and required surgery. In the fourth case, a sixteen year old robber was killed. I apologize, but I don't see any of these cases as a clear-cut improvement over what might have happened if the "victims" had not been armed. In the first, there was no robbery, just an armed drunk in a car. In the second, there may or may not have been a robbery attempt. Even in the other two, it's not clear to me who were the real victims. |
Please notice how "an average of 6.4 incidents occurred in the first 7 years studied, and an average of 16.4 occurred in the last 7 years" between 2000 and 2013. And who was in the White House. Thank you for these insightful stats, PP. |
Also notice that no where in the report is conceal-carry mentioned. The report only studies "active shooter" incidents, not crime or murders in general. So I'm not seeing any stats here that show the impact conceal-carry rates have. |
Exactly. |
Um, that's why we have cops. |
Correlation is not causation. Crime is down for a lot of reasons, among which are economic and other factors. If you want to claim it's down because of an increase in concealed carry, I'll have to disagree because crime is down just as much in places where there was no increase in concealed carry. |
A paltry 16.4 cases in 7 years but 77,000 gun homicides during that same time that were not deterred or prevented despite there being enough gins in America to arm every man, woman and child. By the numbers, a "good guy with a gun" only has a 0.0002 chance of ever doing any good |