Apparently Utah law would make it illegal for them to prevent people from bringing concealed firearms, which is basically a law to maximise casualties from campus shootings.
I legitimately cannot decide what scares me more, the thought of a mass shooting, or the thought of a bunch of "heroes" with a concealed carry cross-firing.
Mark my words, one day a mass shooting will occur, someone will pull out their concealed carry, and a second concealed carry person will come around the corner and shoot the first (or the police will).
Once there is panic and an unknown threat, adding more guns into the formula (particular without a uniform to go along with it) will only cause additional confusion.
You know, there's more than a bit of history with this, and it's never come to pass.
For example, of all the recent mass shooting events, only one didn't happen in an ironically official "No Gun Zone", the Arizona congresswoman shooting. Turns out a concealed carrier showed up just as the shooter was getting wrestled to the ground. Surprise, surprise, he didn't shoot.
So you're just libeling people like me. Who you clearly know nothing about.
I'd say the lack of basic gun safety skill among concealed weapons holders is sufficient evidence to be concerned. This is just in the last 3-4 months with a quick google search.
If I can't trust people with guns to reliably follow basic safety procedures [e.g. Both of these sound like someone had the safety off] with a weapon that can cause serious injuries why would I trust their fire discipline?
Out of 8 million licensees, plus anyone who wants to with a clean record in Vermont, Alaska, Whyoming, and Arizona, there's going to be people who screw up. Police do at a much higher rate, in my observation over the years (there are, after all, a lot less of them).
Years, as in the wave of "shall issue" concealed carry regimes started with Florida in 1987, and now includes 43 states and most of the population. Every time a state goes shall issue the usual suspects scream "blood in the streets", yet it never comes to pass, as they mean it. Here you're stretching quite a bit to go form "normal" accidents to postulated future bad actions in a shooting event, because you can't find any of the latter. (You can't because there aren't any, at least that I've learned about since the early '70s and my readings of prior modern history.)
There are going to have to be a lot more, and much more worse screwups, before the toll is a fraction of the massacres in NewSpeak "Gun Free" zones.
> Out of 8 million licensees, plus anyone who wants to with a clean record in Vermont, Alaska, Whyoming, and Arizona, there's going to be people who screw up. Police do at a much higher rate, in my observation over the years (there are, after all, a lot less of them).
Police also frequently have long shifts where they are exhausted and are carrying a firearm. Its not surprising they'd screw up more frequently than a population with relatively ideal operating conditions.
> Years, as in the wave of "shall issue" concealed carry regimes started with Florida in 1987, and now includes 43 states and most of the population. Every time a state goes shall issue the usual suspects scream "blood in the streets", yet it never comes to pass, as they mean it. Here you're stretching quite a bit to go form "normal" accidents to postulated future bad actions in a shooting event, because you can't find any of the latter. (You can't because there aren't any, at least that I've learned about since the early '70s and my readings of prior modern history.)
I didn't scream blood in the streets. I pointed out that questioning the competence of people who carry weapons as they've been shown to be injure themselves through carelessness...is very reasonable.
You are attacking other people and somehow relating that to what I said.
You've pointed out there was 1 event at which someone with a CCW permit and a weapon existed in recent history. Attempting to draw conclusions from such a small number of events is idiocy. But you go ahead.
> There are going to have to be a lot more, and much more worse screwups, before the toll is a fraction of the massacres in NewSpeak "Gun Free" zones.
Many very popular types of guns do not have "safeties" in the sense that you are likely thinking. They do not have a switch that can be toggled between "safe" and "fire". Glocks are one prominent example (they lack some sort of safety switch, although they have other sorts of safety features.)
Truly mechanically induced accidents are nevertheless exceptionally rare. The guns only fire when the trigger is pulled, which is why gun owners stress the importance of trigger discipline.
Another note on the glock, you have to pull the trigger to pull it apart.
All the more reason you follow the 4 rules of gun safety to a T with that brand. Especially the part about ensuring its not pointed anywhere it shouldn't be and unloaded check about a million times. (note, I own no firearms but have enough friends that do I gain a ton of knowledge on them.)
One exception to firearms going off on their own might be a misfire after trigger pull. That means you have a possibly live round in the chamber that could go off at any time. Need to be really careful on that one.
And you can't really follow Rules 2 & 4 when you holster it, unless you remove your holster first, which is often not a good option (like after the shooting appears to be over, but before others like the police arrive).
I will never willingly carry a striker fired weapon: no external hammer, so if something, like a windbreaker tie or finger catches on the trigger, you can't DTRT with your thumb on the nonexistent hammer to stop it from firing.
Flip side is what one of my instructors called manual safeties: "death levers". If you forget to flick it to safe....
Another side is that manual safeties make guns somewhat "proprietary" as Massad Ayoob puts it. Some police officers have avoided bad outcomes when their weapons were grabbed, as the criminal struggled to make it fire they could take effective action. Not so much of an issue for those who carry concealed.
That is why you wouldn't carry such a weapon as a CCW and hope for the best. You'd pick one with a safety if your goal was safety.
"Exceptionally rare" events that send you to the hospital should be minimized if you are acting rationally. Choosing an "unpopular" gun with a safety vs. a "popular" gun with a safety...well, that isn't giving up the gun now is it?
That is why I have an issue with gun enthusiasts. They don't think and they literally get people killed/injured because of it. Then go "well its rare..."
So fucking what. Cars have a ton of safety features to reduce fatalities too even tho such fatalities are "rare".
If gun owners continue to show poor judgement when they have time to think about it rationally, why should I think they'll do any better under pressure?
That makes little sense. Your counterpoint is that when a private citizen came around the corner carrying a gun, whilst civilians, cops and security were tackling the shooter to the ground, he didn't shoot, that means that it's impossible that two people carrying could confuse one another for the actual shooter at an MCI?
At least in my state, they beat it into you in concealed carry class that you must attempt to leave the situation, not doing so and opening fire puts you in hot water. Drawing your weapon should only happen when A. you can't escape (gunman blocking the exit and there is no alternate route), or B. You can't escape and you have been or are going to be directly harmed.
In the end, I'm not worried about concealed carry people, it's the people who don't care to be registered that are the issue. And as it's been said before, if someone is bent on causing an incident, a sign that says "gun-free zone" isn't going to stop them, it'll just make for a target rich environment.
Indeed, the nation's worst mass murders by far used arson. Worst school massacre explosives.
I seriously studied biology and chemistry, up to part way through MIT. If I wanted to kill a very large number of people ... I wouldn't even use anything I learned in those classes and labs, but stuff I in part picked up from the EEs I hung out with.
This is what happens when you extinguish a region's gun culture, as NY/NYC has done starting in 1911. You have
"leaders" who both hate and don't understand guns and their use, outfit their men with poor tools (the infamous New York Trigger), and and those men's only experience with guns is very very limited training.
Turns out citizens legally carrying concealed have a much better record. Given how anti-gun the MSM is, do you doubt for a second that if citizens had comitted such an atrocity it wouldn't be nationwide, probably world wide screaming headlines?
Your concern is perhaps legitimate, but not after I point out the above.
I'm sorry, but that's total nonsense. A much better record of what? Citizens legally carrying concealed weapons are rarely called upon to fire weapons in stressful situations with dozens of bystanders, so they only have a "better record" of doing so by virtue of having no record at all.
"Gun culture" has absolutely nothing to do with trained police officers. New NYPD recruits go through 13 days of firearm training, and submit to semi-annual requalifications[1].
People with carry permits are never faced with the kind of stressful situation that an active shooter would provoke. It's utter lunacy to think that they would be able to stay calm and diffuse the situation.
Look, NYC is infamous about cops handling their weapons poorly. I thought everyone who pays attention to current events knew this, but I guess I was wrong.
As for your claim that we never face these stressful situations, that's flatly false. Guns are used ~ 2 million times a year to stop crimes (probably more now, those figures are some years old), and there are a number of active shooters who've been stopped by citizen concealed carriers.
But you of course wouldn't know of them because the national MSM for some inexplicable reason doesn't report these incidents. If your Google Fu is up to snuff you can find them. Try including "mall" and "church" for starters
New NYPD recruits go through 13 days of firearm training...
Is that impressive? The cops in flyover country come to the job with quite a bit more experience than that. 10-15 years of hunting, target shooting, safety training in school at multiple grade levels, and the supervision of experienced adults probably doesn't completely transfer to open carry as a peace officer. However, this "13 days" figure will make me a little nervous the next time I'm around a young cop in NYC.
Could you detail what you mean by "poor tools" a bit more?
Everything I can find on the "New York Trigger" states that it was specially requested by law enforcement and designed by Glock so the trigger weight would more closely resemble that of the revolvers they were then transitioning away from. Were they more prone to failure or..?
OK, I haven't pulled the trigger on a Glock with a New York trigger. But the travel of the two are very different. A double action trigger moves a long distance, as it steadily pulls back the hammer (they're found in semi-autos, BTW, and I recommend them to people for whom a single action M1911 isn't right).
A Glock trigger inherently has a lot less travel, all it's doing is providing some travel and therefore physical feedback before it releases the already cocked striker inside the gun (cocked by the slide).
So I don't personally know, but what I know from first principles per the that they're different, and the above matches with the reports I've read from people who have used them that say it's ... suboptimal. NYC street police marksmanship certainly doesn't contradict this.
And here's a critical detail about "was specially requested by law enforcement": the whole exercise was not to make it feel like a revolver, but to decrease negligent discharges. Which almost every other law enforcement organization in the nation solved (as much as it can be solved :-) with training---see Rule 3 (Keep your finger out of the trigger...). Marksmanship was irrelevant.
Another example of "poor tools" was their "leaders" insistence on using Full Metal Jacket (FMJ) bullets instead of eeeeeevil Hollow Points. Eventually the resulting needless injuries and deaths forced them to get with the program. I can't recall a single other major law enforcement unit with this policy, at least not for long.
The 9 mm Europellet sucks, if you care about stopping people vs. killing them; much much MUCH more so with FMJ ammo. However I can understand law enforcement units going with it instead of .45 ACP before .40 S&W appeared on the scene, which I'm sure was some time after NYC adopted the Glock. Then again they've had many chances to upgrade caliber as they cycled through new batches of weapons.
And, BTW, I think Glocks suck, but obviously lots of people disagree with me. Going back to training, the manual of arms of a Glock is point it and press the trigger. No manual safety for a criminal to have to engage before he can shoot you after grabbing your gun, no death lever to forget to engage before you can shoot. That also bears on training.
Glock the company is pretty sleazy (hey, look at the brand new lawsuit, and there's been lots of other drama), not that this was necessarily recognized when they were first on the market. To my knowledge they've never had an official "recall"; let me assure you they're not that good, not with all the models and generations of models they've produced.
Firing when out of battery, i.e. before the slide has locked home and the brass is sufficiently supported (which is iffy to begin with, especially with their .40 S&W models at least as of some time ago), is another HUGE no no in my book. And pretty much everyone else who's not the Glock equivalent of an Apple fanboi.
As usual, take this with a grain of salt. The handguns I own and carry concealed were designed by John Moses Browning (PBUH), and adopted as standard issue by the US Army in 1911 (sic; the US military is still using a machine gun he designed 7 years later). With of course improvements, the trigger pulls are ~ 3.5 pounds. I carry one every time I walk out the door. I've never had a negligent discharge because I keep my finger off the #(*&$% trigger until I'm on target, and of course keep the safety on. Which from personal examination in detailed field stripping plus a century of experience shows it takes the super-magnet of an MRI machine to defeat.
But I'd shot well over those 10,000 times you're supposed to need to become an expert before buying them, and I don't recommend the model to novices.
> "Firing when out of battery, i.e. before the slide has locked home and the brass is sufficiently supported (which is iffy to begin with, especially with their .40 S&W models at least some time ago), is another HUGE no no in my book."
Is this done intentionally by Glock, or is this a failure mode for glocks? I was reading about open bolt firearms and different blowback mechanisms the other day, and learned about Advanced Primer Ignition which sounds like you are describing. It seems like it would be primarily useful for fully automatic sub-machine guns though; it seems too nuanced and prone to error for a gun is marketed with reliability claims.
Unintentionally. I'm pretty sure there's not enough mass in a normal handgun slide to slam the round home fast enough for that to work, and like pretty much all handguns of this class, Glock actions lock up before firing. I've certainly never heard of it being used for rounds with the pressure of 9 mm Parabellum. It would also be hard on the gun, and again there's less of a mass budget. And of course the Glock's frame is made out of durable plastic (which is not one of it's problems, although might cause problems upon occasion).
This is my understanding from memory: one reason .40 S&W is so popular is that it's a 10 mm diameter round, so it's easy to "bore out" a 9 mm design and in theory make it work (not an option with 11.5 mm .45 ACP). As I've been told, and this is common in handgun designs, the chamber does not entirely support the brass.
You can get away with this because the brass at the base is thick (at a point it has to be because the curve up into the base can't be supported) and this sort of gun design is generally allowed. Compare to the .38 Super, which is 1,500 PSI higher than 9 mm or .40 S&W, and about 50% more than .45 ACP. M1911's chambered for it have "fully supported chambers", the original John Moses Browning (PBUH) .45 ACP chamber isn't fully supported. Also do a search on glock fully supported barrel or chamber, there are after market ones.
However I gather that Glock cuts, or in the past cut the margin a bit fine for their .40 S&W handguns, which is not a good posture to start from for an out of battery discharge.
And then somehow, without warning or requiring lousy maintenance (or of course reloads, which cause a lot of "kabooms" that are no fault of the gun), some .40 S&Ws blew up in user's hands due to out of battery discharges. Which Glock fixed on the QT. Search Google for more details, I found out about this pretty randomly in the first place. It's consistent with many other reports of Glocks having problems and how the company dealt with them, including the NYC police as I recall.
And of course take this with a big grain of salt, I'm an anti-Glock type, due to the accidental discharge safety problems I identify above (no safety, no external hammer).
I would put a very large amount of money on any randomly chosen civilian CCW holder outshooting any randomly chosen NYPD cop.
This is partially the fault of the cop, CCW holders tend to spend more time at the range than cops, but to a certain degree it isn't: The NYPD has foolishly required all of their (normally single-action) guns have a 12lb trigger pull on all trigger pulls (http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2012/08/foghorn/nypds-choic...).
Then it should be easy to refute, right? Here's the scenario:
People are screaming, someone is shooting, you don't know who. You see bodies on the ground, they're bleeding. Then you see someone come around the corner holding a handgun out, they are dressed like a student, you draw your concealed carry and out of fear for your own life you shoot that person. Turns out both you and them are concealed carry. Opps.
Explain why that scenario is unlikely/won't happen/can't happen. If it is "fear mongering" that should be trivial for you.
It's fear mongering because it hasn't happened and is incredibly unlikely to happen. At least untog up there provided some sort of actual reporting of similar events, even though it's innocent bystanders getting caught up in the shrapnel from the heros trying to protect themselves from getting shot. That's not this hollywood blockbuster scenario you two have conjured up.
> It's fear mongering because it hasn't happened and is incredibly unlikely to happen.
Because, why? Again I see no refutement. Just empty words.
Two concealed carry owners shoot each other[0]. Concealed carry almost shoots a police officer[1]. Concealed carry shoots the VICTIM in a robbery[2] during a cross-fire with the robbers.
Again, none of these were actually two conceal carry shooters accidentally shooting eachother because one thought the other was the criminal. How would you like me to refute that? Shall I find an article titled "Two heros accidentally didn't shoot themselves thinking the other was the criminal." Because that's what I would need to find in order to "refute" your rediculous premise.
> Because that's what I would need to find in order to "refute" your rediculous premise.
That's what I want you to refuse, why my premise is "ridiculous." My examples clearly indicate that concealed carriers are prone to these kind of mistakes. I mean for crying out loud a concealed carrier shot the VICTIM in a robbery!
The OP said "Mark my words, one day a mass shooting will occur, someone will pull out their concealed carry, and a second concealed carry person will come around the corner and shoot the first (or the police will)."
That's fear mongering. It's an event that hasn't occurred, but is meant to drive fear into the witless.
All you've proven is that innocent people get caught in the crossfire on occasions. Who's to say the teller wouldn't have been shot anyway? And quite frankly, the only person responsible for that death is the armed robber. Very likely he would be charged with murder even though he didn't shoot the victim. The victim would be alive today if an armed robbery had not taken place. Here's some fear mongering for you, that shooter could himself have been shot if the robber didn't want any witnesses left behind. You don't think that happens?
> And quite frankly, the only person responsible for that death is the armed robber.
You don't think the person that actually shot the teller is the least bit responsible? Most armed robberies result in no deaths. This one resulted in one, and likely resulted in that one BECAUSE some idiot with a hero complex started shooting.
It is very likely had that person not been there the robbers would have got away with the money but everyone would be alive to talk about it.
Concealed carriers are dangerous. They're almost as dangerous as the "bad things" they seek to stop. More guns are more guns. Once a shot is ringing through the air it doesn't care who the good guys or bad guys are, so I'd prefer to be in a situation with less shots in the air regardless of motivations.
Concealed carriers are well intentioned fools. They turn a dangerous situation even more dangerous. Like throwing a match into a gas leak.
You know, if I were to take out my gun in such a scenario, that would be a risk I would be willing to take.
If you get instruction from police officers, as I did for my Missouri concealed carry license, they'll chill you with stories about they, or someone they know, almost shot a fellow officer. It's something everyone is concerned about, shooting a good guy.
In these sorts of scenarios, it's thought to be relatively easy to figure out who's a good guy and who's a bad guy. Which armed person is everyone running away from, or if downed, facing away from. In your scenerio, where it sounds like the shooter has been downed, is anyone still shooting? Etc.
I prefer the model where nobody has guns, including the police. Maybe specialist armed units, but your average street cop shouldn't have a firearm: they aren't well trained enough.
It is a proven model. It works. Plus even if you argue "people can just use knives instead," it still stops mass shootings.
Great. Then the relatively physically weak, the infirm, the elderly, the women, will be at the mercy of the strong.
A short look at mass shootings in Western Europe in the lat few decades, which are both more numerous and more deadly, suggests that intermediate restrictions won't do any good at best. History prior to that tells what government can easily do to disarmed untermensch.
I'll take an occasional mass shooting over everyone being at the constant mercy of thugs.
For that matter, sort of echoing the others who have commented prior to my starting this comment, such an attempt in the US would instantly spark a nasty civil war killing orders of magnitude more people.
> Then the relatively physically weak, the infirm, the elderly, the women, will be at the mercy of the strong.
Fortunately guns aren't the only weapons. Guns are more contentious than most because it gives a single individual the power to kill many others.
> A short look at mass shootings in Western Europe, which are both more numerous and more deadly, suggests that intermediate restrictions at best won't do any good.
More numerous and more deadly than, what? The UK hasn't had a mass shooting in several years. It certainly wasn't more deadly than the handful the US has had between then and now.
> For that matter, echoing the others who have commented prior to my starting this comment, such an attempt would instantly spark a nasty civil war killing orders of magnitude more people.
This just further proves that the very people who have guns are dangerous individuals who cannot be trusted with guns.
Guns are the only effective weapons that "the infirm, the elderly, the women" can use.
The U.K. != Western Europe, and I include the massacres prior to "several years" ago; you have to since these incidents are fortunately rare. Wikipedia has done a very good job of chronicling them, although you have to look at half a dozen entries because they're broken down by things like where it happened.
"This just further proves that the very people who have guns are dangerous individuals who cannot be trusted with guns."
Well, you're welcome to try to act on your prejudices (unConstitutional ones, I might add). Those of us who've read our 20th Century history know what such actions mean, and the only practical response.
It's not magic: Given a large, random sample of self-identified 'men' and 'women', pitting them against each other in one-to-one unarmed combat, the men will win an overwhelming majority of the time.
I enjoy working with women who are trained in self-defense - I have a female friend who has a devastatingly strong and quick round kick to the jaw. However, as with most people, most women aren't.
This is a great organization mobilizing around this topic (although their website is sorta crap): http://www.2asisters.org/
There's "misogyny", and then there's gross ignorance of human physiology. Unless you deny that compared to men, women have substantially less muscle mass and therefore in combat are severely disadvantaged, "relatively" less "strong", when denied a weapon that doesn't depend on that?
Which all things being equal, if you care about effectiveness, is limited to a firearm.
It's a nice idea, but absolutely impossible to implement in the US for political and practical reasons. We may as well discuss my plan to tear up all railways and replace them with canals deep enough for container ships. (Think about it; you could kayak to anywhere in the country!)
Is there evidence to support this claim? Many of the worst mass shootings have happened in regulatory environments of the opposite nature: where firearms are prohibited altogether. I suspect that complete prohibition is the formula for maximum casualties for a single, isolated event with a small number of sufficiently armed shooters.
