To Carry or NOT To Carry

Posted Saturday, October 1, 2011, at 10:45 AM
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  • *

    My Dad taught me as a kid if you point a gun at another person, be prepared to use on them. I believe it was good advice.

    I use to hate the other deer hunters I ran across when I was a kid. Some would try to steal your deer if you got one. I came across more than one sitting up against a tree pasted out from their booze. The big one was talking to other hunters after the hunt and they would say didn't get anything but got a few bush shots, just knowing they had no idea of their target.

    -- Posted by Eagle_eye on Sat, Oct 1, 2011, at 12:57 PM
  • My comments apply to back country hikers, hunters and personal protection. In my younger days, and prior to CCW permit laws, I carried a handgun. In the woods you are back in time with the same circumstances the mountain men faced. Should the occasion arise, with a weapon, one must still make the decision to stand and fight or to run. Without a weapon, the only option is to run, or to use your personal charm on your advesary.

    I have never needed a back-up weapon weapon in the woods, but I have also carried a spare tire in vehicles that have never been used. Hopefully I will never need to make the decision to fight or run.

    Yes, I do have a CCW permit at age 76.

    -- Posted by oldcoot on Sat, Oct 1, 2011, at 1:08 PM
  • Dang....a cougar after us? At our age? I should be flattered.............Mouse

    -- Posted by NonnyMouse on Sat, Oct 1, 2011, at 3:59 PM
  • hahahaha Good one NonnyMouse :)

    -- Posted by MsMarylin on Sat, Oct 1, 2011, at 4:02 PM
  • I am filled with shame.........

    -- Posted by NonnyMouse on Sat, Oct 1, 2011, at 6:20 PM
  • *

    Reminds me a time as a teenager when the guy shot a cow for a turkey in Pa. Now that one big difference between the 2. Thats the kind of things I had to deal with as a teenager, guess that why my Dad cautioned me so well what to look out for then, and it still goes on today.

    -- Posted by Eagle_eye on Sat, Oct 1, 2011, at 8:24 PM
  • 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.

    * 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) 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.

    * Handguns are the weapon of choice for self-defense. Citizens use handguns to protect themselves over 1.9 million times a year. 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

    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

    * Nationwide.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.

    * 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.

    -- Posted by skeeter on Sun, Oct 2, 2011, at 8:11 AM
  • *

    I just have to laugh Mike, read this and see why.

    A guy calls 911 and tell dispatch someone was stealing the tools out of his tool shed.

    Dispatch says we don't have anyone to see out, could be 30 minutes before we can get someone out there.

    The guy graps his gun and goes out and corners the thief's and has them and gun point.

    Using his portable phone he calls 911 again and tells dispatch I don't need the cops now just see the undertaker, I shot the thief's so no need for cops.

    Within 2 minutes half of the town cops are there, and low and behold nobody was shot. The cops asked why he called in he had shot the thief's

    The old guy said I couldn't get your help so I took care of it. An BTW I was told you all were to busy to come out and stop these thief's, now why are so many of you here.

    No comment from the cops

    I may have reworded this from the way I got it but you get idea. If you have to protect yourself and property,. just amazing how fast they can get there if a gun is involved.

    -- Posted by Eagle_eye on Sun, Oct 2, 2011, at 1:52 PM
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