The Great Gun Control Debate

[Jarnhamar]

Perhaps you, and the American who posted the clip and gave it an English title, should learn to speak French first:

The armed Frenchman in the video, and his partner, are POLICE OFFICERS, and the video describes how they extricated themselves from the dangerous situation without escalation. This leaves two matters: First, being armed (to the knowledge of the thugs) doesn't seem to be a deterrent in favour of the police officers in France; and, second: How many people here think that American police officers would have been that  patient and restrained, instead of actually pulling their guns and shooting the people coming at them with baseball bats?

I should definitely learn french though I don't really think the American who posted it will share your opinion.

When the officer put his hand on his pistol and, I'm assuming, insinuated he would use it, the armed gang members stopped. They looked pretty intent on smashing him up with those bats. I pooched the delivery but context is still sound.

 

[captloadie]

But why a CCW? Why not an open carry permit? Would these not be an even larger deterrent?

 

[Loachman]

How many people here think that American police officers would have been that  patient and restrained, instead of actually pulling their guns and shooting the people coming at them with baseball bats?

Okay, I'll be the first.

 

[Jarnhamar]

But why a CCW? Why not an open carry permit? Would these not be an even larger deterrent?

Guessing here

Public over reacting. You carrying your pistol around the store while shopping turns into a panicked 911 call that a man is running around the store with a pistol scaring people.

In most of the videos I've seen where a CCW holder in the US confronts a criminal they do so by surprise. A criminal robbing a store ignores the man at the counter and points the gun at the clerk, all of a sudden that man he ignored is pointing a .45 to his head.  With open carry you will loose your best advantage, the element of surprise.

Open carrying a gun you may also make yourself a target.  You can be making yourself a target for thieves who want a gun (and they set up an ambush) or if someone is robbing a store or whatever they may decide to just shoot you first to be on the safe side.

Having your gun grabbed from you is more likely then when it's hidden.

 

[Loachman]

Exactly.

Open carry is foolish, except where there is no other option.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>Public over reacting. You carrying your pistol around the store while shopping turns into a panicked 911 call that a man is running around the store with a pistol scaring people.

You hypothesize.  Parts of the US have had open carry for years.  So you can back up your hypothesis with evidence, or discard it.  I don't mean a handful of examples across decades that are exceptions that prove the rule - I mean a steady stream of panicky reports.

>With open carry you will loose your best advantage, the element of surprise.

Ditto.

>Open carrying a gun you may also make yourself a target.

Ditto.

I also have a hypothesis: where people openly carry, we don't know whether the element of surprise is lost or if the carrier becomes a target - because criminals look for easier ground in the first place.  Stuff that never happens is difficult to measure.

 

[Jarnhamar]

You hypothesize. 

Yes. That's why I opened my post with "guessing here".

When I did a quick search of problems with open carry having police called on people open carrying guns turned up a number of times.

There's some YouTube videos too of people testing out open carry.  Sometimes a single cop car shows up and sometimes numerous cars show up.  Sometimes the police are polite sometimes buddy has guns pointed at him and he's detained.  That's in states with open carry.  I'll dig the videos up when I get on a laptop.

 

[Kilo_302]

Yes. That's why I opened my post with "guessing here".

When I did a quick search of problems with open carry having police called on people open carrying guns turned up a number of times.

There's some YouTube videos too of people testing out open carry.  Sometimes a single cop car shows up and sometimes numerous cars show up.  Sometimes the police are polite sometimes buddy has guns pointed at him and he's detained.  That's in states with open carry.  I'll dig the videos up when I get on a laptop.

I remembered this nugget from Georgia's first day of open carry laws. Now this could have been a misunderstanding because the law had just gone into effect, but it's clear open carry could lead to many incidents like this.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/georgia-showdown-guns-everywhere

According to the Daily Times, the first man, Ronald Williams, approached the second man in the store and demanded to see his identification and firearms license. Williams also pulled his gun from his holster, without pointing it at the second man. The second man responded by saying that he was not obligated to show any permits or identification -- then he paid for his purchase, left the store, and called the police.

The main question is, "is that guy responsible and trained well enough to carry a firearm in public?" Texas for example, only requires an 6-8 hour course to become certified. This is insane. In Georgia, you can carry in bars of all places unless the owner doesn't permit it.  Booze + guns + social setting=deadliest bar fight ever

Combine this lack of control and training with the fact that anyone can buy a gun, with no paperwork, at a gun show or over the internet, and this is a recipe for disaster. I just plain don't understand why people want to live in the Wild West. We've made progress since then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KniKvVxaM1o

 

[Remius]

  Booze + guns + social setting=deadliest bar fight ever

Combine this lack of control and training with the fact that anyone can buy a gun, with no paperwork, at a gun show or over the internet, and this is a recipe for disaster. I just plain don't understand why people want to live in the Wild West. We've made progress since then.

So has this actually happened though?  I assume the law has been in place for a bit now?  And don't mention the Hells Angel shoot out.  That was between gangs and would have happened with or without gun laws or hours of training.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I remembered this nugget from Georgia's first day of open carry laws. Now this could have been a misunderstanding because the law had just gone into effect, but it's clear open carry could lead to many incidents like this.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/georgia-showdown-guns-everywhere

The main question is, "is that guy responsible and trained well enough to carry a firearm in public?" Texas for example, only requires an 6-8 hour course to become certified. This is insane. In Georgia, you can carry in bars of all places unless the owner doesn't permit it.  Booze + guns + social setting=deadliest bar fight ever

Combine this lack of control and training with the fact that anyone can buy a gun, with no paperwork, at a gun show or over the internet, and this is a recipe for disaster. I just plain don't understand why people want to live in the Wild West. We've made progress since then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KniKvVxaM1o

Since 1987, the state of Florida has issued 2.5 million concealed-carry permits,” Raso says in his latest opinion piece for the NRA News network. “Of those, only 168 people have committed firearms crimes. That’s .00672 percent of the total amount issued.”*

The streets are awash in a thimble full of blood  :

 

[Jed]

So has this actually happened though?  I assume the law has been in place for a bit now?  And don't mention the Hells Angel shoot out.  That was between gangs and would have happened with or without gun laws or hours of training.

This is the fundamental difference of opinion when it comes to matters of gun control. Knowlegable folks put their faith in individuals of good character. Fearful folk put their faith in honest and competent government.

If I have to flip a coin to decide which horse to bet on, I will pick an honest and thinking individual over a well intentioned but misdirected and bloated bureaucratic government.

 

[PuckChaser]

6-8 hours of handgun training sounds like more than most CAF members get before they carry the Browning overseas, judging by all the NDs.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I always say that I can shoot pistol despite my army training, real blind leading the blind it was back in the 80’s. Handgun use and knowledge has really exploded in the last 15 or so years and what little I have seen of the training for the army is that it’s a vast improvement over what I got.

The incident rates in the US for CCW holder are incredibly low despite the general lack of required training, the amount varies from 0-12 hrs on average. Now here in Canada with our PAL system we are already ahead of the game, if you have your RPAL and then had a 1-2 day ATC  (CCW) course, you be good to go. The law is already on the books to allow it. Funny enough the CFO’s don’t want to release the training standard for ATC 3 carry because they know that a course will be put together to meet (and likely beat) that standard and people will take it and then submit their application. The CFO have tried to hide the application form, the training standard and pretended it did not exist, the courts have balked in the past about “illusionary permits”. It’s the same with handgun hunting, the Feds say there is no reason to issue a permit to hunt with a handgun because the Provinces won’t allow it. The Provinces say they won’t change it because the Feds won’t allow it. One day we need to get a Province to allow handgun hunting again and then we have another legitimate reason to carry in the bush.

 

[Jarnhamar]

So you can back up your hypothesis with evidence, or discard it.  I don't mean a handful of examples across decades that are exceptions that prove the rule - I mean a steady stream of panicky reports.

I'm not sure if you'll count these as evidence supporting my hypothesis or discount them as just a handful of random examples but youtube is full of these videos. In the majority of videos people are in open carry states yet the police report panicked phone calls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCjRrADK_D8  female cop in this encounter seems in over her head.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzBJanz3hjE  mentions a large number of calls the police received.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVgUBnXhZhU  obnoxious commentary by the video host, police don't seem confident handling open carry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OZV6mLwS_0  looks to be about 5-6 cop cars. 20 minutes of arguing back and forth whether or not the guys rifle needs to be unloaded, police aren't what the law is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2PED_dw60E  police draw firearms on open carry group
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eubistS4Wog  video of an ex-cop who physically tried to disarm someone open carrying a firearm.

 

[ballz]

I remembered this nugget from Georgia's first day of open carry laws. Now this could have been a misunderstanding because the law had just gone into effect, but it's clear open carry could lead to many incidents like this.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/georgia-showdown-guns-everywhere[/url

The main question is, "is that guy responsible and trained well enough to carry a firearm in public?" Texas for example, only requires an 6-8 hour course to become certified. This is insane. In Georgia, you can carry in bars of all places unless the owner doesn't permit it.  Booze + guns + social setting=deadliest bar fight ever

Combine this lack of control and training with the fact that anyone can buy a gun, with no paperwork, at a gun show or over the internet, and this is a recipe for disaster. I just plain don't understand why people want to live in the Wild West. We've made progress since then.

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KniKvVxaM1o]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KniKvVxaM1o

A lot of fear-mongering in that post. One guy unholsters his pistol and its a "showdown," but nothing actually happened and he was rightfully charged and hopefully they threw the book at him.

More fear-mongering about the bar. Yes, I think its a terrible idea to get sloshed with your pistol in your jacket, but there are negligence laws to deal with people that choose to do so and something bad happens as a result. A grown adult can decide for themselves if they are capable of carrying a firearm without doing something stupid, and they can deal with the consequences if they are not. The problem with today's society which has made so much "progress" as you call it, is they think its their job to babysit everyone and tell them what they can and cannot do, when they have to go home, etc. Just because you claim that everything about our current way of life is better and smarter than in past generations does not make it so. "Because its 2015" is not a valid rebuttal.

Individuals can pay the consequences for their own actions. Individuals choosing to live in an actual free society must accept the risks that are inherent with real freedom. Many years ago, everyone was happy to accept this risk because they had actually had their freedom threatened whether it through tyrannical governments or the World Wars or what have you. Nowadays, there are people that think you can actually have a free but also risk-free society. They are delusional.

6-8 hours of pistol training is definitely more than the CAF provides. A Sgt on our Bn's CAFSAC team last year won top pistol shooter in the CAF for a first-time competitor. He is a coy clerk, and wasn't even qualified on the 9mm Browning, and ended up as one of the coaches for the team. He shoots recreationally civie side, and put our training to shame.

 

[Loachman]

More fear-mongering about the bar. Yes, I think its a terrible idea to get sloshed with your pistol in your jacket

Which is illegal. Those carrying in bars cannot drink.

 

[ballz]

Which is illegal. Those carrying in bars cannot drink.

That's an even better point then... I am obviously not up-to-date on every individual state's laws, Kilo is either in the same boat or deliberately being misleading in his fear-mongering... I will assume the former to keep it civil.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>I'm not sure if you'll count these as evidence supporting my hypothesis

They are evidence, but what would better support your hypothesis are some impressive numbers.  Example: "N" complaints against legitimate carriers per 1,000 legitimate carriers per year, or something like that, where "N" is something more than microscopic.  Discard the incidents involving LEOs, because they should know better.

 

[a_majoor]

And another look at how narratives are created and manipulated. How many people are aware of this fact?

http://crimeresearch.org/2016/01/france-suffered-more-casualties-murders-and-injuries-from-mass-public-shootings-in-2015-than-the-us-has-suffered-during-obamas-entire-presidency-508-to-424-2/

UPDATED: FRANCE SUFFERED MORE CASUALTIES (MURDERS AND INJURIES) FROM MASS PUBLIC SHOOTINGS IN 2015 THAN THE US HAS SUFFERED DURING OBAMA’S ENTIRE PRESIDENCY (UPDATED 532 TO 396)

8 JAN , 2016 
Obama press conference in Paris

“But we are the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency. It doesn’t happen in other advanced countries. It’s not even close. And as I’ve said before, somehow we’ve become numb to it and we start thinking that this is normal.” –President Obama, announcing his new executive orders on guns, January 7, 2016

“The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world.  And there’s some steps we could take, not to eliminate every one of these mass shootings, but to improve the odds that they don’t happen as frequently.” –President Obama, interview that aired on CBS Evening News, Dec. 2, 2015

“With respect to Planned Parenthood, obviously, my heart goes out to the families of those impacted. … I say this every time we’ve got one of these mass shootings: This just doesn’t happen in other countries.” –Obama, news conference at COP21 climate conference in Paris, Dec. 1, 2015

“We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months.” –Obama, statement on shootings at Umpqua Community College, Roseburg, Ore., Oct. 1, 2015

“You don’t see murder on this kind of scale, with this kind of frequency, in any other advanced nation on Earth.” –Obama, speech at U.S. Conference of Mayors, June 19, 2015

“At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.” –Obama, statement on the shooting in Charleston, S.C., June 18, 2015

Yet, despite the impression that President Obama has been creating, France suffered more casualties (murders and injuries) from mass public shootings in 2015 than the US has suffered during Obama’s entire presidency (Updated 532 to 396).  Note that these numbers don’t adjust for the fact that the US has 4.98 times the population of France.  The per capita rate of casualties in France is thus 8.19 per million and for the US it is 1.22 — France’s per capita rate of casualties is thus 6.68 times higher than the rate in the US.

A systematic look at mass public shootings from the US and Europe is available here.

UPDATE: The number of people injured in the California attack was raised from 17 to 21, thus increasing the US causality total to 396.  The number of people injured in the Paris attacks on November 13th has also been increased from 352 to 368 and the number of people killed by one from 129 to 130 so the total casualties for Paris alone is now 525.

Please click on screenshots to enlarge. UPDATED

US MPS 2009 through 2015

France MPS 2009 to 2015

Go to link to see the screenshots.

I'm interested to see how the usual suspects try to explain this away, especially given French gun laws are quite strict compared to the United States, and to my knowledge, there are no active NRA chapters in France. Then again, then loudest proponents of gun control are silent in the face of the fact that the places in the United States with the highest rates of gun violence are the cities and states with the most restrictive gun laws.

 

[Jarnhamar]

>I'm not sure if you'll count these as evidence supporting my hypothesis

They are evidence, but what would better support your hypothesis are some impressive numbers.  Example: "N" complaints against legitimate carriers per 1,000 legitimate carriers per year, or something like that, where "N" is something more than microscopic.  Discard the incidents involving LEOs, because they should know better.

I wouldn't even know where to begin to look for that truthfully.  I know Canadian hunters still get the police called on them when someone witnesses them legally taking their firearm into the bush.

If Canada adopted an open-carry policy for firearms I think our police would be constantly called out every time someone seen a firearm for the next 50 years.

One similarity the Canada has with the US is that police don't seem all that knowledgeable in firearm laws. More so for the US judging on those videos. You would think in states where open carry is permitted the police would have dealt with it enough to be able to recite the law with their eyes closed and not have to ask the person carrying the gun what the law is.