A firearm question for you LeftiesFollow

A trained person responding to a threat is certainly the ideal situation. It's what you'd want, if someone is going to confront a shooter in a school you want them to know what they're doing, have the best chance of success, and minimal change of causing more harm than good. Well for my money at least, if someone is going to be carrying a firearm on a campus they damn well better be trained. The issue is two-fold for me from that point:

1) Are there going to be people in place who are pre-trained to respond quickly with a firearm?

2) If so, who's paying for that training? If not, are we letting untrained people have guns? Or are we hiring security people? Or requiring training perhaps?

I imagine there may be cases where you can find no shortage of properly trained people who are willing to carry a firearm and protect their students, but I doubt that's going to be a universal situation. Which is where my concern lies, which is why I'd wonder if using a military-trained person in an example is the most relevant case. It's not going to be the universal situation, and how we'd address that is more of a concern than whether or not someone properly trained can respond appropriately.

Edited, Jan 24th 2013 2:09pm by someproteinguy

I'll tell you what: you stop bringing in things you believe are facts, and I'll stop having to correct them. Deal? That's not the argument. For the nth time, your own claims have been that a random civilian would without a doubt save lives if a gun was somewhere on the premises. You went as far as claiming that there were CASES of it happening; Civilians running half a mile to get their guns. When asked for proof, you've fallen woefully short, but instead of saying "oops," and finding another story that might better suit your hypothetical you've decided instead to double down and back pedal as only you can in the hopes that we'd forget your original claims. You crying "irrelevant semantics" is pretty much "well that disproves me so ignore it!"

And I noticed you called me a troll. Much like the Dread Pirate Roberts, I'll admit it with pride. Too bad for you that even with trolling I can still use facts and common sense, whereas you as a contrarian have to go out of your way to insist those very facts and common sense are irrelevant because it's the only way to be on the opposite side of any debate.

Edited, Jan 24th 2013 6:02pm by lolgaxe

Most people who obtain carry permits for firearms have some degree of training. It's usually required to get the permit. What I've been arguing all along is to remove the moronic restrictions which prohibit those who already have those permits from carrying their weapons in various areas. Specifically school zones.




Who knows? I'm not talking about mandating anything. I'm talking about removing an existing restriction on firearm carry laws. The point is that right now, even if there are several members of a school faculty with the skills and training to deal with a shooter, they are hindered by the fact that they are required to leave their firearms off campus. We can talk about training people on campus as well, but how about we start by removing the law which currently ensures that even if such a trained person is on campus, they can't have their weapon with them?



What I'm proposing costs no money at all. There are probably tens of thousands of people who work in schools right now who are sufficiently capable of intervening in a shooting incident who are currently disarmed and thus unable to do so as effectively as they could. This is a free resource which could help protect our children which we are throwing away. I'm just suggesting that we not do that.



Sure. But some is better than none, right? We currently have laws which actually prohibit those who do have the training and expertise from being able to effectively act in the event a school shooting occurs. To me that's crazy.




It's a case that shows us that had he not had to run so far to get to his gun, maybe more lives could have been saved. Obviously, we can't say exactly what would have happened, nor can we guaranteed outcomes in the future. But we can tilts the odds in favor of saving student lives, and I think that's worth doing given the nearly zero risk and cost this would entail.



I'm not sure why you think that. If we waited to do something until it could be done universally, we'd never do anything. Do you wait to install an alarm system in your home until all your neighbors can install them? No. You install yours in your home, and you let your neighbor worry about installing theirs in their home. Similarly, why should a school be forced to wait to be allowed to let their faculty bring weapons to school to help protect their students until there's some federal universal assurance that all schools will be able to do so? That seems strange to me. Just remove the restriction and let the schools decide on their own how to move forward. That seems like a reasonable course of action to me.


That's not to say we can't also pursue other courses, but there's no rational reason not to do this right now.

Most people who obtain carry permits do have police or military training.

Possibly true in blue states. Highly unlikely in red states.

Most states only require a photo ID, a background check, and to pay the merchant.

Or go to a gunshow and you can skip two of those steps.

So, is it safe to assume that there is a notable percentage of people who legally bought weapons and illegally conceal them at one point in time?

Depends on your definition of "notable". I'm sure some small percentage of people might do this. Most will not simply because the penalty for being caught is pretty severe. Two cases where I'd see this happening most would be someone who bought his gun legally and then decides to use it for a crime (he'll conceal it while going to/from the crime scene) and someone who buys a gun for protection and is afraid for his safety, but lives in a state that does not allow concealed carry (or makes it ridiculously difficult to obtain), so decides he's more willing to risk the legal penalties than the danger of not being able to defend himself.

How will it help prevent mass shootings?

Being off duty doesn't make you a civilian. I'm not sure how the reserve/guard works though.

Edited, Jan 25th 2013 2:24am by Almalieque

Most people who obtain carry permits are your dad? How many permits does he need?

Gbaji's argument for more gun access seems to rely pretty much completely on conjecture. "Well, there's no actual mass shootings that were stopped by a civilian with a gun but all of these COULD have been.... and a teacher COULD have gotten a gun.... and there ABSOLUTELY COULD have been less deaths.... and this COULD have happened... So, in closing, more guns for everyone is obviously the answer!"

In NYC you need, and I quote "A license may be granted to an applicant who is of good moral character, who is over 21 years of age, who has not been convicted of a serious offense, who states if and when he has ever been treated for mental illness, who is not subject to a protective court order and to whom no good cause exists for the denial of the license."

Do you have to prove that you've had gun training to get a conceal and carry permit?

Varies wildly by jurisdiction, but in most cases the concealing part doesn't require special training. Some states require training to own. In many states there are broad exemptions. If I recall correctly, in Virginia anyone could conceal if they were traveling from home to work. Wasn't an issue for me as my place of work had guns enough without me freelancing one in from home. Also would have been frowned upon to the tune of 20 years in federal "pound me in the ass" prison.

The last bit is relevant. NY is a "may issue" state, which means that the issuance of permits is at the discretion of law enforcement. Which typically means that they don't issue them except to law enforcement or actively employed private security (cause no one else has a "good cause" to have one). These are some of the most restrictive states.

Most states are "shall issue", which means that as long as the predefined conditions for the permit are met the state cannot deny a permit. But since conditions are set by law, they are often fairly strict, and usually require some form of training course be completed, proficiency test passed, background checks, fingerprints on file, etc.

Point being that for these states, which make up all but six of the states in the US, the average guy who just buys a gun at the corner store can't just walk around with his gun on him. So this fear that yahoos without skill or training or restraint would go in guns blazing and make things worse is relatively unfounded.

Of the remaining six states, four have no restriction, meaning anyone who can legally own a gun can legally carry it (there are some restriction which vary by state though). So if you happen to live in Alaska, Wyoming, Arizona, or Vermont, anyone might be packing.

There are two states (um... sorta) with "no issue" laws. DC and Illinois.

If we're tossing out semi-random information...

Says who? I think there's 10 families in Newtown who would be more than happy if we'd manage to reduce the number of children who died from 20 to 10.



Because I don't want to get caught up in yet another semantic argument. Some nutter has already tried to make issue with the use of the word "prevent". Also, I don't want people trying to play games with the definition of "mass shooting". It's a tricky semantic situation when you have to carefully pick your words because you're posting on a forum where the slightest mistake, no matter how clear your intent was, will be taken out of context and twisted around.

If I say that an armed civilian with a concealed firearm may be able to end a mass shooting, then folks like Joph will jump in with the Mother Jones study showing how few mass shootings end with armed civilian intervention. This is because a "mass shooting" is defined as a single shooting event in which there are 4 or more victim fatalities. So any intervention of an armed civilian which stopped the shooting short of 4 victim fatalities doesn't count as "ending a mass shooting".

If I say that an armed civilian with a concealed firearm may be able to prevent a mass shooting (preventing 4 people from being killed and thus becoming a mass shooting in the first place), nutters like yourself will ignore the mass shooting definition Joph uses and argue in terms of shooting in general. You'll say that since it's unlikely for the armed civilian to be right there and stop the shooter before he can shoot anyone, he's therefore not going to be able to "prevent" the mass shooting.

I used the phrasing I did to try to avoid repeating the same silly semantic BS you guys keep tossing at me. Of course, even when I do this, someone like Lolgaxe will jump in with "but a reserve member of the military isn't a civilian!" argument. Sigh...



Stop saying "prevent a potential mass shooting". As I pointed out above, you're changing my words so as to create a strawman. It may reduce the number of fatalities in a mass shooting or potential mass shooting. Again, I'm using that language, not because it's concise, and not because it's necessary, but because there are a handful of posters here who are freaking idiots.

I've already answered this. To you directly IIRC. It's funny how you guys get pissed that repeat myself, but then you keep asking the exact same questions I've already answered (or continue to argue as though I'd never answered). There are multiple reasons:

1. Armed guards cost money. lessening restrictions on where people can concealed carry guns allow those people to be in any random area while costing us nothing.

2. Armed guards cannot be everywhere. Same deal. There's a chance of a person with a concealed carry gun being in any area at any time, as long as that area isn't one designated as as gun free zone.

3. Armed guards are obviously armed guards, so shooters will tend to start shooting where they are not (or shoot the guard first). A shooter can't know if there's someone with a concealed weapon nearby when he starts shooting, and even if he suspects there might be, he doesn't know who and thus can't really do anything to avoid them.

There are probably more reasons than that, but those are the first and most obvious 3 that just pop out at me.

Edited, Jan 24th 2013 6:29pm by gbaji

Correct. Because real quantifiable terms with real data matter. Not just daydreams of all the shootings some random guy with a gun could have stopped or all the murders some other guy would have committed.


Because, again, you're just guessing and using daydreams and conjecture in lieu of any actual evidence. Like trying to use the recent mall shooting as evidence when absolutely none exists that the guy with the gun had any impact at all on what happened (in fact, a review of the events would suggest he had zero).

What if it was a civilian with a long rifle? Literally?

It really doesn't hurt my feelings that you're hellbent at pointing at a cat and screaming and flailing that it's an elephant. It's what kindergarteners do. My daughter occasionally does it, and I correct her too. Maybe you don't realize, but at some point it stops being cute. It starts appearing like a severe learning disability. I know the English language and facts are irrelevant to you, but some people do actually find them relevant when they're trying to present arguments. I'm humble enough to admit that I'm just far too great to be able to simply get over. I can try but I don't believe the outcome will turn me into the drooling mess of a lemming you're content with being.

Westroads.

Do you want me to pull at the strings of your little claim or you want to simply thank me for leaving it at that? Because, hoo are there some really big holes.

His head would explode in a spray of tears if he knew Meli was a security guard at that mall on his day off.

Yeah, I'm sorry. But you're going to have to have more than that before you bring a gun onto my kids campus. I don't particularly care if someone thinks they're responsible and well trained.

An armed guard or police/security officer is one thing, but that's entirely different. I'm less concerned about the rare mass shooting than I am about the more mundane gun crimes.



And a massive liability for the school district if something goes wrong. Lawyers will have a field day with this one. Worse than the good Samaritan who tries to do CPR and gets sued because they accidentally made the situation worse.



So what do we do for the rest?



The Clackmas shooter wasn't really within range to hit anyone after the first few shots either. From witness accounts he was also a pretty poor shot. Maybe if he targeted a group of kindergarteners trapped in a classroom he'd of had more luck.

As long as were making irrelevant comparisons... Linky.



Forget only two deaths. In a country with strict firearm regulations one has to resort to using a knife. The consequence? No one died. I'll repeat that no one died.

Obviously by that comparison the better method is to remove guns entirely.



Edited, Jan 25th 2013 9:02am by someproteinguy

Technically that is a solid position inside 20 ft a person with a knife holds an advantage over one with a gun.

Not without concealed knife safety courses.

What's shocking is that there wasn't a single gun-fu martial artist in that school.

Edited, Jan 25th 2013 11:37am by lolgaxe