It’s a good thing I read this thread, it reminded me that I need to renew my pistol permit, thankfully they now have a 5 year option so that will avoid the hassle of having to do it every year.
If the thread has encouraged you to obey sensible gun laws, that is a good thing.
I think Walmart was responding to their own employees and customers who feel uncomfortable when they see a customer walking through the store openly carrying an AR-15. You have no idea if it is a “good guy” or a “bad guy” until it’s too late, and personally I wouldn’t want to stick around long enough to find out. I remember being quite uncomfortable at the sight of a young man (don’t know if he was even of “legal” age) openly carrying a sheathed knife at an outdoor coffee shop.
I’m not a big fan of open carry because in my experience the kind of people that like to walk around with an openly visible gun are not the calm, responsible gun owners that we hope to have. I do think however that a conceal carry permit should either be free or very low cost. Yes, I realize that we pay for a license for other things but driving isn’t a constitutional right, a closer comparison would be voting and they did away with poll taxes a long time ago.
Unfortunately, enough people determine “good/bad guy” by race/ethnicity, so gun rights tend to be less respected for black people than for white people (more likely to have the police called on you for legal open carry if you are black, more likely to be treated rougher by police if you are black, etc.).
Constitutional rights can have conditions put on them. Voting can be limited, speech can be limited, press can be limited.
Many states that have open carry have city or county laws that further restrict when and where you can have guns in public places. The Walmarts near me are all in cities or counties requiring concealed weapons permits, so you don’t see people walking into stores toting assault rifles. Sometimes you can see a rifle or shotgun in a pick up gun rack in rural areas, but not in the city/county limits.
I’m pretty sure that even with a permit, you’re not allowed to shoot them unless you’re counting using a bang stick as shooting them. Been a while since I was closely involved in that, but unless it’s changed, the methods of harvest are tightly controlled and don’t allow guns. You’re not allowed to bait them, either.
But yes, lots of guns in Florida. Other than at gun centric events, I’ve never seen open carry around here, though. Wasn’t unusual in Arizona, though. When we first moved to AZ in the early '90s it wasn’t uncommon to see people openly carrying in everyday places like the grocery store. We lived in Scottsdale, so it wasn’t exactly like the sticks. By the time we moved back to Florida in 2007, the open carry in AZ wasn’t nearly as common but gun culture was still very much alive and well. Although I don’t personally own a gun and don’t have much interest in them, maybe I’m more agnostic on the issue since I’ve been around guns and responsible gun owners all my life. They’re a tool. Nothing more, nothing less.
The issue retailers have is that almost all prohibit the employees from bringing guns on the premises (in many states they can be in the locked car in the parking lot). The employees feel unsafe if the customers can carry and they can not.
“The employees feel unsafe if the customers can carry and they can not.”
Or, the employees feel unsafe. Period. Many, many have no interest in carrying themselves realizing that being armed actually provides little protection to them in these scenarios.
The police were present when the Dayton shooter appeared. Even so, more than 30 were shot in 32 seconds. Highly trained law enforcement has difficulty stopping these shooters, the idea that a random civilian will do so is simply delusional.
FBI stats show that every year, 200-300 assailants are justifiably killed by private citizens using firearms. Most use handguns of course.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-15.xls
No doubt many more assailants are wounded and their potential crimes thwarted.
And twice that many accidentally shoot their own children or other family members with their guns.
In 2017, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 39,773 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC. This figure includes gun murders and gun suicides, along with three other, less common types of gun-related deaths tracked by the CDC: those that were unintentional, involved law enforcement or whose circumstances could not be determined. It excludes deaths in which gunshot injuries played a contributing, but not principal, role. (CDC fatality statistics are based on information contained in death certificates.)
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/
More than 20,000 people kill themselves with guns per year. Certainly, let’s help people with mental health issues. But there is no need to disarm the entire population - and that is what it would require - to prevent 20,000 gun suicides in a country of 330 million people. Especially as the right to bear arms is an explicitly guaranteed Constitutional right.
(Also, of course, even total disarmament will not prevent all of those suicides. At least some substantial portion will simply find another way.)
@roycroftmom source?
IMO, no, not always mentally ill.
I can see where people commonly think no one in their right mind would do something like that — but I would not equate that to a mental health crisis.
JMO
As far as I’m concerned we only have a guaranteed Constitutional right to muskets, bayonets, etc-- arms that existed at the time of the writing of the Constitution. Anything else is up for negotiation and regulation. We are actually already living this-- we do not, as individuals, have rights to bear nuclear arms, or howitzers, or bomb-equipped drones. We don’t currently have the same rights to bear all arms that our government has-- and that’s the most frequently used rationale for allowing weapons capable of rapid-fire mass murder.
Assault-rifle bans would do little to lower the numbers of people killed or injured by guns in the United States. Fewer than 2% of gun deaths result from semi-automatic rifles, and estimated fewer than 1% of gun injuries. It should go without saying that no one is committing suicide with a semi-automatic AR-15 or AK47, and of course no one is killing anyone with fully automatic weapons in the United States.
This is a somewhat balanced piece on the topic as far as HuffPo goes: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/assault-weapons-deaths_n_5763109de4b015db1bc8c123
Perhaps a compromise could be forged along the lines of requiring extensive background checks for people seeking to purchase semiautomatic rifles. I think many on all sides of the debate could support that, although of course the devil is always in the details.
A better deterrent for gun deaths of course would need to center around handguns, which are used in the vast majority of gun crimes and gun suicides. Again, perhaps a compromise could be found using mandatory and lengthy jail sentences for any felon caught in possession of an unlicensed handgun. This could be a powerful tool in cleaning up the inner cities, where more than half of gun homicides occur.
Moderator’s Note: Please remember CC is not a debating platform. I’ll leave the thread open for now.
Statistically, not that many die from assault rifles, but when they are used, it has a vastly disproportionate impact on our lives. 98% of American schoolchildren now practice active shooter drills because of them. Statististically, the 3000 dead from the events of 9/11 aren’t really that many, but they changed our country greatly. Some things have a larger impact on our lives than the number killed.