<p>I have to admit to zero fear of robbery or such. I have dogs. I don’t have dogs for that reason or anything, but I have several. </p>
<p>Also, I’m much more uncomfortable with concealed carry Knowing that people like GZ can carry a loaded weapon makes me way more uncomfortable than strict regulations </p>
<p>jMO</p>
<p>Here is a tidbit to illustrate my point. It just popped up in the news. What is the first man was armed and the second man’s rifle was loaded.</p>
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<p>[Knife</a>, rifle pulled in fight in Va. Wal-Mart parking lot | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com](<a href=“http://hamptonroads.com/2013/11/knife-rifle-pulled-fight-va-walmart-parking-lot]Knife”>The Virginian-Pilot - Virginia News, Sports, Weather, Business & Things to Do)</p>
<p>How many would be dead if everyone armed and loaded? At least the two men and possibly a few nearby shoppers?</p>
<p>Ok, I am not supposed to use anecdotes to support gun rights but I am seeing a bunch of anecdotal support against guns here. First, a rifle isn’t used for protection. Someone would be crazy to use a rifle for protection. But, Christopher Jackson will probably get his concealed weapon to protect himself from another crazy Ronnie Sharp.</p>
<p>By the reasoning I read on this thread, more guns in the hands of law abiding citizens should lead to more violence and killings. Florida issued 1.1 million CCW permits, Georgia issued 600,000 and Illinois issued almost none. Where are all of the dead bodies in Florida and Georgia? The news should be flooded with the reports of road rage shoot outs, neighbors settling disputes with guns, etc. At any one point in Florida, there are potentially 1.1 million people carrying weapons on them. But Illinois and even Chicago should be the safest areas in the country. Remember, they make it impossible to get a CCW permit.</p>
<p>I think we’ve focussed on reasons why law abiding citizens shouldn’t have weapons but we are overlooking the fact that what we fear are the criminals and crazy people with the guns. I have yet to read a convincing reason not to own a gun yet.</p>
<p>Now, let’s think of how likely it is for that previous anecdote to occur…:rolleyes:</p>
<p>Still doesn’t make me not want guns to be owned.</p>
<p>
Hard to put down, since I recall at least three studies that came to the same conclusion. The spectacle of a couple of the study authors trashing their own results was… entertaining.</p>
<p>People tend to believe the stats they’d like to believe, kluge, Just normal behavior, looking for validation for what you instinctively feel to be true. That new federal grant money is going to illuminate a previously dark area of the gun subject is wishful thinking, though. </p>
<p>There’s ample evidence, old and new, on a variety of issues that proves this paraphrase true: “drag a 100K grant through academia and you never know what you’ll find.” A good guess would be a lot of bodies willing to torture gun stats into whatever interesting new shapes you desire, though.</p>
<p>That 20’000 gun suicides a year is a striking number. Any clue as to what the number might be if you could get the guns back from everyone law-abiding enough to turn them in?</p>
<p>Frugaldoctor, </p>
<p>There was a thread in the past here which discussed all the same things about gun ownership, minus GZ. It was volatile and filled with interesting discussion on both sides of the gun aisle. It is probably in the archives if you search, in a long defunct part of CC. </p>
<p>There are many here who will read this current thread but have opted not to interject, but are still reading it.</p>
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<p>I agree but not everyone does.</p>
<p>A friend of mine, just outside of New Orleans, has a neighbor who does his yard work with a pistol on his hip. Always. My friend, a long time gun owner, thinks it’s strange but says he’s kind of comforted by it. Worries less about his wife, kids, and house when he’s out of town.</p>
<p>I don’t agree with the quote in the above post, #367. I think it’s a big generalization to say someone carrying that isn’t law enforcement is “probably not mentally stable”. ~10% of the adults in my state have a CCW. 20% of permits are issued to women; there are approx. 500,000 CCW.</p>
<p>After some quick googling, I see my state is 2nd in CCW in the nation. Yet they are 30 in injury due to firearms. I’m not in FL or GA.</p>
<p>I always find these threads interesting and enlightening. I do think repeated reference to “gun nut circles” is over the line. I don’t see posters on the other side mentioning “anti-gun zealots”.</p>
<p>Catahoula, the most recent study on the effect of gun ownership and suicide comes from Alexander Tabarrok of George Mason University. Google Tabarrok and I think you’ll agree he’s an unlikely candidate for the liberal media anti-gun conspiracy. Few would drag a $100 bill past his office seeking to prove something that is perceive to align with “progressive” views.</p>
<p>Tabarrok finds a clear correlation between increased gun ownership and increased suicides. He describes the result of his study in his blog:
[Search:</a> suicide](<a href=“You searched for suicide]Search: - Marginal REVOLUTION”>You searched for suicide - Marginal REVOLUTION) </p>
<p>The difficulty in obtaining reliable data on defensive gun use is due to its rarity. An excellent discussion of the statistical reason why overestimation of such events is inevitable (regardless of whether the methodology used to collect the data is sound or flawed) appears in Silver’s “The Signal and the Noise.” Simply put - any event for which no objective evidence will exist and which occurs in less than 1% of surveyed parties’ experiences will tend to be overstated in a survey, for purely mathematical reasons. Further, the more time that elapses between event and survey the less accurate the results will be. So calling people up and asking them if they stopped a bad guy from committing a crime is an almost useless activity. The answer you get will not be reliable (even ignoring the superfluity element I addressed above.)</p>
<p>I found the reaction to the Clackamas Mall shooting to be informative. There, a bad guy got his hands on what the gun lovers take exception to people referring to as an “assault rifle”, went into a mall and started shooting people at random. The gun jammed and he didn’t know how to fix it; when he tried the magazine fell out. He walked into an interior portion of the mall and shot himself. Dead: two victims and the shooter; one more victim shot but not killed.</p>
<p>So far, so good; it’s a sadly routine crazy guy with gun capable of killing lots of people goes into a public place, hurts people then commits suicide story.</p>
<p>The interesting part is what happened next. Turns out there was an off duty security guard there who was carrying a gun, who saw the bad guy. Full props to the security guard: he did the right thing; that is, he went into a store and hid instead of shooting at the bad guy. But that’s not a good enough story; it doesn’t fit the “good guy with gun stops bad guy with gun” narrative. So the story shifted. We were taken into the bad guys brain, where he saw the good guy with the gun, and, overtaken with fear at seeing an armed hero, he changed his plans and instead of shooting more victims he committed suicide… somehow due to the presence of the good guy with a gun.</p>
<p>The “good gun guy saved the day” story actually makes no sense (the bad guy’s gun had jammed before the saw the security guard, and “bad guy commits suicide at end of rampage” is a pretty standard plot line for these things - Columbine, Sandy Hook, etc.) But a lack of evidence didn’t stop the gun-lovers; Clackamas Mall became the latest “proof” that a liberal media conspiracy was covering up all the great things that good guys with guns were doing. [Virtually</a> Unreported: CCW Holder Likely Prevented Larger Clackamas Mall Death Toll | NewsBusters](<a href=“http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/12/16/virtually-unreported-ccw-holder-likely-prevented-larger-clackamas-mall-d]Virtually”>http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/12/16/virtually-unreported-ccw-holder-likely-prevented-larger-clackamas-mall-d)</p>
<p>
Because criminals and crazy people always wear black hats and law abiding citizens always wear white ones, right? I mean, it’s just that simple, correct? :rolleyes:</p>
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And the rest of us want the peace of mind of not having to worry about whether or not that George Zimmeman wannabe thinks we’re a “threat.” </p>
<p>As I posted up-thread: gun nuts look in the mirror and see Bruce Willis/Liam Neesen. Normal people look at them and see George Zimmerman. We’re not all “constitution haters” or “gun grabbers.” We don’t belong to a liberal media conspiracy. We just don’t share your opinion of yourself. You think you are infallible; we think you’re a little bit nuts. Just how nuts we’re not sure. That’s the problem. You don’t know how nuts I am (today) and I don’t know how nuts you are (today.) Add guns and: boom.</p>
<p>It’s interesting; I doubt that razorsharp and I have ever done much of anything but be 180 degrees apart on any subject we’ve both posted about here on CC; yet here we are, virtually in lockstep on this one. I feel confident in asserting that razorsharp is not part of a liberal media conspiracy.</p>
<p>“Normal people look at them and see George Zimmerman.”</p>
<p>Oh please, unless you are this one person who engaged Zimmerman in a life-endangering struggle, no one on this thread has to fear an armed Zimmerman. There are a whole lot of people in urban ghettos and neighborhoods with gang violence I fear much more than Zimmerman. I have zero fear of Zimmerman.</p>
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<p>I am a proud member of the vast right wing conspiracy. I believe in law and order which means interpreting the Constitution the way it was written. There is absolutely nothing in the second amendment that gives individuals the right to own hand guns. The courts who have held this are engaging in judicial activism. People who advocate this interpretation might as well be advocating witchcraft as science. </p>
<p>I also think other people’s rights to defend themselves stops when it endangers me. If we have to pass a test to drive, surely we should have to pass a test to shoot a gun. That test should be difficult to pass and annual and require an assessment of mental health and judgment when faced with stressful conflict situation. </p>
<p>I would say you are at least 100 times more likely to shoot yourself or your family member than you are to face the nutjob in a Batman movie showing or someone like him. That risk alone is a sufficient reason not to own a gun.</p>
<p>To clarify, I quoted what I did of razorsharp’s post for continuity. </p>
<p>That more people might be upset than he was happy, I have to agree with.</p>
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My high school senior daughter and I live in what you might call an urban ghetto (Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn). I have zero fear and I find it horrifying that so many people believe that the answer to gun violence is more guns.</p>
<p>The links looks to be an interesting read, kluge. Thanks.</p>
<p>Bad guys, good guys, bad guys, good guys… I think we’ve gotten the point but do you have any idea how many of the ‘good guys’, the ones that have guns around the house because they hunt, target shoot, etc., are contributing to that huge gun suicide rate? The 20,000 you’ve mentioned? </p>
<p>Those guys and girls are the only ones that are even remotely likely to turn their accidents waiting to happen in, don’t you think?</p>
<p>Catahoula, the “good” gun owners I’ve mentioned - and I know lots of folks like this - keep their firearms (primarily long guns) locked up - generally in a safe, unloaded, with the ammunition kept separate from the weapon. The probability of their guns ending up being shot by accident or used in an impulsive suicide are lower that the probabilities for the guys who put a loaded pistol in their bedside drawer so they’ll be ready to spring into action when the “bad guys” come a-knockin’. Obviously, we’re not talking absolutes. It is possible (if a lot harder) to commit suicide with a 12 gauge or a 30-06. But most people use a convenient handgun. (I suspect that the accidental shooting numbers skew more toward the long guns than the suicides do, though.) Further, I doubt that the number of hunters has trended up along with the number of guns in circulation over recent years, so I suspect that the results of the Tabarrok study have little to do with hunting rifles.</p>
<p>I find it interesting that the wanna-be Willis/Neesens hide behind hunters as a justification for owning handguns. Outside of PETA types I’m not aware of anyone who is interested in inconveniencing hunters. And lots of hunters are as horrified by the plethora of cheap handguns floating around as we liberal media conspiracy types. It’s a classic red herring.</p>
<p>Instead of a 100 times more likely, it looks like the number is 22 times more likely. That is still a compelling argument to avoid owning guns.</p>
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<p>[The</a> Tradeoffs of Gun Ownership | Psychology Today](<a href=“http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/get-psyched/201208/the-tradeoffs-gun-ownership-0#_edn18]The”>The Tradeoffs of Gun Ownership | Psychology Today)</p>
<p>So, the ‘20,000 gun suicides’ is really an irrelevant number, when someone is beating up on those wannabe Jack Bauers of the world? Those ‘rabid gun nuts that pant at the idea of overthrowing a corrupt government’, I mean.</p>
<p>You might check the references and dig deep into each, before you trust predictive numbers from just about any source, razorsharp. Might be solid but…</p>
<p>I will bet,though, that one thing missing in each is discrete data for the risk to ‘gun nuts’. Their spouses, kids, and friends. Whether the owner is one that tends to color within the lines, not have a criminal record, etc.</p>
<p>SamuraiLandshark, I completely understand your post #366. I’ve enjoyed reading the anti-gun arguments because they reminded me how strongly I supported those views. Even, during my younger days of growing up in East New York when it was considered the worse ghetto in NYC, seeing a police officer with a gun terrified me because of the gun. Now, I have to consider myself the liberal rabid gun nut! This has been fun. I still want to conclude that GZ should lose his gun privileges; that’s really what got me interested in this thread.</p>
<p>It is disconcerting when our deepest held assumptions and beliefs can be turned on their heads. I, too, was anti-gun in my younger days, and even, gasp, quite liberal. </p>
<p>We all view stats differently and can read a report and see a different truth. My views on guns changed from a few different events, one of which was the riots in Los Angeles in 1992. I could smell the smoke from burning buildings in my front yard. Another was when a family member was mugged while working in a dangerous part of the city. </p>
<p>In terms of GZ, if he commits a felony, he loses his right to own guns, correct? He has exhibited questionable behavior as I mentioned upthread. I did not follow all the details of his exploits, but it seems that he might lose his legal right to own guns in the future. One incident was domestic and I am not sure what happened. The other incident - also domestic, but still he said, she said, right? </p>
<p>Do we pull the legal right for someone who is accused, but not convicted, yet?</p>