Got my new carry permit...

[Zen Traveler]

EDIT: Here is my proof for seatbelts saving lives: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811383.pdf

Funny ..the first thing that came up when i googled "seatbelt death"

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Government-Survey-Reveals--by-Martin-Hill-080608-450.html

Every link on that page gives me a 404 error.

[dtel]

Anything can be misused, I think we should ban cars, they are misused more than anything else and cause harm. No I didn't look it up just a guess ?

[Thaddeus Smith]

[Zen Traveler]

Anything can be misused, I think we should ban cars, they are misused more than anything else and cause harm. No I didn't look it up just a guess ?

Do you really think we should ban cars?

[Thaddeus Smith]

Anything can be misused, I think we should ban cars, they are misused more than anything else and cause harm. No I didn't look it up just a guess ?

Do you really think we should ban cars?

is there a point to any of your statements, or are you just being combative for the sake of being combative?

[Zen Traveler]

is there a point to any of your statements, or are you just being combative for the sake of being combative?

I thought I was joining in on the discussion....I don't think the concealed carry laws have brought down gun crimes as was implied and that seatbelts do save lives, as my link shows. {EDIT: your link was an opinion piece whose links weren't any good} Fwiw, I thought dtel brought up a non-sequitur in this discussion as well, because I don't think he wants to "ban cars." [:S]

[dtel]

Do you really think we should ban cars?

No, or responsible people carrying guns with the proper permit, what is the stats on people with permits causing harm to themselves or others ? I would think pretty low ?

Accident's will happen with guns cars or almost anything. I would much much rather drive next to 4 gun carriers in a car than one person driving with a cell phone. [:|]

I don't know, I have had guns since before I was a teen and have been around them all my life and do not know anyone who has had an accident.........yet. So to me it's not a big deal , story may have been different if there had been an accident but there called accidents for a reason.

[Zen Traveler]

Do you really think we should ban cars?

...I don't know, I have had guns since before I was a teen and have been around them all my life and do not know anyone who has had an accident.........

Audio Flynn used that same anecdote in a discussion with me on here and the next week our Vice President shot his friend in the face. Fwiw, I have known several people that have been killed or injured with guns and they all had permits.

[CECAA850]

Well then we should just outlaw guns all together like Mexico and Columbia. Shootings should drop substantially.

[Zen Traveler]

Well then we should just outlaw guns all together like Mexico and Columbia. Shootings should drop substantially.

I think that would be throwing the baby out with the bath water.

[Beechnut]

Most states have really come around to CHL permits. It's good for the country. And amazingly, it's not been the wild west with all these extra guns on the street like the fear mongerers would have us believe. Who'd have thunk it....

Do you have a link for this statistic?

Here's the current landscape of Shall-issue states in America. Twas not so in the 90's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_carry_in_the_United_States

[Zen Traveler]

Here's the current landscape of Shall-issue states in America. Twas no so in the 90's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_carry_in_the_United_States

Yeah, but it didn't give any statiistics about being "good for the country. And amazingly, it's not been the wild west with all these extra guns on the street like the fear mongerers would have us believe."

[Beechnut]

More linkage: Armed citizens deture crime and save lives. Armed criminals don't obey laws...hence criminal. Police aren't going to teleport to you when you become a victim of a violent crime. Take the legal measure you deam appropriate to keep you and your loved ones safe.

C. Criminals avoid armed citizens

* Kennesaw, GA. In 1982, this suburb of Atlanta passed a law requiring heads of households to keep at least one firearm in the house. The residential burglary rate subsequently dropped 89% in Kennesaw, compared to the modest 10.4% drop in Georgia as a whole.16

* Ten years later (1991), the residential burglary rate in Kennesaw was still 72% lower than it had been in 1981, before the law was passed.17

* Nationwide. Statistical comparisons with other countries show that burglars in the United States are far less apt to enter an occupied home than their foreign counterparts who live in countries where fewer civilians own firearms. Consider the following rates showing how often a homeowner is present when a burglar strikes:

* Homeowner occupancy rate in the gun control countries of Great Britain, Canada and Netherlands: 45% (average of the three countries); and,

* Homeowner occupancy rate in the United States: 12.7%.18

Rapes averted when women carry or use firearms for protection

* Orlando, FL. In 1966-67, the media highly publicized a safety course which taught Orlando women how to use guns. The result: Orlando's rape rate dropped 88% in 1967, whereas the rape rate remained constant in the rest of Florida and the nation.19

* Nationwide. In 1979, the Carter Justice Department found that of more than 32,000 attempted rapes, 32% were actually committed. But when a woman was armed with a gun or knife, only 3% of the attempted rapes were actually successful.20

Justice Department study:

* 3/5 of felons polled agreed that "a criminal is not going to mess around with a victim he knows is armed with a gun."21

* 74% of felons polled agreed that "one reason burglars avoid houses when people are at home is that they fear being shot during the crime."22

* 57% of felons polled agreed that "criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police."23

---

Link to source and more info

[Beechnut]

Linkage

Good for the country. XOXOXO

* Guns used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year -- or about 6,850 times a day.1 This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.2

* Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker.3

* As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves against sexual abuse.4

* Even anti-gun Clinton researchers concede that guns are used 1.5 million times annually for self-defense. According to the Clinton Justice Department, there are as many as 1.5 million cases of self-defense every year. The National Institute of Justice published this figure in 1997 as part of "Guns in America" -- a study which was authored by noted anti-gun criminologists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig.5

* Armed citizens kill more crooks than do the police. Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1,527 to 606).6 And readers of Newsweek learned that "only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The 'error rate' for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high."7

* Handguns are the weapon of choice for self-defense. Citizens use handguns to protect themselves over 1.9 million times a year.8 Many of these self-defense handguns could be labeled as "Saturday Night Specials."

B. Concealed carry laws help reduce crime

* Nationwide: one-half million self-defense uses. Every year, as many as one-half million citizens defend themselves with a firearm away from home.9

* Concealed carry laws are dropping crime rates across the country. A comprehensive national study determined in 1996 that violent crime fell after states made it legal to carry concealed firearms. The results of the study showed:

* States which passed concealed carry laws reduced their murder rate by 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7% and robbery by 3%;10 and

* If those states not having concealed carry laws had adopted such laws in 1992, then approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and over 11,000 robberies would have been avoided yearly.11

* Vermont: one of the safest five states in the country. In Vermont, citizens can carry a firearm without getting permission... without paying a fee... or without going through any kind of government-imposed waiting period. And yet for ten years in a row, Vermont has remained one of the top-five, safest states in the union -- having three times received the "Safest State Award."12

* Florida: concealed carry helps slash the murder rates in the state. In the fifteen years following the passage of Florida's concealed carry law in 1987, over 800,000 permits to carry firearms were issued to people in the state.13 FBI reports show that the homicide rate in Florida, which in 1987 was much higher than the national average, fell 52% during that 15-year period -- thus putting the Florida rate below the national average. 14

* Do firearms carry laws result in chaos? No. Consider the case of Florida. A citizen in the Sunshine State is far more likely to be attacked by an alligator than to be assaulted by a concealed carry holder.

1. During the first fifteen years that the Florida law was in effect, alligator attacks outpaced the number of crimes committed by carry holders by a 229 to 155 margin.

2. And even the 155 "crimes" committed by concealed carry permit holders are somewhat misleading as most of these infractions resulted from Floridians who accidentally carried their firearms into restricted areas, such as an airport.15

[Zen Traveler]

Beechnut. That is a hard to read political paper which has footnotes that are all over the place. {edit}

[Thaddeus Smith]

is there a point to any of your statements, or are you just being combative for the sake of being combative?

I thought I was joining in on the discussion....I don't think the concealed carry laws have brought down gun crimes as was implied and that seatbelts do save lives, as my link shows. {EDIT: your link was an opinion piece whose links weren't any good} Fwiw, I thought dtel brought up a non-sequitur in this discussion as well, because I don't think he wants to "ban cars."

the manner in which you joined the conversation made it seem like you wanted to do nothing but promote combative anti-gun rhetoric. my apologies if that wasn't the case - it's easy to misread itentions on the internet and i'll be the first to admit failure on that front any time it's appropriate.

[dtel]

Audio Flynn used that same anecdote in a discussion with me on here and the next week our Vice President shot his friend in the face. Fwiw, I have known several people that have been killed or injured with guns and they all had permits.

That's true but you are talking about politicians, they can't be trusted with a dull stick, just look at the shape this country is in. It might be different if it were there money, they all have accumulated alot of it personally but cant manage everyone else's.

Well it just goes to show, just because you can get a drivers licenses or a gun permit does not necessarily mean your responsible enough to recognize how much respect each deserves.

[oldtimer]

That's true but you are talking about politicians, they can't be trusted with a dull stick, just look at the shape this country is in. It might be different if it were there money, they all have accumulated alot of it personally but cant manage everyone else's.

Once you are in politics it's easy to accumulate a lot of money. Strangely enough, this happens by not managing other's wisely. Unless of course it's for a select few.

[Boxx]

That's true but you are talking about politicians, they can't be trusted with a dull stick, just look at the shape this country is in. It might be different if it were there money, they all have accumulated alot of it personally but cant manage everyone else's.

Once you are in politics it's easy to accumulate a lot of money. Strangely enough, this happens by not managing other's wisely. Unless of course it's for a select few.

The very nature of a politician, once elected to office, is to restart the money making machine for the next election. It is a vicious cycle...

[Beechnut]

Mismanagement of funds, business or government, comes down to lack of pride in ownership. You are less frugal with things when they aren't yours and it hasn't been your blood sweat and tears that earned it.