Gun carry question

Parent Cafe
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/12/us/woman-who-shot-at-home-depot-shoplifters-vows-to-never-help-anyone-again.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=6&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2015%2F12%2F12%2Fus%2Fwoman-who-shot-at-home-depot-shoplifters-vows-to-never-help-anyone-again.html&eventName=Watching-article-click&_r=0

This article raises an interesting question, assuming that people carrying concealed or open weapons do in fact deter crime, and we do as some gun advocates do, allow people to carry routinely, how do we prevent these kind of things? A person carrying a gun is held to the same standards as cops, you are only supposed to use it to defend yourself, even the stand your ground laws don’t allow you to shoot at a fleeing vehicle, as this woman did, if the person runs away you are not supposed to shoot (though I will add it depends on the jurisdiction, in some places for example if someone shot at you and then ran away, you might be allowed to shoot at them).

Or worse, in the middle of a mess not being able to tell friend from foe,something cops and soldiers routinely practice for? This woman was obviously out to lunch, I suspect she watched too many tv shows or movies where this kind of thing is cheered, and worse, she could have hurt innocent people with that stunt (shooting out a cars tires is idiotic, I don’t care how much of a sharpshooter she is, bullets are more likely to ricochet off the tire then blow it out, Mythbusters did a whole episode and this was one of the myths), she could have hit innocent people, not to mention that shooting at someone for stealing is not legal.

Should we actually require people with carry permits to have some sort of training on the law, should they have to take a test to show they know the law and what to do? Right now, as far as I know, many places that allow easy carry don’t even require you to have taken a gun safety course, so how would that play out?

I don’t want to turn this into a discussion on legal gun ownership or even with whether people should be allowed to carry, I am posing a hypothetical question about how to prevent situations like this?

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I do think there should be standards in place. In fact, I guess since there are where I live, I assumed there were everywhere.

In our state, to get your permit to carry a concealed weapon, you have to go through a class and then log a certain number of hours of firearms training. In the class, the law is thoroughly explained. It is very clear that your objective should be to survive and if you can do that any other way, hiding, running away, etc., you are obligated to do that. They tell you very clearly that you have to tell the person, stop or you will shoot, and that you will possibly face charges if you shoot someone who is running away. In any event, if you did end up having to shoot someone in self-defense, they said that you would probably be taken away in the police car and have to give a detailed statement and be prepared to defend your course of action. In this situation, I don’t see how anyone getting their permit could be confused about their responsibilities.

I live in the midwest where hunting is very popular and firearm ownership is also very common. I did take the class and get my license, but have yet to buy a gun, and I probably never will. Everyone I know who has firearms has them in a safe and I’ve never heard anyone complain about the procedures involved in buying a gun. Obviously I know that many people seem to have issues with it, and that has always perplexed me quite a bit.

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Jordan Klepper did a segment on the Daily Show last night where he got a gun and concealed carry permit after 8 hours of training. He then went through some active shooter situations. He usually got shot himself before he could get the shooter, at least once he shot an innocent bystander, and then he also was shot by the cops who thought he was the bad guy when they arrived. It was interesting. He didn’t seem to think the required training was very rigorous, and it gave him the right to carry in 30 states.

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Re: #2

Was he successful (shot the suspect or forced the suspect to leave a place where s/he would otherwise have shot more people, and avoided getting shot or shooting anyone else) in any of his tries at the active shooter scenario?

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@ucbalumnus [Here’s the link](Jordan Klepper: Good Guy with a Gun: The Daily Show - YouTube) to the video. He was partially successful in that he did hit someone in the scenario. Unfortunately that someone happened to be an unarmed teenager.

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Re: #4

I would not call the enactment near the end of the video “partially successful” on his part. Seems like he shot an innocent bystander, then got shot by the bad guys, then got mistaken for a bad guy by the police, a scenario worse in all respects than if he had not entered the situation.

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Interesting video.

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I was not being serious when I wrote that the host was “partially successful”. Obviously anyone who shoots an unarmed teenager, is killed because cops mistook one armed person for another armed person, and failed to subdue the bad guy miserably failed.

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You can’t prevent situations like this any more than you can prevent situations where 3-year-olds shoot their mothers/sisters/selves. These things are going to happen. We’ve decided we can accept them as part of the risk.

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“You can’t prevent situations like this any more than you can prevent situations where 3-year-olds shoot their mothers/sisters/selves. These things are going to happen. We’ve decided we can accept them as part of the risk.”

I don’t understand this rationale. You can’t prevent 3 year olds from shooting their mothers/sisters/selves? Really? So if you have the gun secured and unloaded (in case somehow the kid can’t find it), the kid will be able to open the gun safe and/or where it is hidden, then find the bullets, load the gun and shoot them? That is a case where you can prevent the tragedy from happening, there is clearly a way to keep that from happening, the reason such things happen is because the idiot adults who have the gun don’t follow basic safety procedures. That is akin to saying you shouldn’t bother having outlet protectors with toddlers, or you shouldn’t worry about leaving a pot of boiling water on the stove and so forth.

As far as there being no way to prevent situations where someone with a gun shoots an innocent person, or does something stupid like the woman in this case, who is the ‘we’ that decided we can accept them as part of the risk? The NRA? My whole point is that this isn’t inevitable, that right now the carry advocates are claiming that having armed people will prevent crime and make us safer, but meanwhile resist anything that will make it safer to have people carrying weapons in public. These kind of incidents are probably pretty rare, but that is because even among gun owners a small percentage carry them…but what happens if it becomes more common?

My whole point is that if we are going to encourage people to carry,and make the claim that it will make us safer, then we also have the duty to make sure that those who carry have proper training, if they are held to the same standard as cops when it comes to using deadly force, then they certainly better be trained to know how to use them correctly. One of my biggest problems with the gun advocates isn’t the right to own weapons, or maybe even carry them, it is that they resist mandatory training, serious training, including certification testing, before allowing people to own guns or more importantly, carry them in public. I disagree, while no training can prevent stupid and fatal use of guns (like the dumb woman in question), even cops make mistakes, that doesn’t mean you accept it, like with other things we should be making maximum effort to make it as safe as possible, but we don’t. When people join a volunteer rescue squad, they get all kinds of training, when someone wants to drive an ambulance they have mandatory training, when someone has a restaurant they are required to receive certification in food handling before being allowed to run the place, and the list goes on, not because these will prevent all problems, but rather that they reduce the risk to acceptable levels. I do think that the carry advocates should look at the wrongful shootings of even trained people, like cops and the military (about 20% of casualties in war are generally friendly fire), before making broad claims about the benefits of it, and ask themselves if cops and the military, with all their training, make mistakes, how would it not be worse with civilians doing so, especially since most are woefully untrained.

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Police make mistakes of shooting wrong people and they are well trained. Now we want to trust people with no training or experience to protect us? It is a formula for disaster.
While going through menopause, there were times when I just wanted to break someone’s neck (for looking at me the wrong way). So glad I didn’t have any deadly weapons readily available.

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And as it is we have too many gun threads on c. Not sure we need any more.

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@oldfort: That is pretty much my take on it and it also interestingly is the thought of the several cops I know. Besides the impulse when angry to use a gun (road rage,for example), the other thing is also panic, what happens in real life when a bad thing happens, will the person act rationally? Or will they pull out the gun and just start popping away, like some movie or tv show where the ‘ordinary joe’ saves the day? Among other things, given how little training or practice many gun owners seem to have, how well would they even shoot in a tense situation?

@jym626: It is why I limited this to the idea of carry being legal, I am not debating whether guns should be legal or controlled or whatnot, I wanted to talk about the scenario being bandied about,that having people armed and carrying in public would make the public safer, and whether people thought that was true or not. I think that a lot of people are attracted by the notion, like many slogans it appears to be simple, straightforward, that having people armed will deter crime and terrorism, but that I also think that the reality is that when the accidents started happening, when road rage incidents, or anger boiling over, leads to tragedy that people will care, much the same way that people care and get outraged when a kid gets access to a gun and kills someone.

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I agree with you, musicprnt . Will cross my fingers that your thread stays on your topic, though again, would prefer there be less talk about guns here. JMO.

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Bad guys like soft targets. It could be an empty house, unarmed group, or even a workplace Christmas party. So armed persons in these situations do not reduce the crime, rather they will just move it elsewhere. Similar to parking my car next to a nicer one so the thief leaves mine alone.

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You arrest people that use their gun irresponsibly.

Just like people that use their car irresponsibly.

That’s how you deal with it.

The Daily Show obviously successfully demonstrated their agenda, but 1 person taking a class and then not stopping an active shooter doesn’t actually advance an argument.

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And you answered your own question. You can’t prevent certain things from happening, but that doesn’t mean you don’t try. But “we” as a society in this country have decided that the risks are acceptable. Otherwise “we” would do something else, by definition. Some colleges are moving to allow students to carry guns on campus. Personally, as an instructor, I would find that disturbing. It seems unlikely that New York State will follow suit anytime soon, however.

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11-8-16 - get the nra puppets out of office

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@sylvan8798 :
I think I get where you were coming from, I thought you were justifying that mentality, rather than explaining it. The problem isn’t “we the people” in terms of things, unless polls are total lies most people want to see things like safety laws governing how people store weapons, better background checks (for example, not allowing someone with a mentally ill person in it, like Nancy Lanza, to have an arsenal in their home), and even laws requiring safety training for gun ownership and especially the right to carry. One of the biggest ironies is the NRA has one of the best gun safety programs around, I have friends who teach those courses, and they emphasize safety, they also emphasize that guns are not toys and need to be treated with respect and caution,yet they continually fight this kind of training be mandated for gun owners, or that there be laws penalizing gun owners when they violate safety rules, like in having a loaded weapon around the house and so forth. We have a lot more safety rules around cars and boats then we do guns in many places, and there is a lot more responsibility around car and boat ownership then there is guns IMO in most places. The 2nd amendment was never meant to be a get out of jail free card or shield guns and gun owners from regulation and regulations, it simply says you have the right to own guns in a way that is consistent with public safety and the rights of others (the latter portion is applicable to almost any right that is enumerated in the Bill of Rights, there are implicit limits on all rights).