WAY OT: Keeping gun in vehicle

Fred19Flintstone

Toxarch said:hi

You ever notice that pretty much all mass shootings happen in "gun free zones"?

There were a bunch of people who went to see a movie in a theater in Colorado. They didn't allow guns inside so those with licenses left their guns in their vehicles. A guy came in with a gun and started shooting people. I'm sure lots of people pulled out the cell phones and called 911. The cops did not arrive before a bunch of people died. I'm sure, like some have stated here, many of those people thought they were in a place where they would never need a gun to protect themselves. One licensed legal carrier could have stopped that shooter pretty quick.

I try not to go places where I think I might need a gun. But I have no idea where some lunatic will decide they want to shoot people. I have a LTC. I'll use my gun to protect myself, my family, and a stranger if needed.

These cowards that shoot up churches, schools, theaters do so because they are gun free zones and thus the people are soft targets that aren't likely to shoot back.  I work in a gun free zone and I think about this quite a bit.  Gun laws like that only restrict the law abiding people.  Lunatics and terrorists do not abide the law, they just take advantage of the soft areas the law makes so that they can shoot fish in a barrel. 

kthacher

Toxarch said:

You ever notice that pretty much all mass shootings happen in "gun free zones"?

There were a bunch of people who went to see a movie in a theater in Colorado. They didn't allow guns inside so those with licenses left their guns in their vehicles. A guy came in with a gun and started shooting people. I'm sure lots of people pulled out the cell phones and called 911. The cops did not arrive before a bunch of people died. I'm sure, like some have stated here, many of those people thought they were in a place where they would never need a gun to protect themselves. One licensed legal carrier could have stopped that shooter pretty quick.

I try not to go places where I think I might need a gun. But I have no idea where some lunatic will decide they want to shoot people. I have a LTC. I'll use my gun to protect myself, my family, and a stranger if needed.

This is a US-centric argument that fails any sort of sanity check.   Entire countries outside of the US are essentially "gun free zones".   Countries that have dramatically less mass-shootings than the US.  By this logic, those countries should have more mass shootings, not less.   The fact that they don't, exposes this argument as nonsense.  Perpetuated by those who will use any flawed logic to advance their agenda.

I expect that this point-of-view will subject me to ridicule here, but as far as I am concerned these gun loving threads have no place here, so fire away.   

JohnInCarolina

Some of y'all have watched one too many Death Wish movies.

Mickey

Toxarch said:

Smokin_Trout said:

Under the steering column doesn't count as out of sight? It has to be completely covered?

I have a good friend who is a TX State Trooper and I asked him about that. He said that out of sight meant that the gun could not be seen by looking into the vehicle through the window. So if you can put the gun in the holster under the steering column and it can't be seen from outside the car, then you are OK. Would probably work in a car, but not a truck.
However, if you have a LTC, then you can open carry in your vehicle as long as the gun is on your person. It can't be sitting next to you or anything like that. 

By open carry and on your person my understanding is it still must be on a belt or shoulder holster. 

smokeyw

Ozzie_Isaac said:

I carry a cellphone.  Cops are just minutes away.

As already stated, "when seconds count, the police are only minutes away".

Spaightlabs

Battleborn said:

I carry regularly, not all the time, but regularly. It may be just me personally, but if someone wants my wallet/car/phone, they can have it. It's just stuff. However, if it comes down to me going home or the safety of my family, I know how to use my firearm to remove myself from a situation. 

To get back to the OP. That is a great setup!

How do you decide when to carry?  

Isn't carrying most of the time like wearing a motorcycle helmet most of the time?

Spaightlabs

westernbbq said:

Glock 17 with two  15 round clips and a .357 magnum are in my safe...just in case...

Step 1:  Learn the terminology.  Your Glock does not have a clip.  It has a magazine.

Just sayin'.

fishlessman

my only experience with guns was two guys gunning down 3 others with automatic uzis, they ran right by me firing away. i got in the truck and beat feet those three guys were found dead the next day in the cellar window wells of the lowell mass police station. be careful who you play with. be more careful were you play   i dont want a gun, neighbors kid walks into the house at night to raid the fridge, 14 going on 5 after a seizure, lake renters just walk into the yard (people on vaca have no clue) too many handles going around in my neighborhood    was fishing a derby a few years ago, a guy hole hopping with a jigging rod dropped a line down another groups fishing hole, some words, a knife, 5 guns pulled, 6 go to the station can just imagine that call home...honey, i need bail, someone stole my fishing hole and.....

have seen a few incidents, car riddled with holes with the giant pool of sticky blood, couple of floaters etc,  just a few weeks a guy cut the head and hands off another a couple miles  from the house, hardly made the news at all. amazing what makes and doesnt make the news

am ok with guns but seeing a 20 year old with a side arm walking down a tourist beach in a bathing suit is just odd

Spaightlabs

Toxarch said:

 I'll use my gun to protect myself, my family, and a stranger if needed.

You would be well-served to protect yourself and your family and leave the strangers to protect themselves. The 'I have a gun and I'm gonna be a hero'  fantasy is nice and it may give you warm fuzzies about why you carry - to be the great protector of the unprotected - but in reality the idea of concealed carry is self-protection, not crowd protection.

If you find yourself in a 'situation' you would be wise to first use your brain and then your weapon if necessary to extricate yourself from the situation.

Let's say you are in The GAP buying yourself a new pair of skinny jeans.  You hear what you think is a gunshot.  A 16 year old girl folding sweaters yells 'gun'.  You see a pimply  kid holding a gun, and take the hero's role double tapping him twice center mass.  everyone gets out safely.  When the SWAT team rolls him over, they find the gun - a price gun - he was marking skinny jeans down for the big Christmas sale.  The gunshot was in a rap song playing in the store.

If when you heard what you thought was a gunshot and heard someone yell gun and moved quickly towards the exit of the store, everyone would be at Christmas dinner.  But now you and Trevor aren't.

You aren't trained as a tactical operator or a police officer.  Leave that to your buddy the State Trooper.

Battleborn

Spaightlabs said:

Battleborn said:

I carry regularly, not all the time, but regularly. It may be just me personally, but if someone wants my wallet/car/phone, they can have it. It's just stuff. However, if it comes down to me going home or the safety of my family, I know how to use my firearm to remove myself from a situation. 

To get back to the OP. That is a great setup!

How do you decide when to carry?  

Isn't carrying most of the time like wearing a motorcycle helmet most of the time?

My decisions on when to carry and not to carry are mostly dictated by where I am going and when. If I am going to the supermarket in the middle of the day, probably not carrying. Am I going to be driving down MLK Blvd in Las Vegas at night, I am certainly carrying and I will probably have more ammo than normal. 

A lot of it has to do with situational awareness. 

Mickey

fishlessman said:

my only experience with guns was two guys gunning down 3 others with automatic uzis, they ran right by me firing away. i got in the truck and beat feet those three guys were found dead the next day in the cellar window wells of the lowell mass police station. be careful who you play with. be more careful were you play   i dont want a gun, neighbors kid walks into the house at night to raid the fridge, 14 going on 5 after a seizure, lake renters just walk into the yard (people on vaca have no clue) too many handles going around in my neighborhood    was fishing a derby a few years ago, a guy hole hopping with a jigging rod dropped a line down another groups fishing hole, some words, a knife, 5 guns pulled, 6 go to the station can just imagine that call home...honey, i need bail, someone stole my fishing hole and.....

have seen a few incidents, car riddled with holes with the giant pool of sticky blood, couple of floaters etc,  just a few weeks a guy cut the head and hands off another a couple miles  from the house, hardly made the news at all. amazing what makes and doesnt make the news

am ok with guns but seeing a 20 year old with a side arm walking down a tourist beach in a bathing suit is just odd

You are a wild man. Still want to buy you a beer one of these days. This and other stories you have told are really cool. And I have never forgotten the note when my dog died. 

Spaightlabs

Only time I've ever drawn a gun on a person was in Aspen, CO.  Not a hotbed of violent crime.  

Mickey

Spaightlabs said:

Only time I've ever drawn a gun on a person was in Aspen, CO.  Not a hotbed of violent crime.  

Hell, I can't remember locking the back door when we stay there. 

GATraveller

Spaightlabs said:

Toxarch said:

 I'll use my gun to protect myself, my family, and a stranger if needed.

You would be well-served to protect yourself and your family and leave the strangers to protect themselves. The 'I have a gun and I'm gonna be a hero'  fantasy is nice and it may give you warm fuzzies about why you carry - to be the great protector of the unprotected - but in reality the idea of concealed carry is self-protection, not crowd protection.

If you find yourself in a 'situation' you would be wise to first use your brain and then your weapon if necessary to extricate yourself from the situation.

Let's say you are in The GAP buying yourself a new pair of skinny jeans.  You hear what you think is a gunshot.  A 16 year old girl folding sweaters yells 'gun'.  You see a pimply  kid holding a gun, and take the hero's role double tapping him twice center mass.  everyone gets out safely.  When the SWAT team rolls him over, they find the gun - a price gun - he was marking skinny jeans down for the big Christmas sale.  The gunshot was in a rap song playing in the store.

If when you heard what you thought was a gunshot and heard someone yell gun and moved quickly towards the exit of the store, everyone would be at Christmas dinner.  But now you and Trevor aren't.

You aren't trained as a tactical operator or a police officer.  Leave that to your buddy the State Trooper.

Wow.....keep puffin the cheeba!  I had a 50/50 shot of guessing which state you were from just by the nonsense written above - and I got it right (without even looking)  

I do agree that in 99.9% of bad situations your best weapons are your brain and mouth.  Let cooler heads prevail.  BUT....there are times when self protection is unavoidable (you see it on the news daily) and I refuse to become another death statistic.  There are laws.......abide by those laws, educate yourself and train, train, train.

stlcharcoal

stlcharcoal

Spaightlabs said:

Toxarch said:

 I'll use my gun to protect myself, my family, and a stranger if needed.

You would be well-served to protect yourself and your family and leave the strangers to protect themselves. The 'I have a gun and I'm gonna be a hero'  fantasy is nice and it may give you warm fuzzies about why you carry - to be the great protector of the unprotected - but in reality the idea of concealed carry is self-protection, not crowd protection.

If you find yourself in a 'situation' you would be wise to first use your brain and then your weapon if necessary to extricate yourself from the situation.

Let's say you are in The GAP buying yourself a new pair of skinny jeans.  You hear what you think is a gunshot.  A 16 year old girl folding sweaters yells 'gun'.  You see a pimply  kid holding a gun, and take the hero's role double tapping him twice center mass.  everyone gets out safely.  When the SWAT team rolls him over, they find the gun - a price gun - he was marking skinny jeans down for the big Christmas sale.  The gunshot was in a rap song playing in the store.

If when you heard what you thought was a gunshot and heard someone yell gun and moved quickly towards the exit of the store, everyone would be at Christmas dinner.  But now you and Trevor aren't.

You aren't trained as a tactical operator or a police officer.  Leave that to your buddy the State Trooper.

Yeah right.....with a hundred million gun owners in the US with millions CCW'ing everyday, please name some examples of this.  You can't, but it's pretty easy to start naming off how many times a cop as shot an unarmed "suspect" just in 2016.

As a CCW instructor for the state of MO and IL, I agree (and teach) with what you're saying--use your brain and protect yourself first and foremost.  But the situation you describe is absolutely ludicrous and demeaning.  Like we can't tell the difference between a rap song vs. a gun shot, or a firearm vs. a price gun.  Get real.

Spaightlabs

Yup - no officer or soldier, whose training and exposure to pressure/life or death situations has ever mistaken a cell phone or a soda can or a hairbrush or a wallet for a gun.  So no way it could happen to a guy who is carrying a CC weapon who likely has very little training and whose attitude is that he is carrying to protect others if necessary.

Holstered courage is a dangerous thing.
 

smokeyw

Spaightlabs said:

Yup - no officer or soldier, whose training and exposure to pressure/life or death situations has ever mistaken a cell phone or a soda can or a hairbrush or a wallet for a gun.  So no way it could happen to a guy who is carrying a CC weapon who likely has very little training and whose attitude is that he is carrying to protect others if necessary.

Holstered courage is a dangerous thing.
 

Do you have just one example of this happening by a CCW citizen? We all have a right to protect ourselves, especially when it has been proven that others are failing to protect us. I'll take my chances with my handgun and you can have your cell phone!

stlcharcoal

kthacher

herbu

In every gun debate, I look for something I've never seen.  Where is the focus on punishment of criminals who break existing gun laws?

It seems to me the same people who advocate more laws support lenient sentences and complain about the number of "disenfranchised" people in prisons.

I don't understand the logic of passing more laws when we're not taking full advantage of the ones we have.

nolaegghead

@Killit_and_Grillit  I understand where you're coming from.  We aren't one of those countries where horrific things are commonplace.  If anyone thinks that, they really aren't paying attention to those other places.  That said, terrible things happen here, and the media amplifies them while statistically, we're just a place were a medium level of horrific stuff happens, in terms of first world indu

kthacher said:

stlcharcoal said:

kthacher said:

 

This is a US-centric argument that fails any sort of sanity check.   Entire countries outside of the US are essentially "gun free zones".   Countries that have dramatically less mass-shootings than the US.  By this logic, those countries should have more mass shootings, not less.   The fact that they don't, exposes this argument as nonsense.  Perpetuated by those who will use any flawed logic to advance their agenda.

I expect that this point-of-view will subject me to ridicule here, but as far as I am concerned these gun loving threads have no place here, so fire away.   

Not sure how your country defines "mass shooting", but here it's 3+.  That means the count is skewed by murder-suicides and gang related killing--not terrorists.  Factor those out, and the stats are incredibly low for the size of country, number of people, and the number of guns......and they have gone DOWN over the last 10 yrs (but media coverage has gone up.)

I'm not trying to downplay the horror of the real ones, but it's not what the media and gun-haters try to make it.  And when Rolling Stone magazine puts one of the shooters on the front cover of their magazine, it just makes other whackos want to follow suit.  If we didn't have "gun violence" in this country, we would have "knife violence", "bomb violence", or "vehicle violence".  The crazies/killers are going to find whatever they can to inflict the most damage on the easiest target......in Germany, that was a truck......In Ohio it was a knife.....in France it was a truck, a bomb, and guns.  Bad people do bad $hit and you're not going to stop it not matter how many laws you pass and how much stuff you take away from the law abiding citizens. 

I was not suggesting new laws or taking anything away from anyone.  I was simply pointing out the fallacy in the quoted post.  That 'gun free zones' increase the incidence of mass shootings.  If that was the case, then countries with stricter gun control should experience more mass shootings.  But they don't.  So the initial argument, which is simply a convenient opinion, is flawed, simplistic and plain wrong.  I am prepared to have my point refuted with facts, but I expect to wait a long time to hear any fact-based argument that people arming themselves reduces mass shootings or gun-based violence.   In fact, the statistics suggest the complete opposite conclusions.  

nolaegghead

herbu said:

In every gun debate, I look for something I've never seen.  Where is the focus on punishment of criminals who break existing gun laws?

It seems to me the same people who advocate more laws support lenient sentences and complain about the number of "disenfranchised" people in prisons.

I don't understand the logic of passing more laws when we're not taking full advantage of the ones we have.

There are sentencing guidelines at the federal level. 

nolaegghead

I'm all for you Rambos carrying your guns. 

Anyone know how much money we spend on gun violence a year in the US?

stlcharcoal

maso

I guess the biggest motivation I have is the fact that while I can stay out of the "bad" areas there's nothing stopping the bad guys from coming into my "safe" area. I carry not because of being afraid of being mugged because I would just give them whatever I want but more for the active shooter scenarios however unlikely they may be. 

Few years ago right down the road from my house in a good town not really close to a bad area at all, a guy walked into his work and decapitated a woman and stabbed another before being shot by the owner. And that was in the front lobby. Shocking event. Not in our "little" town! 

Its a parachute i I have on me when I can but I pray I never need it. 

SkySaw

There is no such thing as a rational, fact based argument to support the current US gun culture. No matter how you slice it, the simple truth is that children, women, men, blacks, whites, armed and trained police officers, and everyone else is more likely to die from gun violence in the US than in any other 1st world country, by a significant margin. Sure, there are crazy, violent people the world over, but the omnipresent threat that exists in the US that is potentially mitigated by carrying a gun simply isn't present in other parts of the world.

Some people can handle the whole gun thing; unfortunately, too many others get carried away. If you have gun in every room in your house (just in case), there is no way you can ensure the safe handling of each of those weapons. 

stlcharcoal

kthacher

kthacher