Three people reportedly shot in Six Flags Great America parking lot

^^^^Normally I go to Cedar Point and my usual route to the park doesn't take me anywhere I specifically feel unsafe but when I've gone by myself during HalloWeekends as a woman traveling alone late at night on the way home I feel more comfortable having options other than running away if I found myself stuck on the side of Rt. 2 and the person who stopped was looking out for an opportunity and not my safety. I carried a weapon in my car for the trip to Kennywood because it was far from home through areas I know are sketchy. it never ended up coming out of the case because the only stop we really made was Arby's and it felt like overkill at the moment to arm myself just to eat at Arby's but again as a woman traveling that "insurance" Vater speaks of matters to me in some situations.

Exactly, and I didn't even mention the gender difference, which absolutely matters. It's why my wife keeps a heavy maglite-type thing in her car and mace in her purse.

Vater:

who expects to ever need a gun?

That's where my biggest disconnect is. I don't expect to need a lot of things, and so I don't carry them. Why is a gun different?

I don't expect to puncture a tire when I drive anywhere, but my car has a spare.

Edit 1: Perhaps a better analogy is, my wife doesn't expect to get raped, but she has mace in her purse.

Edit 2: An even better example: dude at the mall in Indiana didn't expect some mfer to spray bullets in the food court, but I bet a lot of people are happy he had a Glock.

Perhaps the best analogy of all is, if Great Adventure needed a hotel it would have one.

The good guy with a gun thing is a statistical anomaly, so that's not a convincing reason to me. I also expect to get a flat tire, so I'm still where I started. It always comes back to the fact that the US is the only country where people feel they should carry a gun and also has more gun violence per capita. I can't prove causation, but the correlation seems pretty obvious.

Statistically speaking mass school shootings are still an anomaly but as an educator I go through lockdown drills with my class every year and EMS in our county practice protocols just on the off chance that we may one day be that unlucky. We do fire drills monthly but in all my years as a student and 20 as a staff member I have yet to be in a building that was on fire school or otherwise.

^And there's an even better analogy than all of mine.

Jeff:

that's not a convincing reason to me.

Cool. You don't have to understand why one feels the need to carry. Speaking from my own experience, when I did carry, no one ever knew it. I don't have statistics, but I guarantee most legal gun owners--i.e. people like me--are not the problem.

Honestly, I'm sort of with you: I don't carry anymore and it has more to do with no longer feeling a need, but also has to do with where I am spiritually. That said, I don't question anyone for wanting to carry, and when I hear of the extremely rare instance where someone stopped a shooter with a weapon of their own, I'm grateful.

It's actually not a good analogy, because more guns = more accidental shootings.

More fire drills or spare tires do not have the same outcome.

And I should add that I am a pro-gun person with a safe full of guns. I'm just pointing out the flawed argument.

Whoops! I think the debate just derailed. I'm offering reasons (personal and otherwise) for those who feel they need or want to carry, you guys are debating why we as a society (or country or whatever) should have fewer guns. While I guess they're kind of related, I don't care about the latter. I don't carry anymore, but I don't want to prevent others from doing so legally.

djDaemon:

And I should add that I am a pro-gun person with a safe full of guns. I'm just pointing out the flawed argument.

More guns = more accidents is 100% irrelevant to the debate. The question was "I don't expect to need a lot of things, and so I don't carry them. Why is a gun different?" The resulting analogies consisted of things people carry or do to prevent things from happening that people don't expect to happen.

Also, I don't expect to ever get a flat tire. I'm aware it happens, but I don't expect it. That's weird.

I explained why carrying a gun is different than carrying a spare tire, which was your example of another thing we do to be prepared for an unlikely event.

Like I said, I'm pro gun and all that, but the spare tire and fire drill comparisons aren't good ones. There are many, many instances of people getting hurt or worse in accidental discharge situations. I am not aware of any instances of a school fire drill accidentally killing anyone.

I could tell that Vater isn't from the cold part of the country without even looking at his profile. I expect to get a flat tire every time I go out driving and am pleasantly surprised when it doesn't happen.

I still don't see the relevance. It's a reason why one might not want to carry a gun, but that wasn't the question.

A self-inflicted bullet in the leg is simply a possible side effect of one of those preventive measures that has nothing to do with the original question. The same could be said about there being an increase in people getting crushed by their cars when changing a tire. And?

The act of carrying a spare tire presents zero risk to the user. Installing it does indeed incur a remote chance of injury, but that's something you agree to take on (or instead call AAA) if you choose to participate in driving.

As stated above, the act of simply having a gun on your person increases the likelihood of injury to yourself or others, even if you are a trained user and have no intention of using it. The number of people who have been injured or killed by gun accidents exceeds the number of lives saved by a person having a gun in the right place at the right time.

Great. I don't deny any of that. But continue to argue something else entirely, please.

Also, Pittsburgh's average temps are 2 degrees colder than my town's. I drive in the snow a lot (well, I used to pre-COVID) and except for my recent trip to Dollywood, I can't remember the last time I got a flat.

I understand the question, but there's no reason that the scope of such a debate can't expand. The context always matters. I think there aren't good analogies for carry arguments because, well because there aren't any. If a preventative measure makes the problem worse, and there's certainly correlation, I wonder why we can never go there.

We're funny about rights, aren't we? The folks advocating for gun rights, law abiding citizens, are often, but not always, the same folks ready to make it harder for law abiding citizens to vote, receive healthcare, and read gay books or learn about history.

Thank you all for the dialogue. (I didn’t mean to drop a question and then disappear - it’s a work from work day.)

I really do appreciate the insights here. Will try to reply later.

This may help with the gun discussion:

The Riddle of the Gun