What REALLY drives the decision? Motivation for Daily Non-Sworn CCW

[Bergeron]

@Earlymonk,

I’m glad that you’re still in this conversation and deriving value from it. There are a couple of points that I’d like to further expand on.

Risk:
While I am not, and have never been, a safety professional, I have continuously worked in multiple safety-adjacent capacities and been a part of multiple formal risk analyses. I can agree that people are not somehow naturally ingrained with quality risk assessment capabilities. An anecdote to illustrate the point: I was on an offshore oil rig that was drilling through a H₂S section. There are risks to drilling in the oilfield, and H₂S increases those risks.

Before crew change, at the morning safety briefing, the Offshore Installation Manager (OIM) stands up and tells us: “You are about to go through the most hazardous part of this hitch- the drive home. It will do your family no good if you are a conscientious, proactive, and safe worker on the rig who dies in a car crash on his way home.”

Violent street crime kills or grievously wounds, thousands of people per year. Any safety professional would not permit you to assume that risk, and would instead demand that you take multiple steps to mitigate that risk.

Motivation:
I personally trust Defensive Gun Use (DGU) statistics to be about as underreported as sexual assault. In addition to DGUs, that is, situations where the display or use of gun in self-defense would be legally and ethically permissible, there are also near-DGUs, situations that do not legally or ethically permit the threat or use of deadly force but that do have the possibility of escalating to full DGUs. I expect that near-DGUs outnumber DGUs by orders of magnitude.

A common thread in my life and in the lives of people who have expressed interest in daily CCW to me is the realization that there is the possibility that they’ll need to act in self-defense without anyone to assist them. “I can’t carry a police officer around” is trite, but it is also often the first mental step along a path that leads to daily CCW.

Daily
To circle back to the safety aspect for a moment, the daily CCW’er is more likely to be safe in their administrative gunhandling than the occasional carrier. There is a learning curve to daily carry that involves developing best processes and also in selecting appropriate supporting equipment and attire. This forum is one of, if not the best way(s) to avoid useless, unhelpful, or otherwise “woo-woo” sort of CCW gear.

Lastly, in regards to the daily carry of a hobby, I’ll make this point: Another of my very favorite hobbies are reading and writing. If you see me with a briefcase or bag, you can be assured that there’ll be a book, and notebook, and writing utensils in it. Pistols are much easier to carry than books, notebooks, and most any other hobby that a person might have. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

[Joe in PNG]

Auto safety philosophy correlates nicely with CCW.
You have the same possible extremes on how people do it, from absolutely clueless & unsafe (Karen posting a selfie while driving and sipping her 5th margarita of the day), to the overly paranoid (Dwight who goes no where unless he's wearing a full driving suit and a car equipted with race cage & 5 point harnesses).

Between the two, you have a happy medium where one can be prepared for a lot of outlier situations, but not have to spend a whole lot of excess effort to do so.

A driver who wears their seatbelt properly, doesn't play with their phone while driving, pays attention to the road and drivers around them, has tyres with the proper tread and inflation, and isn't playing to their damn phone has a pretty good chance of avoiding & surviving most of the nonsense that happens on the road. Other items such as jumper cables, a good jack, basic hand tools, blanket, medical kit, and so on can increase the number of situations one can deal with, should they come up. A defensive driving course likewise can increase the chances of avoiding accidents.

[blues]

^^^ Too bad the insurance companies and gov't haven't gotten together to promote CCW and relevant education.

[JustOneGun]

To the OP:

As Paul Thorn song says, "You might be wrong". We as humans are not actually all that great at determining odds.

Enter Givens...

I would add from my own LEO experience: To live properly within the statement, "What are the odds" requires a true randomness that rarely occurs in real life. It's been my experience that many victims bring the crime on themselves through their own actions born of ignorance. They often select themselves as victims, "Despite the odds". Of course that can be true whether they are armed or not. Here I am not talking about you so much as myself. I know a lot but I am also a total geek. The older I get the more dumb I feel. Some days I just don't get it seems to be my theme. So having a gun on me after all these years is literally just another tool, "Just in case through no fault of my own, after all the strategies to not need a gun fail and I end up needing a gun." That is why I carry a gun, out of humility not arrogance.

Plus I live in seemingly, "God's Country" among the bear, Mexican wolf, coy wolf, coyotes, foxes, skunks, stray dogs(we're free to be not responsible up here), etc and from time to time: Rabies(a bad combo).

[willie]

I have been shooting for 66 years; handguns are my primary interest; I have fired about 250,000 rounds through handguns; I am comfortable with them; and as I have become older, I appreciate that being armed might protect me from death or injury. I live in a city with a high crime rate. I would retreat if circumstances permitted. One reason is that I wish to avoid involvement with criminal justice system. Another is that I wish not to be sucked dry by an attorney. Being armed when I travel is comforting.

[olstyn]

You can spend a lot of time waxing philosophical about it if you like, but for me, when boiled down to the essentials, it's pretty simple:

1. There is a specific, known threat in my life.
2. I like having options, and having a carry permit and carrying a gun whenever feasible gives me options I wouldn't otherwise have for dealing with #1 and any unknown threats that may find their way into my path.

I sincerely hope never to have to exercise those options, but I'm VERY attached to having them available to me.

[DDTSGM]

This has been an interesting thread for me to read. To me there is no simple answer, but I think it is something we all need to reflect upon. It's often not pleasant, and sometimes humorous to examine our base reasons for doing things.

I don't think we should overlook the impact that ego has on all of this - we carry because it makes us feel better/fills a need we have within. For some folks the carried firearms is simply a means to make them feel more substantial, in control. Other folks take some 'pleasure' in the fact that they are able to respond and protect others if needed; still others EDC out of a sense of obligation to their families or friends, it makes them feel better to think they are safer because of their presence.

Pretty simple, really, JMO.

[nycnoob]

What I’m really interested in, however, is the philosophy of other P-Fers. Why have you chosen to take action to insulate yourself against THIS PARTICULAR low odds risk (violent crime requiring a DGU)?

I live in NYC so it is impossible to get a carry permit for anywhere in NY state, therefore I do not carry.
I am hopeful the supreme court will fix this issue soon and I do not want to damage my chances of
being able to carry in the future so I do not carry illegally. However I wish to own and be able to use guns.

I decided to buy guns and learn how to use them, with the intent of possibly carrying because
I was reading economics. (my academic training was in Engineering and Mathematics) I was trying
to understand about why so many pension plans went broke and how sustainable is Social Security
and what are the chances for a stock market crash in the future. My readings convinced me that there
will be monetary trouble ahead and I could not envision how that would lead to any outcome
besides lots of violence.

Additionally, I had been training in edged weapons (my first serious attempt at self defense and lethal force)
and I took a private lesson from someone far more skilled then my regular instructor. My thought at the time was,
"If people like this exist, then I need a gun, (there will be no other way to protect myself from this level of skill and muscle)".

[Totem Polar]

Additionally, I had been training in edged weapons (my first serious attempt at self defense and lethal force)
and I took a private lesson from someone far more skilled then my regular instructor. My thought at the time was,
"If people like this exist, then I need a gun, (there will be no other way to protect myself from this level of skill and muscle)".

Knives: efficiently separating organic matter for roughly 3.5 million years.

Seriously, nothing will make you respect the blade like working with a skilled and athletic expert. Sharp objects in the hands of strong, fast thinkers have been scaring the living shit out of proto-people since before they were actually modern human people. Fact.

[Kanye Wyoming]

No guns growing up, although I once happened upon a revolver in my grandfather’s bedside table drawer. He was a semi-public figure but still I remember being very surprised, and also thinking it was a little bit badass.

Other than a .22 rifle in the Boy Scouts, I never touched a gun until about 4 years ago at the age of 53.

Like a good father loves all his children equally, I’ve always loved all of the 10 Bill of Rights amendments equally, and intellectually I’ve long appreciated and cherished the Second.

November 2015 - Bataclan and kosher supermarket massacre in Paris. Hated the idea that I might find myself in a situation where I’d have to cower defenselessly under a theatre seat or behind the potato chip aisle and have to pray I wasn’t discovered.

January 2016 – even though the idea that I might ever actually own let alone carry a gun was still nothing short of beyond ludicrous, I figured it couldn’t hurt to at least know what a gun was and how it worked, so I took the NRA Basic Pistol course. Shooting was fun!

Over the next year – took lessons, got my carry permit, took a few classes, including a Tom Givens course, and there was no looking back. Now I simply can’t conceive of the possibility of not carrying unless asleep, in the shower, or where it could result in my arrest. As unlikely as it is I’ll ever have to draw much less fire, my eyes have been opened to the non-zero chance that it might save my life or the life of a friend, loved one or possibly even innocent strangers. Or at least I won’t go out without a fight. I also get the warm fuzzies from knowing that I am affirmatively exercising one of the most critical Constitutional rights and in the tiniest way contributing to the perpetuation of the republic rather than simply being a philosophical proponent. About a year ago I bought an AR-15 that is still in the box just because fuck you Bloomberg, et al.

I also took to the working with your hands aspect of cleaning guns, doing kindergarten-level “gunsmithing” like changing sights, and even fucking things up royally when I try to do anything beyond kindergarten level – I’m literally the LEAST handy or mechanically inclined guy on the planet, but at least I tried.

I like being a part of a community populated by the kind of people who are on P-F. Shitty mods excepted.

My aunt loves telling my kids about how when I was very little, she figured out that if she wanted me to do something she’d tell me I couldn’t do it. If she wanted me to take a nap she’d say “Kanye, you are not allowed to take a nap.” If she wanted me to eat my broccoli she’d say “Kanye, only the grownups can eat broccoli.” So there’s probably also a tablespoon of oppositional defiance disorder involved, as illustrated by the f*ck you AR-15. I sometimes wonder whether, if we were told we HAD to carry guns, I’d be inclined to refuse.