The Encumbrance of Concealed Carry

[KevinB]

Well until Jay I thought things were going well...

Honestly most violent crime in high pop urban areas is not going to be deterred by CCW - as the majority of the folks in those situations will not have a CCW.

Furthermore - I'm not sure if the decrease in violent crime is more due to (intentional) underreporting by certain locations.

[Hambo]

I will add that in addition to critical reading skills, perhaps more importantly are critical thinking skills. As an analogy, to assume a criminal will have no more reluctance going into a room of armed people to rob them than a room of unarmed is, IMO, a critical loss of coherent thinking. It's only a matter of extrapolating that room into neighborhoods, cities and states to see that while the leftist media will not report on the societal benefits of CC, through the work of people like Lott we have the opportunity to advance it. Why we would not want to do so is beyond me - perhaps this thread is just another example of the contentious nature of Internet forums.

Thanks to all for taking the time to post your thoughts.

Believe it or not, I wrote that myself because I'm not into confirmation bias or junk science. If anyone can prove a causal link, I'm on board, but that was a pretty weak effort on Lott's part. I'm also not willing to enter a debate with anti-gunners using statistics that any undergrad can pick apart.

I base what you call a critical loss of coherent thinking on my experience with criminals. I wouldn't expect you to stand facing two officers who have MP5s pointed at your chest and think about pulling your weapon, however, I've seen people who did just that. I also worked for a defense attorney once I moved down here and based on talking to criminals about their cases, I would suggest that you can't understand at all how they think, when they bother to think. As I said previously, they are not a subset of people for whom rational thought and fear of consequences are a powerful motivator.

[Palmguy]

Exactly.

The sheepdogs take a big risk when they try to tie a basic individual right, that of self-defense, to a metric of public utility. Suppose the numbers swing the other way? Well, too bad you've moved your foundation off the bedrock of principle and onto the shifting sands of utility...

Yes, this. Too many people try to force the utilitarian argument; I understand why but it's not something you want to be the cornerstone of a pro-gun thesis. Stipulating to collective utilitarianism is playing with fire.

[Jay Cunningham]

Let me make one more statement and then move forward:

Aspects of this thread are dancing around getting too personal, but it's not quite there yet. The moderation issue is: preemptively strike and get accused of heavy-handed moderation, or wait too long and getting accused of letting "derp" occur.

If anyone felt sad because of my previous comment, I'm truly apologetic.

This thread is good, but check yourself if you feel the compelling urge to get personal.

Yes, I'm an unpopular person. Please continue.

[Shellback]

I'm glad it was all figured out before I arrived, and that the consensus was already reached. Sorry for the waste of bandwidth.

Some of the major topics concerning CCW and guns have been discussed ad nauseam, on this forum and others, so don't sweat it. If everyone rolled with the hive there'd be nothing to discuss, and internet gun forums would be a giant circle jerk, which they often times are. If you don't speak up as the voice of dissent then who will? The worst thing that's going to happen is either someone will change your mind or they might change yours... It happens occasionally.

[LittleLebowski]

Some of the major topics concerning CCW and guns have been discussed ad nauseam, on this forum and others, so don't sweat it. If everyone rolled with the hive there'd be nothing to discuss, and internet gun forums would be a giant circle jerk, which they often times are. If you don't speak up as the voice of dissent then who will? The worst thing that's going to happen is either someone will change your mind or they might change yours... It happens occasionally.

Excellent post.

[TCinVA]

I'm glad it was all figured out before I arrived, and that the consensus was already reached. Sorry for the waste of bandwidth.

There are levels of knowledge involved with every human endeavor...and believe it or not there are a number of people participating on the forum who have spent literally decades working through the issues you're trying to discuss.

Take your opening statement: You find the mental burdens associated with concealed carry to be great and you hope they stay that way. That's exceptionally counterproductive. What you gain with training, time, and experience is the ability to recognize what you should be looking for, the ability to respond to those indicators quickly and efficiently, and sufficient skill in doing so that you can be managing what you perceive to be a possible threat without anyone...including the possible threat...knowing that you're doing it.

You're worried about your gun staying completely concealed, but with training, experience, and proper gear selection others have figured out you can carry with near total invisibility in any environment where they aren't actively scanning you with a metal detector.

You behave better with the gun strapped on to avoid a potential problem when people who have been carrying for a while have so deeply embedded avoidance and deescalation into their routine habits that it's become a feature of their personality.

A lot of people have been doing this sort of thing for a very long time, and they didn't come to where they are at casually. Someone who has spent literally their entire adult life working on questions you're very recently starting to entertain probably won't see a need to completely reexamine what they are doing. People who don't really think much about strapping on their pistol because it's something they've been doing for a very long time and they've actually gone to the trouble of organizing how they live their life around the responsibilities and realities of ready access to a deadly weapon (including logging sometimes thousands of hours in formal training) are always going to look funny at somebody who is stating that they're somehow too casual about the whole thing.

[wsr]

OP you are coming across as almost frantic in your worries about possibilities, you need to stop treating "possibles" as "probables"

[LittleLebowski]

Folks, this thread is done. I would like all to remember when you started out carrying, I'd love it if all remembered that we should welcome and encourage folks new to this lifestyle/hobby, and I would be ecstatic if all of you recalled that PF is not a closed community, open only to those that can earn a FAST pin.