Let the CDC study it, and you will find that the odds are a lot higher that your gun will be used in an accidental shooting, a suicide, or a crime vs. actually using it for protection.
I’ve tried to follow this thread pretty closely but it’s quite lengthy…forgive me if this has already been posted. IMO, it’s a good read - a reasonable approach. Read it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-a-new-way-to-tackle-gun-deaths.html?mwrsm=Facebook&_r=0
Dunblane, Scotland:
sixteen 5-yr olds and their teacher killed
I remember that, around 1995. I had to go physically find my own 5 year old when I heard about it. Stopped what I was doing and drove across town to see her.
After Dunblane, the British did something about it. It hasn’t happened since. Here, it’s a monthly occurrence.
I’ve got no inkling whatsoever as to where that is going.
How would that encourage the adoption of gun restrictions?
another gun free zone works successfully I see…
It’s not a gun free zone.
Are you just assuming it was a gun-free zone?
The UCC campus was not gun-free. Undergrads are not allowed to carry, but other students are. With a student body with an average age of around 38, you can assume many people were carrying. I saw two interviews with students who said they were armed during the shooting. And those were two who were interviewed, so you can imagine there were many more.
On a related topic, how would you, as a police officer responding to an active shooting, feel if you ran into ta school and there were a dozen students running around holding guns?
I would think responsible gun owners in Oregon would know the gun laws there. (If they don’t know them, they shouldn’t be gun owners there). What I read on the Oregon news site is that Oregon law forbids restrictions of anyone with a concealed permit to carry wherever they want. So even if the school did try to say undergrads can’t carry weapons on campus, they couldn’t enforce that legally. Therefore, the campus can’t be a gun free zone. Again, this is what I read in the Oregon news site. I have no first hand knowledge as I am not a Oregonian gun owner.
I’d hate it. Luckily, police officers receive training in not shooting you until the threat is imminent. That makes it much less likely that you’re going to get capped, particularly if you comply with the shouted commands to “Drop the weapon!”.
People who are slow to react and who tend to turn towards the cop, holding the weapon and saying “Duh…what?” should come up with some other plan.
From CNN, background info on Dunblane:
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/17/world/europe/dunblane-lessons/
Pre-Dunblane, the UK had 200,000 guns in private hands. In the US today, there are estimated to be over 300 million guns in private hands—roughly one gun for every person in America.
As much as I would like guns to just go away tomorrow, I am a realist. Just banning them without doing something about the huge number of them in circulation is just futile.
At least one of the armed students on campus that day said he was not in the general area where the shootings started. He also commented that he and others who were armed did not run to where the gunshots were fired because they knew SWAT was probably on the way and they knew that police would not know they were good guys rather than bad guys. Real life is so not like the good-guy-with-a-gun fantasy the NRA sells so effectively.
Well, let’s go to the historical videotape:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/
Fascinating article.
I don’t buy that all the family members are as shocked as anybody. What is the shooter’s mother’s culpability in all this? She was well aware of her son’s mental issues/u and, accordingly, was fiercely protective of him. She boasted on social media about his arsenal of guns.
Sounds like the Adam Lanza’s family dynamics all over again…
The one thing this thread really highlights is the different reliance on government (and others) that various people have.
I, for one, will never put myself in a position to rely on government (police etc.) for my immediate personal and family’s safety because I am quite aware that police et al are purely reactive, not pro-active, and definitely not immediate. Clearly, many posters here are just fine with being defenseless for a time in the face of criminal activity. Well, that is a decision they can take, but thank God there are more than enough Americans who are not that passive with their families’ well-being.
Secondly, it is rather revealing that people who would rely on government have no problem with the overall result, i.e., the citizenry is then wholly dependent on the whims of working-class government bureaucrats. Way too much trust in government, and it is good for government bureaucrats to know that they cannot run roughshod over people without serious consequences, if they go to far.
I watched my Dad tell a government bureaucrat to never step foot on his properties again without permission or the proper paperwork, and the bureaucrat never did come back. However, if my Dad was a forcibly unarmed citizen, I doubt that government bureaucrat would have respected what Dad told him. I got the message and it was good one, as I saw the look on the guy’s face - government must be kept within its limits, by the known possibly of force if necessary.
Thirdly, being in gun training classes with women (and men) who have successfully defended themselves with a firearm kind of makes this “Let’s all be defenseless” argument a joke to me. These women carry concealed weapons and have effectively defended themselves from random attacks, crazy ex-husbands and boyfriends. Anyone who would now advocate making these women defenseless targets does not have these women’s well-being and safety at heart. The net effect would be just serving up them up to be victims all over again, instead of being unharmed potential victims. Yes, given the choice, these women have chosen to have a fighting chance to be an unharmed, potential victim - much less painful. I take their side.
I would go for this ONLY if it included ALL guns on the planet. Otherwise, I will pass because anything less would give the people with guns way too much power.
Although, if you want me to have the guns and everyone else without, then I could go for a ban. 
For the record, since OCC is public college it cannot ban people with guns who have concealed carry permits. However, a private college can.
Awc has told us about the many many guns in the US, and the many many law abiding citizens who are carrying guns. And he has also told us that the way to stop bad guys with guns is for good guys to shoot the bad guys.
So, my question is, why isn’t this working? When mass shooters are stopped, either they stop because they shoot themselves, or they stop because law enforcement shoots them or otherwise disables them, or in some cases IIRC they are stopped by being tackled by unarmed citizens. So far those armed citizens are not stepping up to the plate to do their supposed job. Why not? How come mass shooters don’t get stopped mid-rampage by armed citizens, if this is such a simple task that we should be able to expect the average armed layperson to accomplish?
Could it be because talk is cheap?