Target customers have become a target

Re: blaming gun free zones for gun violence... does anyone really believe that some crazy person who knows he's going to be dead by the time his rampage is over, cares one iota about whether or not some people there might have guns???

Gun free zone or not, nobody knows whether or not there might be one or more people inside that have guns in spite of the official policy, especially given that most of them do not employ metal detectors. Just because some sign says "Gun Free Zone" does not mean that some people won't carry guns there anyway. Hell, look at all the guns the TSA confiscates from people trying to board airplanes with them.

Does anyone think these people sit & reason things like that? These mass shooters are not career criminals or gang members out looking to rob people. They are unstable goof balls or just poor slobs who feel like they've been pissed on by life & are now pissed off to the point of murderous rage.

And the idea that elementary schools should NOT be gun-free is just nuts in my mind. If kids today have to go to schools where their teachers are packing heat or where there are armed security guards walking around like in the Tel Aviv Airport, then we have gone waayyyy too far in the wrong direction.

But the real thing about blaming gun free zones for gun violence that flummoxes me is this... if guns weren't as freely available as they are & if our country weren't drowning in them, there wouldn't be a problem. Excessive gun violence is the fault of having an excessive number of guns, not the fault of places that don't want them there.

Blaming gun free zones for gun violence is like blaming 7 Elevens for convenience store robberies.
 

Misty said:
Many times in gun free zones, the killers keep firing and killing people until the police come on the scene. And then the killings stop, and the killer kills himself. If the armed police had not arrived, they would keep shooting, and many of them had
the ammunition to take even more lives. In gun free zones, people are used as targets and the killers don't even know the people they are shooting. They are helpless victims.

That's why gun free zones are so attractive to killers. There are many instances in the newspaper where people have knives as weapons in a store, and another customer has a gun and shows it, and the would be killer drops his knife, and lives are saved. There are many stories in the news about gun owners saving lives.
Click to expand...

Would like to see a few if you have them.
 
Misty said:
There seems to be such a lack of respect for lives, and some I think comes from some of the Very Violent movies and video games on the market today. People are becoming desensitized to violence. The recent killings at the school and theater, were by killers who spent large parts of their days playing these games, which are very realistic..

Chicago had the strictest gun laws untill recently and the most murders, and now they have the most restrictive rules for getting a conceal carry license. In many states, after conceal carry went into effect, crime rates dropped.
Click to expand...

I agree Misty, it's a known fact that when criminals know they may have to deal with armed citizens, they go elsewhere. The video games, and the lack of family values do contribute to behavior like this, not to mention the mind-altering prescription drugs that these people have been on since they were kids, and labeled as having ADD, etc. As I said I don't conceal carry, but I know it's a crime deterrent...http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/09/murder-drops-as-concealed-carry-permits-rise-claims-study/
 

Pappy said:
Mr. Jim.... I certainly respect your opinion on us gun owners, but why stop at guns? How about people that commit crimes with knives, scissors, etc. How about adults that don't restrain their children in a car seat or do not use seat belts. Aren't they being irresponsible also?

I know now that we can come up with all kinds of what ifs and no one will win this debate. If you feel up to it, check with Floridas Concealed Forum. Maybe when you see the thousands of CW permits you might have a better understanding where I'm coming from..Pappy
Click to expand...

Calling gun owners who leave their guns where kids can get them irresponsible, is totally legitimate.

And the knives & scissors thing is a red herring. There is no epidemic of knife & scissor crime. People are not committing mass murders in schools & theaters, etc. with knives & scissors. You can't point a knife or a pair of scissors at a group of people 40 or 50 feet away from you & kill them with a squeeze of your finger.

But as for your question about adults not restraining their kids with car seats... of course they are irresponsible. But how is that relevant? How does their irresponsibility excuse the irresponsibility of gun owners who don't lock their guns in a safe, or of gun store owners who don't do the same after closing up at night?

And FYI, I live in Florida. Have lived here most of my life. Florida has a high crime rate. Orlando is becoming one of the most violent cities in the country. Mostly gun crime. And all those CW's aren't doing anything to bring it down.

Guns are the most dangerous small arms weapons known to man. Nothing else makes killing as easy & convenient as a gun. They are in a class by themselves & deserve to be treated & regarded as such.
 
SeaBreeze said:
I agree Misty, it's a known fact that when criminals know they may have to deal with armed citizens, they go elsewhere. The video games, and the lack of family values do contribute to behavior like this, not to mention the mind-altering prescription drugs that these people have been on since they were kids, and labeled as having ADD, etc. As I said I don't conceal carry, but I know it's a crime deterrent...http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/09/murder-drops-as-concealed-carry-permits-rise-claims-study/
Click to expand...

Can you cite some examples of cases where criminals have gone elsewhere because they knew people were carrying guns?

Where are these places where many people are known to be carrying guns?
 
MrJim said:
Would like to see a few if you have them.
Click to expand...

White House Study Finds Guns Save Lives: “Consistently Lower Injury Rates Among Gun Using Crime Victims”

Mac Slavo
June 27th, 2013

Though statistics prove time and again that disarming a free people leads to more violent crime and the potential for mass government democide, it hasn’t stopped President Barrack Obama and his Congressional entourage from doing everything in their power to make it more difficult for Americans to legally own firearms.
Citing the Sandy Hook mass shooting last year, democrats on the hill have claimed that we must restrict gun ownership and strip the Second Amendment for the safety of our children and the general public.
But a new report commissioned by the White House titled Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-related Violence suggests what many self defense gun proponents have been saying for years. The report, ordered under one of President Obama’s 23 Executive Orders signed in the wake of the Sandy Hook incident, asked the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the National Research Council and other federal agencies to identify the “most pressing problems in firearms violence.”
To the surprise of the authors and those who would no doubt have used the report to further restrict access to personal defense firearms, the study found that gun ownership actually saves lives and those who have a firearm at their disposal improve their chances of survival and reduce their chance of injury in the event they are confronted by a violent criminal:
Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year…
…
The estimate of 3 million defensive uses per year is based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys. The former estimate of 108,000 is difficult to interpret because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.
A different issue is whether defensive use of guns, however numerous or rare they may be, are effective in preventing injury to the gun wielding crime victim. Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self protective strategies.
Full Study available at the National Academy of Sciences

Via: Blacklisted News / Story Leak
​
Consider that 3 million people use a gun to defend themselves from harm every year. This means that over 8,000 Americans every day act with potentially deadly force to prevent injury or death to themselves or a family member.
In addition to overwhelming evidence that owning a gun reduces your chances of injury when attacked, regardless of whether you fire your gun or not, the new report proves that there has been a decades’ long obfuscation of national statistics that have been used to determine the importance of guns in self defense. Up until this study became available, anti-gun politicians often cited figures that indicated that just 108,000 people a year used guns in self defense. The new study suggests that those numbers were off by over 2500%.
The new White House report coupled with evidence from Australia, Britain and Canada shows that reduction of personal gun ownership is a road to more violence, injury and death.
The President commissioned this study in the hopes of finding a reason to take more guns from law abiding Americans.
What it found, however, is that the answer to gun violence in America is… arming more Americans

Since the White House Study showing guns save lives is only one article and you wanted a few of them, please go to the google search engine, Jim, and type in "Gun Owners Save Lives" and you will be able to read 46,700,000 articles about it.
 
This discussion puzzles me. All schools in Australia are de facto gun free zones. There's no sign that says they are because no sign is needed. Why would anyone except a police officer enter a school with a loaded gun? Why would anyone take on into a shopping mall, a church or a movie theatre. What is wrong with a society that thinks it is a reasonable thing to do?

In my whole life I don't recall anyone shooting up a classroom although I do remember one occasion where a man took a teacher and her class hostage as part of a domestic dispute. It was ended peacefully by the police. We did have a mass shooting in a shopping mall once but that was before Howard's national gun laws. Churches, mosques and synagogues are sometimes subject to vandalism and arson, but again no shoot-ups.

Given the different histories of our two countries, I could say that it is obvious that a lack of guns is much more protective than concealed carry. People who think otherwise are not looking far enough abroad to see what happens in other countries, nor are they looking closely enough at the gun worshipping culture at home.

And to make things clear, Australia is not a gun free society. We have legal gun owners and illegal ones too. We have gun crime as well. We just have a lot less of all of them, not just overall but per capita as well. A lot less.
 
Misty said:
White House Study Finds Guns Save Lives: “Consistently Lower Injury Rates Among Gun Using Crime Victims”

Mac Slavo
June 27th, 2013

Though statistics prove time and again that disarming a free people leads to more violent crime and the potential for mass government democide, it hasn’t stopped President Barrack Obama and his Congressional entourage from doing everything in their power to make it more difficult for Americans to legally own firearms.
Citing the Sandy Hook mass shooting last year, democrats on the hill have claimed that we must restrict gun ownership and strip the Second Amendment for the safety of our children and the general public.
But a new report commissioned by the White House titled Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-related Violence suggests what many self defense gun proponents have been saying for years. The report, ordered under one of President Obama’s 23 Executive Orders signed in the wake of the Sandy Hook incident, asked the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the National Research Council and other federal agencies to identify the “most pressing problems in firearms violence.”
To the surprise of the authors and those who would no doubt have used the report to further restrict access to personal defense firearms, the study found that gun ownership actually saves lives and those who have a firearm at their disposal improve their chances of survival and reduce their chance of injury in the event they are confronted by a violent criminal:
Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year…
…
The estimate of 3 million defensive uses per year is based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys. The former estimate of 108,000 is difficult to interpret because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.
A different issue is whether defensive use of guns, however numerous or rare they may be, are effective in preventing injury to the gun wielding crime victim. Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self protective strategies.
Full Study available at the National Academy of Sciences

Via: Blacklisted News / Story Leak
​
Consider that 3 million people use a gun to defend themselves from harm every year. This means that over 8,000 Americans every day act with potentially deadly force to prevent injury or death to themselves or a family member.
In addition to overwhelming evidence that owning a gun reduces your chances of injury when attacked, regardless of whether you fire your gun or not, the new report proves that there has been a decades’ long obfuscation of national statistics that have been used to determine the importance of guns in self defense. Up until this study became available, anti-gun politicians often cited figures that indicated that just 108,000 people a year used guns in self defense. The new study suggests that those numbers were off by over 2500%.
The new White House report coupled with evidence from Australia, Britain and Canada shows that reduction of personal gun ownership is a road to more violence, injury and death.
The President commissioned this study in the hopes of finding a reason to take more guns from law abiding Americans.
What it found, however, is that the answer to gun violence in America is… arming more Americans

Since the White House Study showing guns save lives is only one article and you wanted a few of them, please go to the google search engine, Jim, and type in "Gun Owners Save Lives" and you will be able to read 46,700,000 articles about it.
Click to expand...

That's all well & good, but it completely ignores the obvious fact that if there weren't so many readily available guns floating around to begin with, it wouldn't be anywhere near as necessary to walk around armed or to be put in the position of having to use a gun to defend yourself.

I also wonder how many of those cases of guns being used for self defense were drug dealers who used a gun to defend themselves from some other rival drug dealer or random thug trying to rip off their money & drugs.

But all that aside, it does not change the fact that America is the gun violence capital of the world.

U.S. gun-rights advocates are correct in their assertion that global evidence isn’t immediately compelling when it comes to the link between levels of gun ownership and homicide. And most studies of previous U.S. gun legislation suggest a limited impact on rates of violence. It turns out that’s the wrong set of questions. The international evidence is clear that it takes more than guns to cause high crime rates, yet guns enable both intentional and unintentional violence, and large, lightly regulated gun sales lead to more homicides throughout the Americas.

You don’t have to get very far in Stephen Pinker’s history of violence, The Better Angels of Our Nature, to find ample support for the idea that there’s more to homicide than the prevalence of firearms. In precivilization, as many as 15 percent of all deaths were violent—inflicted by weapons as simple as a stone. Even today, the strongest relationship to homicide rates around the world involves overall levels of economic development, inequality, and social cohesion rather than gun prevalence.

Yet if you restrict your attention to developed countries, there is a link between guns and more violence. A survey of academic studies by Harvard University’s Lisa Hepburn and David Hemenway concluded that high-income countries with more firearms have more homicides. Americans have the highest gun ownership in the world, with nine guns for every 10 people. The U.S. also has by far the highest level of gun violence among rich countries. In another study looking at 23 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Hemenway and a colleague find that U.S. homicide rates were 6.9 times higher than rates in the other high-income countries, driven by firearm homicide rates that were 19.5 times higher.

In addition, unintentional firearm deaths in the U.S. were more than five times higher than in the other countries. Among these 23 countries, the U.S. accounted for 80 percent of all firearm deaths; 87 percent of all children under 15 killed by firearms were American children. In 2005, 5,285 U.S. children were killed by gunshot compared with 57 in Germany and none in Japan—a country with some of the toughest gun controls in the world. In America, people who live in houses with guns are more likely to be killed. Homes with guns are 12 times more likely to have household members or guests killed or injured by the weapon than by an intruder. And while the guns-violence relationship is not perfect across or within rich countries, the counter-examples have implications that gun-rights advocates might not like. Consider Switzerland, which has the second-highest gun ownership rate amongst OECD countries, yet a very low overall homicide rate—one-third the OECD average. While Swiss gun-related homicides are more common than elsewhere in the OECD, that still suggests that the mere availability of guns doesn’t necessitate a lot of violent crime.

Yet if any country understood the “well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” part of the U.S.’s Second Amendment, it would be Switzerland. Gun possession is required as part of compulsory military service. Increasingly, those guns are being kept in depots, so they’re not immediately available. Military service requires soldier-citizens to attend repeated, extensive training sessions from age 20 to 50. Switzerland is a prime example of why culture and institutions matter to the relationship between guns and violence.

Meanwhile, Mexico provides a case study of what happens when more guns meet weak institutions. In the four years following the lapse of America’s assault weapons ban in 2004, 60,000 illegal firearms seized in Mexico were traced back to the U.S. Luke Chicoine, an economist at the University of Notre Dame, estimates that the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban led to at least 2,684 additional homicides in Mexico. Similarly, a study from New York University researchers found that homicides spiked in Mexican border towns after 2004, particularly those most involved in narcotics trafficking. The spike was far less dramatic in towns that bordered California, which had a state-level assault weapon ban that remained in place after the U.S. ban lapsed. A survey of court cases reported in their paper found that 3 percent of trafficked guns came from California, vs. 29 percent from Arizona and 50 percent from Texas.
Click to expand...

http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-13/guns-dont-kill-people-gun-culture-does





 
MrJim, if you don't want a gun you have the right not to have one. As for me I have the right to have one and I have plenty of them.

I hope you are never attacked by someone intending harm, but if you are feel free to dial 911. Of course the police won't arrive in time to prevent the violence but they can investigate and try to find out who killed you.
 
I wonder what would have really happened if everyone in that theatre had a gun.

I bet I can guess... a bunch of John Wayne & Bruce Willis wannabes would have whipped out their guns & started firing at everything that moved, probably upping the death toll to twice what it was.


 
Sorry if I'm appearing dense here but why on earth would anyone feel it necessary..legal or not, to take a gun into a supermarket? How is it that people feel they need to protect themselves while buying bread?

This is appalling.

Here in the UK we have legal gun owners, but if anyone were to walk into a supermarket/school /or public place carrying one they'd be arrested on the spot!!
 
Davey Jones said:
I wonder what would have really happened if everyone in that theatre had a gun.
Click to expand...

They would have killed this guy before he shot all those people, instead of playing games with him after the fact now, with repeated mental evaluations, etc., just stalling before a trial. We would save a lot of taxpayer money (and innocent lives), if this lunatic was taken out that night, by someone with a concealed carry license.

hollydolly said:
Sorry if I'm appearing dense here but why on earth would anyone feel it necessary..legal or not, to take a gun into a supermarket?
Click to expand...

Responsible citizens who have a legal concealed carry permit, will carry their firearms with them wherever they go. If a criminal goes into that store and threatens to shoot someone with the gun he bought off the street from a gang member, then all the customers would be grateful that someone was present to stop him, before he did any harm...I know I would!
 
SeaBreeze said:

They would have killed this guy before he shot all those people, instead of playing games with him after the fact now, with repeated mental evaluations, etc., just stalling before a trial. We would save a lot of taxpayer money (and innocent lives), if this lunatic was taken out that night, by someone with a concealed carry license.

Responsible citizens who have a legal concealed carry permit, will carry their firearms with them wherever they go. If a criminal goes into that store and threatens to shoot someone with the gun he bought off the street from a gang member, then all the customers would be grateful that someone was present to stop him, before he did any harm...I know I would!
Click to expand...

Yes & the idea that the bullets fired by a "responsible gun owner" could ever go astray, miss or pass thru their intended target then go ricocheting around, eventually striking somebody else, is just inconcievable, isn't it?

Because that NEVER happens on TV or in the movies.

Y'know... where reality is always portrayed so accurately.

The thought of a dozen or so "responsible gun owners" whipping out their side arms in a crowded public place & opening fire scares me as much as the thought of one maniac doing so.
 
It's not inconceivable Mr. Jim, but IMO not likely, and I would take my chances. I'd much rather have an armed citizen or even an armed security guard use their weapons to kill the crazed maniac. We fear different things, and that's okay, we're different people. I fear the maniac alone using the theater as a shooting gallery.

I think we're just going back and forth on this, and as I've said before I'm just giving my own opinion and thoughts, and I don't want or need to change anyone else's mind about gun control. So let's just agree to disagree, I respect your right to your own opinion, as you should respect mine.
 
MrJim said:
I wonder what would have really happened if everyone in that theatre had a gun.
Click to expand...

I bet I can guess... a bunch of John Wayne & Bruce Willis wannabes would have whipped out their guns & started firing at everything that moved, probably upping the death toll to twice what it was.


Thats what I was thinking too,if all this happened yesterday then its practically a guarantee more would have been killed by (ahem) accident. Now ya know why some of these stores dont want gun in their stores.


 
I've always thought it slightly odd that a person would rather allow a shooter free reign than to have an armed fellow citizen come to their aid.

My way of thinking on situations such as this, in order of preference:


  1. Be armed myself
  2. Have a cop nearby
  3. Have an armed citizen nearby
  4. Be unarmed myself but attempt to take down the bad guy
  5. Stand there and pray

It's usually the latter that end up as statistics ...

A few things I've learned in almost 40 years of teaching self-defense -


  1. You never, EVER think that help is on the way
  2. You never, EVER depend upon the mercy of the shooter
  3. You take - and are forever grateful for - whatever help happens to appear
  4. Even a sheep can learn to use their teeth
 
I agree with your points Phil. .. BUT I wouldn't STAND there. .. depends on the situation of course, but if in a flurry of activity (shooting) and not armed .. I would fall down immediately and play dead ...
Seems to work in some situations, especially where the shooter is going for 'numbers'..
And being down could help your percentages, especially if a barrage of bullets are flying through the air.
 
Totally agree, Bonnie. If you can't escape then play dead.

Problem is - and you never know until it actually happens - oftentimes in a stressful scenario such as this we freeze up like deer caught in headlights - our head tells us to move but our body refuses, so we just stand there like silhouette targets. For the lucky ones this only lasts a second or two, but for the unlucky ones it can last forever.
 
With the tsunami of publicity given to these incidents, we tend to think they happen every day in every city, but they don't. We should be familiar enough with the places we shop, to have a plan of escape. Employee only doors, rear and side exits, etc. to go to and exit or wait. A contingency plan can go a long way, to keeping you safe.
 
Meanderer said:
With the tsunami of publicity given to these incidents, we tend to think they happen every day in every city, but they don't. We should be familiar enough with the places we shop, to have a plan of escape. Employee only doors, rear and side exits, etc. to go to and exit or wait. A contingency plan can go a long way, to keeping you safe.
Click to expand...

True that ... the forum members reading this in other countries must think the US has become the Wild, Wild West all over again.
It's not really that bad.
I actually go for a walk every morning.. unarmed. .:p ... cell phone and walkman in hand, and come across some very nice and friendly people.
 
Bonnie said:


True that ... the forum members reading this in other countries must think the US has become the Wild, Wild West all over again.
It's not really that bad.
I actually go for a walk every morning.. unarmed. .:p ... cell phone and walkman in hand, and come across some very nice and friendly people.
Click to expand...

I agree Bonnie, it's not bad at all, and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. I don't carry a gun, and take walks alone on trails, in parks and do what I have to do in the city. I see many nice folks that I say hello to or nod when they pass, it's all good. I do live near the theater shooting, and have seen movies there in the past and will continue to do so without fear. I'd rather live here in a country where I can have my freedoms, and just be aware of my surroundings. I'm in my 60s, so I've been doing just fine so far. :thumbsup:
 

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