I totally agree, and gun free zones are killing fields in the making. No matter where they be at. Take the massacre in Virginia… One has a God given right to defend yourself with deadly force no matter what tool one uses to do it.

It’s a classic Liberal doctrine (no longer present in today’s fake “liberals” to any significant extent) that one has an inherent right to self-defense. Those who seek to legislate that fundamental right away are tyrannical statists.

It is essentially the same question when you leave the debate chamber and enter the real world. The whole point of sidearms is that they negate most of the imbalances of weight, strength, agility, and fighting skills which are difficult to master, and level the playing field. Most life-threatening self-defence situations which occur are essentially at or within practical pistol shooting distances.

6 of one, half a dozen of the other Kevin, handguns are simply one method of defending ones self, with deadly force if necessary. I’m afraid that I just can’t buy into the idea of a ‘wild wild west‘ mentality emerging simply because people have the right to legally carry a handgun, or have one under the seat of their car, on in the night stand beside their bed - that right does not include the right to use the weapon at will does it?

While I agree with you on a philosophic level, lrC, Kevin is making some points that need to be considered. Practically, the problem is that simply having a concealed weapon doesn’t mean you can use it. I think it was in “Freakonomics” where the stats showed that:

1) Inexperienced people with weapons usually became a victim of their own weapons - that is they very weapon they brought for protection was taken from them and used against them, because of their inexperience or because the attacker was big, stronger, faster or more stealthy.

2) The possibility of a weapon being present creates a perverse incentive in the assailant. Again, if they are going to rob you and know you are disarmed, it is likey to be a threat, perhaps an assault, but not a deadly one, to get a person to give up their cars or money. If the assailant thinks (or does not know for sure) that a person has a gun, they will mitigate the risk of being shot by killing or shooting the victim first. The result is an increase in violence, not a decrease. It is the law of unintended consequences, similar to what happened when insurance companies mandated better anti-theft devices on cars. They thought that car theft would decrease, but all it did was incent thieves to get cars that were running rather than parked - thus creating “car-jacking” and the violence (including murder) associated with it.

Of course, there would be was to mitigate both:

1. Allow people to carry both concealed and in the open, but have insurance rates extremely high. A person gets breaks on insurance by being a trained and well practiced shooter.

2. Further insurance breaks and safety if guns can only be fired by their owners - RFID and other technologies exist now to do this.

I don’t think there are any issues surrounding the owning and carrying of a gun that cannot be solved by means other than banning them.

How is the involvement of firearms in accidents or suicide relevant to permission to carry a weapon?

Perhaps because the more times you roll a die the more times you get a six? It is relevant to my argument because “Do people have the right to use deadly force to defend themselves is not the same question as “should people be allowed to carry concealed weapons in public”. The second question has broader consequences than the rhetorical jumping off point of the first.

The origin of many of these concealed-carry-would-make-us-safer arguments is the two recent campus shootings in Virginia and Illinois. In that context, drunken teenagers is hardly shrill hyperbole.