And to answer your question... No they were not increased in "gun free zones" although that myth is commonly spread by the gun lobby. A few did include schools, eg Columbine, but in all cases of school shootings there is evidence the school was targeted not because it was gun free ( and it is important to recall there was an armed officer in the building and another nearby both of whom were unsuccessful in hitting the killers) but rather because the killer had a grudge against the school much like a fired employee attacks his former place of work. Even the murder at the Sikh temple doesn't qualify as that facility was not gun free under state law.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...mass-shootings

As to your second question whether these slaughters occur in areas where it is difficult to get a carry permit.. I don't know your definition of difficult but the killings seem to be distributed fairly similarly to the population of the country. The entire data is available at http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...ones-full-data
Keep in mind as you look at the data that the laws on carry may have differed years ago.

Aren't you tired of the old argument that we don't need laws because the villains don't care about laws? It is transparently wrong. The logical conclusion would be we therefore need no laws, just perhaps suggestions and appeals to our better instincts.

Armed guards may have deterred some attacks that we don't know about because they didn't happen but there are no cases where an armed guard succeeded in stopping an attack which was happening. There was an armed guard at Columbine and a second officer who arrived at the scene before any students were slaughtered.

Please look at how Australia, a country still somewhat in its own wild west phase, handled the issue of trying to stop mass killings and as a side benefit reduced suicides and non-mass homicides as well. It worked unbelievably well.
http://tobacco.health.usyd.edu.au/as...uryPrevent.pdf

: In the 18 years before the gun law reforms, there were 13 mass shootings in Australia, and none in the 10.5 years afterwards. Declines in firearm-related deaths before the law reforms accelerated after the reforms for total firearm deaths (p = 0.04), firearm suicides (p = 0.007) and firearm omicides (p = 0.15), but not for the smallest category of unintentional firearm deaths, which increased. No evidence of substitution effect for suicides or homicides was observed. The rates per 100 000 of total firearm deaths, firearm
homicides and firearm suicides all at least doubled their existing rates of decline after the revised gun laws.
Conclusions: Australia’s 1996 gun law reforms were followed by more than a decade free of fatal mass shootings, and accelerated declines in firearm deaths, particularly suicides. Total homicide rates followed the
same pattern. Removing large numbers of rapid-firing firearms from civilians may be an effective way of reducing mass shootings, firearm homicides and firearm suicides

Questions don't result in answers but instead more questions!
 

This was my question, and as far as this answer goes, I don't know. I come from a large farm family, and my parents insisted on months of practice time before we were allowed to take our driver's license test. I guess a few hours plus passing an exam would be enough if one "owned" the roads, but would it be enough in a crazy, stressful driving situation with lots of factors? I know someone who in spite of decades of driving experience got caught in what defensive driving instructors call a "collision trap" that also involved bad weather and poor visibility and was killed. The question is if carrying a concealed weapon--just having the permit and carrying it--is similar to carrying a driver's license--just having the license and carrying it. I don't know.


Can anyone answer my other questions?


A parking space?! Is this a joke, or at least an exaggeration? If it's not, then it really can be serious.


Is there any solid info out there about how many homeowners don't carry insurance? Having a mortgage requires it, I think, but how many others say that with the odds so slim, why spend so much each year (especially those living on the edge who might have to choose between a homeowners insurance policy that they've never used and, say, badly needed medical care or prescription meds)? Florida is the lightning capital of the country, yet very few people (to my knowledge, anyway) have a lightning rod system.


Of course owning a gun is a personal choice. I don't get the impression that anyone is "arguing" against someone else owning a gun, since it is legally permitted. Instead they're saying that THEY don't wish to own a gun. I didn't notice a connection between these people and abortion being a personal choice, but remembering an unrelated thread I did notice a connection between being pro-concealed weapons and opposition to health care for all Americans.

Speaking of abortion (not to hijack the topic), it seems to me that there is a difference between "pro-life" and "anti-abortion," just as there is a difference between "pro-abortion" (must say that I have NEVER known anyone to be "pro-abortion" other than for oneself as a personal, legally permitted choice) and "pro-choice."


Is this also a joke, or is it sarcasm?


This is the very concern that prompted my initial question about the required training seeming so little before people can not just carry but actually use a concealed weapon based on their own judgments stemming from the little training they've had. Should this be a concern, or is it a non-issue in light of the law allowing it?


This makes sense. It also speaks worlds about how very, very serious (life-and-death serious!) this all is, not some casual thing about carrying a concealed weapon. I really hope that "parking spot incident" was a joke. We grew up as a hunting family (and it was for food, not sport), and although there were firearms in the house (all inherited from grandparents and earlier) and all us kids had to take a course in firearm safety, our hunting was ONLY with bow and arrow. There were personal family reasons for this, and though some might laugh at this, we were taught to quietly apologize to the animal for having killed it and thank it for providing us with food. Not quite the same thing, though, as a law permitting the carrying of a concealed weapon.


I would like to think that this too is a joke. I'm still thinking of that parking spot and how it was handled, again assuming that wasn't a joke.


Do people feel there is a connection between being a "timid person by nature" and those who are "uneasy around guns," whatever their reasons? "Timid" people might take comfort in carrying a concealed weapon; maybe it would give them self-assurance or serve some other purpose. However, the word "most" in the next sentence about not openly saying that they're armed implies that there are some who do the opposite, and this could explain why some feel "uneasy around guns."


This is no easy subject, and as I say, I now have more questions than answers. But we are a nation of laws, so we must remember that (like abortion mentioned in an earlier posting) we are obliged to respect the laws, including this one.

Not at all sure where you got that piece of information as you didn't cite a source. Everything I have seen is that he was not subdued but was arrested standing alone next to his car in the parking lot. If there really was a person in the theater with a CCW who was prepared to take out Holmes, how much longer was he going to wait?

Aurora officers describe arresting James Holmes

Aurora police officer Jason Oviatt arrested Holmes a few minutes later, after finding him outside, standing with his hands on top of his car. Oviatt said Holmes was "completely compliant" when told to surrender. Oviatt, though, said that when he first spotted Holmes, he thought he was a fellow officer because he was dressed in full body armor and wore a gas mask and helmet.

"He was just standing there not doing anything, not urgent about anything," Oviatt testified

Quote:
One of the heroes who helped take down the Arizona assassin said Monday he was prepared to shoot the murderous maniac himself.
"I was ready to end his life," Joe Zamudio said. "I had my hand on the butt of my gun. If they hadn't grabbed him and he was still moving, I would have shot him."
Without hesitation?
"Damn right," said Zamudio. "This is my country, this is my town."


Let us set the complete record straight here. Perhaps had Mr Zamudio fired his gun you might have your only actual example of a CCW carrier stopping a mass murder, however, here is the full story as opposed to the snippet that was printed in Mr Murdoch's newspaper:

Armed hero nearly shot wrong man in Ariz. - Slate.com | NBC News

"I came out of that store, I clicked the safety off, and I was ready," he explained on Fox and Friends. "I had my hand on my gun. I had it in my jacket pocket here. And I came around the corner like this." Zamudio demonstrated how his shooting hand was wrapped around the weapon, poised to draw and fire. As he rounded the corner, he saw a man holding a gun. "And that's who I at first thought was the shooter," Zamudio recalled. "I told him to 'Drop it, drop it!'"
But the man with the gun wasn't the shooter. He had wrested the gun away from the shooter. "Had you shot that guy, it would have been a big, fat mess," the interviewer pointed out.
Zamudio agreed:
"I was very lucky. Honestly, it was a matter of seconds. Two, maybe three seconds between when I came through the doorway and when I was laying on top of [the real shooter], holding him down. So, I mean, in that short amount of time I made a lot of really big decisions really fast. … I was really lucky."

In other words we have a brave man who ran to help and also had a gun. His ownership of the gun did not result in any benefit to the situation and very nearly resulted in the death of more innocents. Really lucky.

If you are no longer a resident of PA, your PA license is not valid in FL, so don’t carry until you get a FL CW license.

Question for my 2nd amendment friends. If you believe that the second amendment gives you the right to keep and bear arms without governmental infringement, which is the essence of the phrase, what governmental infringements on arms do you believe are Constitutionally acceptable? You cannot get a CCW license in Florida without a class, with a few narrow exceptions. How is that legal. Where in the Constitution does it say bear arms after taking a class? How about bazookas or Sherman tanks? What is the interpretation of the amendment that says limit A, magazine size or AR-16, is an unconstitutional infringement, but limit B on nuclear weapons and ricin and machine guns is not an infringement? Is this all just about where the line should be drawn or do you believe somehow that the framers had specific arms in mind when they wrote that phrase?

Paul can give you your answers, more accurately.

The Right Training

The second amendment doesn’t give, grant, convey, or provide anything.

Hence the foundation for your (and the anti-gun advocates) misunderstanding of the fundamental issue.

In reply to Tinklesweep asking if it was a joke:

"A resident was in his car on Canal Street waiting for a vehicle to leave a parking space. A man came up from the vehicle behind him, became verbally aggressive and showed he had a handgun. The man with the gun faces aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, without intent to kill, bond was $7000. This was reported in the Daily Sun 12/23/2010."

I wish it was a joke but there are some unhinged folks out there.

And it's only going to get worse with more and more armed and loaded seniors walking around with early Alzheimer's or other dementia related diseases.

I'm listening awaiting a more informative response. I really am interested in what you could mean by this one. What is the "fundamental issue" and what does the second amendment have to say about it if anything of importance.

thank you for that correction. I attempted to deal with the quoted text from the NY Post in post #85. The report in that paper omitted some important details that interestingly were recorded on Fox and Friends which is also owned by Mr. Murdoch.

That is incorrect. Both robbers were shot and no charges were filed against the very brave man.

Here is a quote.

Dawkins had a superficial wound in his left arm, but Henderson was shot in two places: his left buttock and his right hip.

Both posted bail and were released.

Williams has a concealed weapons permit. Bill Gladson of the Marion County state attorney's office says the shooting appears justified.

SO I ask, where did you get your information from?

isolated incidents do not a case make nor is it worthy of discussion as a general indicator of anything except.....there are wackos and idiots in ANY group. And with the current technology it is oh so easy to find an isolated example of almost anything anybody needs to make their point.

Let's talk about the 99% of gun owners that every day of the year do so responsibly!!!

This thread is going the way of all gun and gun related subjects....the proverbial merry go round.

I am going to sit back and watch and chuckle :popcorn::popcorn::popcorn::)

btk