*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by SDGundamX.

"Had this event been real, Joey would have been killed in the first five seconds." (emphasize grave, confindent tone)

Uhhh, not necessarily you leading, divisive talking head?!!
Joey may have done a variety of other things besides FUCKING DYING!?

You wonder why I think the news is toxic to it's core??? Semantics be-damned and fuck me for going to college(Communications, R/TV)!!

I'm pretty sure it's this dead video. http://videosift.com/video/If-only-I-had-a-gun

It certainly deserves to be revived and promoted now.

Oh and the original submission on You Tube had the title,
"Proof that Concealed Carry permit holders live in a dream world,"
Looks to me like a cunt using devisive, leading, sophomoric rhetoric...

...not unlike your UN-creative nod to their title there dystopianfurtdy, and I am not calling you a cunt....I simply understand the motivational sentiments.
behind your edit

Youtube Thumbs Responses:
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There is still hope for the children weened on the cathode ray nipple...."The only wet nurse that create a cripple."- Michael Franti

This again...

Purposely give them inadequate training. Purposely give them a long shirt to cover the firearm (which if you do concealed carry you probably won't ever do because it massively interferes with retrieving your firearm). Then put them in a situation where everyone is in on the joke but them, with a gun man who's second target is always the test subject (rather than a random person in the room).

Of course they are bound to fail.

kinda falls into the "duh" category. It's virtually everyone's fantasy to go in guns blazing, stop the bad guys and get the girl.

Wake the fuck up because you're dreaming.

Newsflash: playing a lot of Call of Duty doesn't train you.for a crisis situation. the vast majority of us would be more likely to wet ourselves in a real situation.

The reality is that you're more likely to be killed or get more innocents killed.

We Americans are all action stars and super heroes lying in wait for our moment to shine. Don't tell us that unlocking all the XBOX achievements for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 3 won't prepare us for real life combat. Don't tell us that years of tactical study from great masters like Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn't pull us through when shit gets real. Don't tell us that our weekend paintball/lazer tag battles aren't indistinguishable from the front lines of Vietnam. The best way to stop one crazy American letting loose with his pistolas in a crowded square is to have all crazy Americans let loose with their pistolas in a crowded square.

We are exceptional, and God is on our side.

Given the choice of having a gun and not having a gun, I'll take the gun. If this video with dubious intent and setups represents some kind of "typical" or average concealed carrier, then the promoters and producers of this propaganda can suck me dry and call me Dusty.

I think I could just paste my comment on half of the discusions around here. I think I will.

Here in Portland Oregon, A kid with a AR-15 walked into Clackamas Mall on Dec 11 to kill as many people as he could. He shot 3 people and his gun jammed, while he was fixing his jam, a citizen with a conealed carry permt drew his weopon and confronted the shooter, The shooter fled down a stairwell and shot himself. The mall was a gun free zone (the guy with the CCW was breaking the rules) and filled with thousands of holiday shoppers. The rampage was ended because one person could defend himself from the cowardly nutjob. You will not see the real story in the mainstream media.

you do know what an anecdote is right?

the CCW was lucky. right place right time and they were lucky enough to not fuck up or shoot innocents.

what do you not get about this? RL is not a movie.

You do know what an assumption is right?

The CCW person was not lucky - he was unlucky he was near a crazy guy with a firearm intent on killing people. What he was was well prepared, and all the other people were lucky that a CCW person was near them and simultaneously unlucky they were near a bat shit crazy guy.

According to the anecdotal story the CCW person did not fire a shot. If they did fire a shot then it isn't luck if they didn't fuck up it is training. If they accidentally hit a bystander then it would be no different than a police officer accidentally hitting a bystander and it would still be better than a slaughter.

I've done a lot of handgun shooting (including full police officer firearms training) and looking at the hundreds of other regular shooters I've been with, almost all of them are better than a regular police officer at shooting (and some of them are police officers).

What do movies have to do with real life encounters? Unlike the movies, most CCW people realise the cops will not turn up in time like in the movies and they've taken it upon themselves to accept reality and defend themselves.

A SWAT team going in full speed is far from a 20 year old mental case. But we aren't changing anybodies minds here.

I do agree with with you that RL is not a movie. I just got the feeling from your original comment that you felt that there is no point in being able to defend yourself because you will probaly just fuck it up. You did say "duh" to the idea that concealed carry is fantasy that will never pan out.
You also go on to say that the CCW was "lucky " he didnt shoot any innocent people with his "blazing" guns, when actually he stated that he didnt fire because there were people hiding in the Charlottes store behind the shooter.
You can call this story just an anecdote if you wish. The part "I dont get" is why you would put more stock in this old, staged , slanted , piece of shitty fluff study, than a recent , pertinent bit of Real Life.

I think we all know what side Clint was on.

don't put words in my mouth. I never said that there is no point in being able to defend oneself. The strawman argument is that the goal is to take all weapons away. no rational person is making that argument.

the reality is that guns are romanticized in America. The reality is that this clouds our judgement.

your second statement is also putting words in my mouth. I never said the CCW went in with "blazing" guns. They were lucky that's all.They were lucky they were there, they were lucky the shooter ran, they were lucky the shooter's gun jammed. They were lucky the shooter didn't have another gun. These things are not hard to grasp.

Can a CCW make a difference...of course it *CAN* It doesn't mean you rely on it. It doesn't mean you shove more guns into peoples hands and just hope it all works out for the best.

the article could be biased/slanted whatever but it has plenty of grains of truth. The odds are in your favor if you run. The odds are in your favor if you hide. It takes a hell of a lot of persistent training to obtain that muscle memory. It takes training to fight the natural urge to freeze up or to panic.

Is it an obtainable goal? sure! What people are actually advocating is that there be increased requirements for someone to obtain and keep a weapon. Thus reducing the odds that some deranged individual is going to get one.

There is no magic way of stopping this stuff from ever happening, but the reality is that if you can reduce the number of guns in circulation, you reduce the odds of someone getting a gun and doing something harmful with it. If you increase the requirements of what it takes to obtain and keep a gain, you reduce the amount of untrained wannabe gunslingers out there and increase the odds that if someone does have a gun, they are trained to use it wisely.

Bottom line is that you have a right to bear arms, but with that right comes a responsibility. I hear a lot of people talking about rights, but precious few talking about responsibility. You might want to think about that.

We've found several easily scared people with little to no experience with firearms and gave them guns. Lets see how they do against an armed madman!

This is "hardly" (and I use that word generously) the scenario people like me are talking about. There will always be sheep and people who freeze up and make mistakes. But that doesn't mean we are all those people.

@VoodooV
I wasnt trying to put words in your mouth. I stated that "I got a feeling"....An overall vibe, from your comment , and then I described the gist that I got. And I dont think I was reading it wrong .
My second statement , that you say are not your words, is in quotation marks because you said
" kinda falls into the "duh" category. It's virtually everyone's fantasy to go in guns blazing" . My point was that not everyone that carrys a gun is in a fantasy land and thinks that they are John fuckin Wayne, which IS the idea that you are trying to sell.
I dont blame you for distancing yourself from your original comments.

There will be a CCW in the building, and chances are they wont be in the room where it starts. They can start an evacuation, gather their wits, and MAYBE try to stop the shooter. You have this gun lust fantasy that defies reality. No one wants to die, except maybe the shooter. And 5 gets me 10 you live in an urban area.

In the US, every year, firearms in the hands of citizens are used 2.5 million times in self-defense.

Fifty-four percent of the defensive gun uses involved somebody verbally referring to the gun. Forty-seven percent involved the gun being pointed at the criminal.
Twenty-two percent involved the gun being fired.
Fourteen percent involved the gun being fired at somebody, meaning it wasn't just a warning shot; the defender was trying to shoot the criminal.
And then in 8 percent they actually did wound or kill the offender.


Disarmed citizens are serfs. Three guesses which political party promoting government dependency doesn't want you to be able to defend yourself.

So you missed the part in the first minute where they said that one of the participants had over 100 hours of gun training (much more than most states require for a CCW).

Anyway even if what you said was true, are you seriously arguing that these are the kind of people who should be allowed carry weapons?

I have some beautiful land in the everglades to sell you.

yeah, you see? that's the problem with vibe-based arguing. You tend to miss the mark a lot. compared to actual evidence-based arguing. In fact, you seem to be confused and have mistaken me for someone else.

you seem to be arguing with someone who thinks that everyone thinks they're John Wayne. Unfortunately, I never said this.

I certainly hope you can find this mysterious individual with whom you are having a discussion. Maybe I can be included in this discussion so that I might be able to voice my actual opinion and actual discourse can occur,

You got no where with this discussion. Milquetoast.

Good point about evidence based arguing.

Looking at this tv news segment (which is not a study):

It has a non-random sample - they put out word that they were offering training - only those interested will reply and they are all from a similar age group (a university is a non-random place).

It has a statistically insignificant sample size of 6 - it needs about 100x that many participants to have confidence level of 99% with a confidence interval of 5.

It doesn't have a control group.

Basically it is almost meaningless.

Good thing the gunman in this knew exactly who to shoot at first.

If somebody walks into my class and starts shooting then I'd prefer he wasnt the only one with a gun. Unfortunately I sure as hell don't want to be carrying the rest of the time, and I don't want my classmates armed either.

Basically I can accept that there are situations where a rampage is cut short by a gun owner, and hell maybe they aren't reported as often as where the rampage continues...but then you have to also accept that the murders that don't happen at all because the perp couldn't get their hands on a firearm also don't get reported. Anecdotes only take you so far.

And ya, this "study" seems pretty bs.

I love this study. It really shows how important it is to carry, and to train. Sorry video, you fail.

It isn't when talking to rational and logical people, but when talking to the self-entitled, self-righteous, gun crazed part of the American population, rationale and logic get chucked out the window

Hypothetical:
Lets say a few people started carrying weapons at schools and wherever.
Some random kid comes in and starts shooting.
One of the kids with concealed weapons manage to stay calm, get cover, and unholster their gun. He tries to get in a shot, and in doing so, another innocent kid with a gun sees him and mistakes him for another gunman as well. This kid then shoots the other kid. Repeat until everybody with guns are dead.

Why does everybody seem to know that they immediately can assess the situation well enough to not kill other innocent people that are also trying to save the situation?

It is a fantasy. It might occasionally come true, due to luck, circumstances or whatever, but that doesn't mean that should be the go-to method.
Guns should be used for hunting. Fully automatic weapons have nothing to do with hunting, and should be banned. Permit should require checkups at a shooting range.

Run. Hide. Call 911. Don't carry guns!

Sheesh.. Can't believe we're having this discussion..

"Run, hide, call 911."
You forgot "concede everyones death in the vicinity of the shooter." And, "Wait 20 minutes for the first responders." Principals and deans having guns locked in the office is far less scary than what happened in CT.

@ Seltar - are you really that disengaged from or unaware of the common yet tragic events that occur that make your "Run, hide, call 911" statement completely inane? For a small sampling, go and have a look at the records of push-in or home invasion robberies for the greater Houston area over the past 4 years, especially on the west side. Nice new homes, expensive homes, deed restricted neighborhoods and prime targets for incredibly violent home invasion or driveway robberies. Where the fuck do you run and hide when the three dudes with guns, knives and bats decide to do target practice on you, your spouse or your kids? Am I supposed to use my own phone to call 911 or do I interrupt one of the mofo's that's busy punching my wife in the face to borrow his? If you are fortunate enough to live somewhere that crimes are few and the cops respond quickly, congratulations. If you don't, and believe that your response plan will keep you and yours free from harm, then congratulations on sticking to your moral standard, but for fuck sakes don't pretend for an instant that your run and hide idea is a solution or one that everyone should abide by. Wake up, take a look around the real world, even a little corner of it.

So you missed the part in the first sentence where I said "easily scared".

I can compare it to other situations. I've seen someone with 25+ hours of motorycle training and over 60,000 miles of riding on his bike and has read volumes and volumes of books on motorycle operation and safety. Yet every time there is the HINT of danger he freezes up and gets into an accident.

There are some things you just can't train for. Iron will is something that is either very hard to learn or you are born with.

Anyone who wants to get a concealed carry or carry should be able too as long as they pass the proper checks and receive training. Whether it will help them or not I don't know. But just because these people are them does not make them me.

Anyone who is "The Shooter" is going to be walking around cow-towing like he owns the place. Rightfully so because he owns a gun and he knows nobody else in that building does.

Anyone who is "trained" will not be standing up and just walking around or even moving around at all. They will be in cover somewhere waiting to see if he walks by the door or a window and shoot him. They will also be trying to escort people out of the building if at all possible to safety which would completely defeat the whole "If innocent gun wielder #1 sees innocent gun wielder #2" situation. If there is a madman in your class room shooting at people you will be running away from that person.

The problem is your "doubling down" on the hero segment where someone is going to hear gunshots and SPRING into action. Fuck that.

I say redo the experiment.

Scenario 1: Aggressor go into room shoot as many as he can, and one person in room has CCW. However make aggressor and CCW both have no knowledge of situation.

Scenario 2: 2 different rooms. Aggressor has to shoot both rooms but 2nd room has person with CCW.

See how those scenarios pan out.

Just like others were saying this report is just silly and set up for failure. And movies and videogames are a separate issue and have no use to be compared to these scenarios. Just like I watching or playing a game about snowboarding won't make me a better snowboarder.

(tho on a side note I did learn how to operate certain guns due to certain specific videogames (such as operating the safety, loading, unloading, etc).

I just found out that Kinder Surprise toys/eggs are banned in the US.

Ok so, you can't have dangerous chocolate containing potentially lethal toys, but assault weapons are just fine?

Seriously, America?

Well fucking done.... /golf clap

How do you know these people are "easily scared"? I'm not easily scared, but I have no idea how I'd handle a situation like that.

Wow, I see so many viewing fails here.

1) Yes, some of these people are gun novices. But these people got more training in gun-handling and marksmanship than is required by most states in the U.S. and they STILL failed to stop the shooter.

2) The whole point of the video is that it takes hundreds of hours of training under stress (like in this scenario) in order for people to overcome their natural instincts and avoid a) freezing up or b) accidentally shooting themselves or another innocent in the confusion.

3) How many gun carriers (barring ex-military or police) have had the kind of training mentioned in Point #2? Of those that have, how many continue to put in the training hours necessary to not lose the skill?

It's all great spouting hypotheticals about how a CCW would have saved the day at Sandy Hook, but this video shows that's a patently false statement. What might have resulted in less casualties would have been a CCW in the hands of a highly disciplined individual with combat firearms training experience. How many gun carrying Americans do you know who fit that description?

And even if such a person HAD been in the school on that day, with the shooter wearing a bullet-proof vest and utilizing a semi-automatic rifle, there's no guarantee the outcome would have been any different.

More guns in the hands of undertrained Americans is not the answer. Modifying the social system so that identifying and dealing with mentally unstable individuals before they go on shooting rampages is a priority, though, would be a step in the right direction.

What the hell was the point of that story? Yeah, if an armed person runs into a room and you have only a couple of seconds to assess the situation, take cover, draw your weapon, and fire, then you're probably going to fuck something up. And?

What's the other option in this scenario? That if everyone was unarmed, then the attacker could just calmly walk around the room, shooting and reloading at will? I'll take the armed citizen who'll fight back, thanks.

For all that you guys care I'll add this: I'm far happier, and feel far safer here in the UK knowing that there aren't weapons everywhere. Police here don't carry guns as standard practice.

Unfortunately I can't quickly find exactly corresponding figures for the UK and America, but this article on wikipedia shows the US had over 10 deaths per 100,000 citizens in 2009, and the UK had 0.25 deaths per 100,000 citizens in 2011.

Come on people, do you really think having more guns around makes you safer? The figures show you're 40 times more likely to be killed by a gun in America than in the UK.

*sigh*

I'm right, you're wrong. No, I'm right, you're wrong.

What evidence? Oh, we'll just leave that over there and use YouTube as proof!

Are you excluded from having a viewing fail? (because fail I think you did)

See my comments above and you should realise how much a joke this setup is.

The point of the video is to push the agenda of the people who setup the scenario.

Maybe it takes you hundreds of hours of training under stress to not freeze up/shoot yourself/shoot innocents - but don't project that onto everyone else, some of us take to these situations naturally.

To obtain answers for your third point, why don't you look it up and report your findings back to us - we shouldn't be doing your research.

Not all of us lose skills as readily as the trainers in this video do. I know it takes me several years for ingrained skills to diminish in myself and only a few weeks of training to have them back up to speed.

This is the stupidest media coverage of the gun issue since they put a revolver in a toy chest at a school and wondered to themselves, "Will any of the children play with it?" If they want to influence legislation with candid camera gags then go ahead and try. It didn't work for James O'Keefe and it won't work here, either.

Sounds like the rampage ended when his gun jammed. The CC was fortunate. Right place, right time. But I wonder if our hero would have pulled his gun and saved the day had the shooter continued to fire unhindered. Your "real story" is a product of your imagination. Our hero still allowed two people to die, didn't he? Now, many people would the shooter have killed if he didn't have a gun, or even access to a gun?

Apologies to the CC. I'm sure he did what he could, when he could. My point is that having CC around doesn't ensure jack shit, except that there may be more bullets flying around a crowded area, if they even stick around and shoot. I don't believe people CC primarily to protect other people. I think the mindset is largely self-preservation.

I think people are missing the point. Guns are a deterrent. If someone wants to go on a shooting spree, they're not going to do it in a place where they know everyone is armed. That's why we have shooting sprees at schools and businesses instead of police departments or gun shows or firing ranges or military bases. The whole point of a shooting spree is to feel empowered. When you're the only one with a gun, you're in charge. When everybody has a gun, you're no longer in charge. A shooting spree becomes less appealing if you know you'll only get in a few hits before you're taken down. Shooters want to go out on their own terms (hence the suicide at the end of most shooting sprees). Even if the civilians carrying weapons don't have a lot of training, the simple fact that they are all carrying weapons is enough to deter would-be shooters.

If you want to end shooting sprees, enact a law requiring everyone to carry guns. Banning guns only ensures that criminals have them.

I haven't handled a pistol since 1983 in boot camp. All I need to do in Oregon to get a CCW is watch a video online, take an online test, pay to download the certificate, and take the certificate to the Sheriff's office for my permit. I wouldn't want me carrying a gun in public, but I could if I wanted to, with virtually no experience or training. Now, guns are not my thing. I don't want one. I'm relatively sane, but if I wasn't, if the world was cruel and oppressive and needed a dark knight, getting a CCW would be just as easy.

This video shows simply and clearly that things very often don't go as you plan when you find yourself in a very stressful and scary situation, and that the training required to perform spontaneously and correctly in such situations must be ongoing, something the vast, vast majority of CCW's would be unable or unwilling to do. Would they have performed better had the "drill" happened when they were told it would happen? Maybe, but that isn't how things unfold in RL now, is it? Sometimes it's an elementary school classroom full of six and seven year-olds, or with smoke bombs in a movie theater, or outside the food court at a mall, or even, like this video, in a lecture hall at a school.

So drop the paranoid, ulterior-motive bullshit. "Dubious"? You sound like a child.

Oh Fletch... fully agree that you can never predict what's going to happen, or how you're going to respond in a stressful situation. I'm glad you don't carry a gun, as you apparently haven't mastered the complex operation of a dictionary - dubious simply means that I found elements of the video open to doubt about whether the deck was stacked towards the good guy or the bad guy(s). There... did I use small enough words for you this time? I can only hope that you know what the word 'dictionary' means. Merry Christmas, Backwoods Batman (dark knight? Are you sure your mom wants you sending this kind of e-mail from her basement?)

You're just grasping now bremnet and the condensation of your arguments, reduced to grade-school insults...

Guns don't kill people, people kill themselves.

No, He un- jammed his gun, we know this because he shot himself with it . He could have continued the rampage after he cleared the jam, but he fled because there was a guy 20 feet away that had him in the crosshairs.
Why do you insist that I'm making this up? There are many eyewitneses. Where is your proof that it happened any other way?

Yeah, I'm ok with that. Fletch says I sound like a child, didn't want to break character... if he feels the need to attack the use of a certain adjective and get into name calling because someone expresses an opinion, I'm in.

Hmmm... 'condensation' of my arguments... I have only expressed one statement "If given the choice to have a gun and not have a gun, I choose the former"... and two opinions - the conclusions drawn by some based on the video content is questionable to me, and yes there is no way to predict what will happen in a high stress encounter when life or death is involved. Pretty straight forward I'd say. Not sure about condensing these.

I thought I'd seen this here years ago. :-/

It's actually not a hypothetical.

This exact same situation happend during the Gabby Giffords shooting. There were two people there with CCW, but they weren't sure was the shooter, so instead of just firing at anyone with a gun, none of the CCW holders fired at all.

That was an actual, real-life event. Sure, it's anecdotal, but who should we listen to; random VS users who don't have any life experience with this, or the people who do?

Wait what?

Dude, you are quite wrong. There have been many killing sprees at police stations and military bases. Are you fucking kidding me? You don't remember THE FORT HOOD murders?

bloody hell

Let's just give everyone a nuke, then no one will fire.. everyone is reasonable, right? Yay people, I trust you!

Okay, that's one example. Have any others? Also, guess how the shooter in that spree was stopped? He was shot by someone else with a gun. If nobody else was carrying guns in that area, the casualties would have been significantly higher.

The fact is that the vast majority of shooting sprees happen in schools and business areas.

Also, why do people think that banning guns would be any more effective than banning drugs? Have the junkies and cartels disappeared since the war on drugs began? No. Will guns disappear if they are banned? No. If people really want a gun, they'll get one, legally or not. Banning guns just ensures that people who obey the law will be left defenseless against criminals, which is exactly what criminals want.

Yes? If every country had nukes, no one would actually use them out of fear of retaliation. Not even Iran or North Korea. A government's leaders might be extremist or even insane, but none of them are stupid enough to give people a reason to nuke them.

@gwiz665

I'm guessing you've never had your friends murdered by the knuckle-dragging animals that make up an increasing portion of US society.

My friends routinely get violently mugged in the far-left city I live in because the politicians and voters are incompetent.

Concealed carry weapons are rarely used in crimes, and likely save far more lives in self-defense than the small number of lives they cost.

@chilaxe solving it by giving everybody guns is not a solution at all. The knuckle draggers come from somewhere, setting in there would be better. Making harsher gun laws, or rather, making it harder to get a gun legally in all of the US would be a potential short term solution. Mutually Assured Destruction is not really a good idea, since it will just escalate it anyway. Maybe the crazies who wants to attack schools will start wearing kevlar vests, so to stop them you need to have armor piercing bullets.

I feel for you and your friends, but the reason your friends get mugged is what needs to be worked at. Are they just bored youths? Poor, desperate people? Gangs? Muggings are rarely completely random, if everyone had a gun, wouldn't they just still mug them, but some times either side would be shot?

@Jerykk if people are crazy enough, they'll suicide bomb with nukes. You'll be a martyr anyway, so it's all good. People are fucking insane, making everyone have an easy way to put metal inside other people is not a good idea.

Guns don't kill people, but they make it damn easy for people to do it.

@harlequinn

The video isn't meant to be a scientific study... it's supposed to show that the idea of everyone carrying a concealed gun is patently bad for obvious and logical reasons.

And your counter-argument to that is that because you're one of the very few Americans who has weapons combat training everyone should be carrying? That's a logic fail on top of your viewing fail.

/golf clap

@gwiz665

Yes, sometimes knuckle-dragging animals get shot. That's particularly valuable when they're in your home beating your family.

No, nothing will fix academic achievement gaps within our lifetime, and the same applies to Denmark's achievement gaps. If the Danish system worked better than the US system, then Denmark's mistreated Muslims would average as high as US Muslims, who average even above the White average.

@SDGundamX
This video is intended to sway people's opinions through faulty empirical results. Thankfully, intellectuals in this thread are noting those flaws.

We know concealed carry weapons sometimes save lives, as discussed above. "The rampage was ended because one person could defend himself from the cowardly nutjob. You will not see the real story in the mainstream media."


Legislation limiting firepower? Probably a fair idea. Trying to ban self-defense by responsible people, but not ban weapons used by violent criminals? Harder to make that case.

"which is exactly what criminals want." -Thank You. The criminals who enact knee-jerk legislation on-cue, after such a n event. The test-pattern for how far the real criminals can go to disarm the people they view as subjects, cattle, worker-bees. The criminals were elected by imbeciles.

Martyrdom is an interesting thing. It only really works if you think you're only sacrificing yourself. If you warned a martyr that his entire country would be nuked should he choose to do a suicide bombing, he would think twice before flipping the switch. No person, whether it be a terrorist or a dictator, will choose to have their home country (and all the friends and family within) annihilated.

You're assuming a reasonable person. A suicide bomber is not reasonable. Maybe this person's family is already dead to american drone attacks (or whatnot), which set him on the path of wanting to destroy america. My point is, you can't assume these kinds of people act in a reasonable way, or that they even know that everyone has weapons. Avoiding nuclear disaster from the cold war was only done because people were smart and cautious; if it had been George W instead of JFK at the cuba crisis, would the same thing have happened? Maybe, maybe not - it doesn't take much for it all to come crashing down. What if it had been Saddam Hussein instead of JFK?

You're just being facetious. "They're demons that much be purged by fire raaah raaah".

That's nice.

It doesn't have much to do with academic achievements, it's just about being able to maintain a healthy living. Having guns freely available is outdated; it's turning the US into the wild west, and civilization has moved on from there. Get with the times.

I wouldn't want to be in society where just anyone and everyone had a gun on them. Much less a high school or college - fuck those people are all retarded, I don't want them to have a gun.

I'm all for having a weapon in your home to protect yourself from intruders; it's your home, so it's outside of everyone else's "realm of protection", but in the public space minimizing weapons is a good thing. There will still be violent muggings - you have to avoid the places where these things happen, not go in brazenly with a gun - but less people on both sides will be killed outright, because the weapons that make kills easy aren't readily available.

Denmark's muslims aren't mistreated, they're coddled. We have muslim gangs and shit, that I would love to quash, but I don't want to go in there guns blazing. If I see a big group of "suspicious people", I just turn away and go some other way. And in general I just avoid the places that they roam in.

How do you mean "average as high"? Salary? Violence? I think you accidentally a word.

@gwiz665

When I say Muslim-Americans average better than the White-American average, I mean they have higher academic scores, higher income, and lower crime.

We can see how specious many of the arguments about the US are when we apply them to Denmark: "The reason Danish Muslims underperform is because Danes oppress them."


I think this is an issue that depends on the numbers. Concealed carry weapons are rarely used in crimes, and likely save more lives in self-defense than the small number of lives they cost.

@chilaxe OK now I follow you.

When you evaluate something like the "average level" of muslims in denmark and compare with those in the US, you have to account for the selection process that happens before they even decide to come here or there. It's much easier to get into Denmark, even considering the somewhat draconic immigration policies, than it is to get into the US. The US, at least used to, import people of high academic standing and somewhat accomplished people, which heightens that average level. And in general, since you are not close to muslim countries, it's simply more costly for any given family to get over there in the first place, which already, naturally if you will, selects higher level people to move over there.


The weapons issue does depend on numbers, but you must be careful not to look too shortsighted at them.

If people have ready access to concealed carry weapons, it would be easier for "bad guys" to get these weapons as well - just because there would be more guns in circulation. Guns can be stolen too, sold, lost etc.

If everyone has a gun on them, to take it to an extreme, some people would be made quite nervous by it, and they might even accidentally shoot someone if they thought they needed to defend themselves - everywhere would become like a slum, where you have to be super careful about going about your business.

If you carry a weapon, proper training is pretty important. The video above has the situation quite biased against the amateurs, but still they do show how little they can handle their weapons and the situation. It's not just a point and click interface as the games would have you believe.

Bar fights would/could end poorly.

Road rage incidents would/could end poorly.

Random people, say in protest rallies, would have an opportunity to shoot at people they disagreed with (imagine anti-nazi protests, people fucking hate those guys).

Bad incidents with cops might leave you with a cop down or you down, since the cops have to be even more careful since they're on the fringe of "dangerous territory" already - if everyone has guns, being a cop just got waay more dangerous.

My point is that you can't simply look at how many concealed weapons are used in robberies, violent crimes etc now, because there are indirect sources as well.


I don't want to remove weapons alltogether, I just want them better regulated, better controller and limited where they are not needed. In a civilized society, they are not needed.

Sam Harris has some interesting thoughts in this blog post: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun