<p>There is driver stop stereotyping. Ever heard the phrase “driving while black”? Lots of people believe they are being stopped for their skin color and no other reason. Kind of like some ivy admissions but I digress.</p>
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<p>Ironically, a “signature” phrase often used by those who open carry guns.</p>
<p>some people are stopped for their skin color, though I think that happens less these days, or hope, anyway, that it does.</p>
<p>Me, I was stopped for driving like a total idiot. :p</p>
<p>As a white mom with a black teenage son, I can tell you that the demeanor of police who approach from his side of the car (that is, who see a car with a black man in it) vs. police who have pulled me over in the past is entirely different. In the one year since my son turned 12 and got “front seat privileges”, I’ve been stopped for things that were clearly ridiculous. Both times, the cop was positioned so they could see him but not me. To give you an example, I stopped at a 4 way stop where there was a tree blocking my view of traffic from the right. After checking that there were no pedestrians in sight, I rolled forward maybe 3 inches (that’s 3 inches over the white stop line, my tires weren’t even in the crosswalk) and stopped again where I could see better. I got pulled over for “rolling through a stop sign”. The cop was hostile and scary until he got a good look at me., nothing like the “I’m so sorry to bother you ma’am, but I’m afraid you were going too fast” that I’m used to. </p>
<p>So, no, I don’t think that DWB is fading as a problem. My son’s still too young to drive but I worry a lot about when he does.</p>
<p>Just found this chart somewhere.
[Crime</a> in Chicago 2013: Chicago ends 2012 with 532 murders 91 more than 2011](<a href=“http://crimeinchicago.blogspot.com/2013/01/chicago-ends-2012-with-532-murders-91.html]Crime”>Crime in Chicago 2017: Chicago ends 2012 with 532 murders 91 more than 2011)</p>
<p>Curious Jane - I have darker skinned relatives with expensive cars who have been stopped plenty of times for no reason.</p>
<p>I am curious to know what the stats are on the number of crimes that are (supposedly) thwarted because the good guys with the guns stopped the bad guys with the guns.</p>
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<p>Quite a bit actually, and they’re called police officers. Unless you think they’re the bad guys with the guns.
Excluding police, there are roughly 260 justified firearm homicides per year, which falls under the category of crimes that are thwarted. Something also to consider is the fact that significantly more crimes are thwarted just by pointing a gun at the offender, and not actually shooting. In this case they act as a deterrent and not an active method of self defense.</p>
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<p>The fact that they hit quite a few bystanders means they are NOT extremely qualified, so you’ve effectively refuted your own argument.</p>
<p>@Pizzagirl (#506) I’ve been wondering the same thing for years.
Between my wife and me, we’ve known many people who have been killed by guns. They include:</p>
<ol>
<li>a 12 year-old neighbor boy, accidentally shot to death by his friend after they found a parent’s handgun in a nightstand</li>
<li>my wife’s young student, paralyzed for life by the distraught boyfriend of his babysitter who opened fire on the family as they returned home from a restaurant
3 & 4 both parents of another student, shot to death in their bed by an intruder</li>
<li>the 20-something babysitter next door, shot to death through a living room window by a jealous boyfriend as she nursed a baby</li>
<li>my wife’s best friend in college, shot to death when a co-worker’s jealous boyfriend burst into their office and began firing randomly</li>
<li>my cousin, shot himself to death after returning from Vietnam</li>
<li>a young physician (one of my best friends in high school), shot himself to death after a supervisor discovered he was self-prescribing amphetimines</li>
</ol>
<p>Yet, in all our years, we have never known even one person who claimed to have thwarted a crime with a personal firearm. I can’t even recall ever reading about such a case in a local newspaper. One would think, if these cases were frequent, one would be hearing about them more often. 260 justified firearm homicides pales in comparison to the number of criminal firearm homicides and suicides per year.</p>
<p>Also, it seems that rather often in sensational mass shooting cases, it turns out that a bystander was carrying a gun. Why don’t they ever manage to get the drop on the shooters? I think the answer is that these cases happen unpredictably and unfold too rapidly for the average citizen to respond. And people do save themselves in these situations by quick thinking without the use of firearms (they hide, they run, they barricade themselves, they call for help, etc.) </p>
<p>I’m aware that the mere presence of guns in homes is believed to deter crime. Maybe so, but the global crime statistics suggest that widespread gun ownership must not be the most effective way to achieve that goal. Every other prosperous country has much lower rates of gun ownership and much lower rates of violent crime. The widespread availability of guns seems to create risks that far outweigh any deterrent effects.<br>
[A</a> Land Without Guns: How Japan Has Virtually Eliminated Shooting Deaths - Max Fisher - The Atlantic](<a href=“How Japan Has Virtually Eliminated Shooting Deaths - The Atlantic”>How Japan Has Virtually Eliminated Shooting Deaths - The Atlantic)
[Could</a> the US learn from Australia’s gun-control laws? - CSMonitor.com](<a href=“http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2012/1224/Could-the-US-learn-from-Australia-s-gun-control-laws]Could”>Could the US learn from Australia's gun-control laws? - CSMonitor.com)</p>
<p>So what you’re saying is responsible people should be punished because of the decisions of irresponsible people. What would you say to someone who used their gun to save their family’s life? That they shouldn’t have been able to because irresponsible people that you know got killed as a result? That kind of backwards logic isn’t going to fly with me.</p>
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<p>Apparently you didn’t read into the recent mall shooting, where a citizen pointed his gun at the shooter, who then killed himself immediately afterward.</p>
<p>See here: <a href=“http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-shooter-183593571.html[/url]”>http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-shooter-183593571.html</a></p>
<p>Which proves that guns are effective as deterrents even when they aren’t used.</p>
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<p>No. I believe responsible people should be talking rationally about the options available to protect innocent people from irresponsible people with guns. Now, maybe one of those options is to put more firearms into the hands of law-abiding citizens at shopping malls, movie theaters and schools. I’m sure there are more cases like the one at Clackamas mall. How many? I seldom hear about them. I’ve been personally touched (and heard about) many more cases in which an innocent life has been taken (or ruined) by the criminal or careless use of firearms. I think more of us need to share these stories to take the argument out of the realm of myths and hypotheticals. But I don’t think anyone knows the consequences of widening concealed carry priviledges all over America. This would be a social experiment. On the other hand, there are many examples of modern, prosperous, and free countries that have low crime and strict gun control.</p>
<p>Anyway, I don’t consider sensible regulations a kind of punishment.</p>
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<p>Actually it appears there are at least some doubts about this story. There are no witnesses that corroborate his story, including the police who indicated they have no evidence this happened or didn’t happen. The gunman did not “immediately” kill himself, and according to police accounts killed himself in a different part of the shopping center.</p>
<p>I really don’t want a gun but I want to be able to get a gun if I decide I want a gun. I don’t like the notion of living in a society in which I could never arm myself.</p>
<p>Lots of misconceptions floating around about Texans and guns. Many, many Texans don’t own guns of any kind. Lots of those who do own guns just have hunting rifles and shotguns. It is often assumed (–and you know what they say about assumptions, don’t you!) that all/most Texans are like the characters in public office or like the gun store owners you see on television. NOT true~</p>
<p>Aaron Schwartz hung himself with a rope. Lets ban ropes.</p>
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<p>A while back there was a thread in which a poster warned people about traveling in Texas because you could very easily be shot in the streets in a traffic dispute because of the widespread use of and display of guns in pickup truck windows. I disputed that it was common to see shotguns or rifles displayed in truck windows and was told this person had lived in Texas and still traveled there frequently and absolutely knew I was wrong. </p>
<p>I’ve lived here since I was a young child, and have never come across anyone brandishing a gun (which is not to say Texas does not have areas of high crime, it certainly does). My Ds had a contest to see who could spot the most guns displayed in truck windows. We never saw one - NOT ONE. We live in Dallas, travel weekly to the country a couple of hours west of Ft. Worth, I traveled to west Texas many times during football season, we went to the Texas Hill country of Austin and San Antonio, and even drove to the Texas coast. We never saw a pickup truck with a gun in the window in all those travels, in spite of this poster’s INSISTENCE that they are everywhere.</p>
<p>I know no one who has a handgun for protection, though I do know many hunters. DH used to go dove hunting and has some shotguns from those days, though he hasn’t used them in years and has no ammo for them at present. </p>
<p>I’m all for some kind of reasonable limitations on guns and the method of purchase. I don’t see how reducing the amount of assault weapons interferes with the constitutional right to bear arms. I know many people here with similar sentiments.</p>
<p>^ stop jazzing up Texas. It will mean more people might want to move here. :p</p>
<p>^ “… more people might want to move here.”</p>
<p>Increase Texas’ population eight-fold (to 200 million) and it will have the same population density as Connecticut.</p>
<p>[States</a> - Ranked by Size & Population - ipl2 Stately Knowledge: Facts about the United States](<a href=“http://www.ipl.org/div/stateknow/popchart.html]States”>State Population and Size - Stately Knowledge: Facts about the United States| ipl: Information You Can Trust)</p>
<p>From the Jan. 14, 2013 Washington Post “O’Malley to Seek Tougher Gun Laws”:</p>
<p>“Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley will seek to institute some of the nation’s strictest gun licensing requirements, ban assault weapons and restrict visitor access to schools in one of the most expansive government responses sought to last month’s school shooting in Newtown, Conn”. …</p>
<p>“You look at some of these guns, and it’s just hard to conclude that these guns should be in the hands of anyone who isn’t a soldier on a battlefield or a law enforcement officer sent into a tactical situation,” O’Malley said.</p>
<p>“There are 46,719 assault weapons registered in Maryland, according to state police… Maryland is already quite restrictive. It requires that all private transfers of guns be handled through a licensed dealer, requires purchasers to watch a safety video and limits purchases of guns to one per 30-day period… Maryland is not among the six states that ban assault weapons, although it has banned some semiautomatic pistols. The state is among six, plus the district, that limit the sale of high-capacity magazines, defining large capacity as those holding in excess of 20 rounds.”</p>
<p>" O’Malley’s plan would halve to 10 the number of rounds that magazines would be allowed to hold."</p>
<p>“His plan includes a blanket ban on all assault weapons.”</p>
<p>“More broadly, his plan would give Maryland a far greater say in all future gun sales, limiting purchases to those who qualify for a license, which aids say would be issued by the Maryland State Police.”</p>
<p>“The plan would require almost all gun owners in the state to submit to digital fingerprinting.”</p>
<p>“Buyers seeking hunting rifles and shotguns would be exempt from the licensing requirement.”</p>
<p>“Currently, only those seeking a permit to carry a concealed weapon must submit to fingerprinting.”</p>
<p>“To purchase handguns and other types of firearms a buyer who is deemed eligible for a license would still have to complete all existing steps to obtain a gun permit, including submitting to a second background check at the time of purchase and abiding by a 7 day waiting period before receiving the weapon”.</p>
<p>“The sort of licensing system that O’Malley is proposing can significantly curb “straw purchases” - the buying of a gun for someone who is prohibited by law from possessing one. A straw purchaser would be unlikely to risk going to a state police barracks and submitting to fingerprinting.”</p>
<p>“Straw purchases remain a particular problem in Prince Georges County and in Baltimore. Straw purchases is the way criminals get guns.” quote from Vinvent DeMarco public health advocate.</p>
<p>The article also addresses mental health issues. “O’Malley’s proposal broadens the categories of people prohibited from possessing firearms. The state would also stablish a 24-hour hotline for people to report a family member or friend who they think is suffering a sudden mental decline in late adolescence.”</p>
<p>“O’Malley’s plan stears clear of calls to put armed guards in schools. Instead he proposes spending $25 million in the coming year to tighten physical security in the state’s public schools, including using uniform video surveillance, automatically locking doors, shatterproof glass and buzzer entrance systems.”</p>