Most bad guys don’t want a gunfight. If they see a gun on your hip they will either shoot you before you figure out what’s happening (yes, there is that) or avoid you altogether. If there are two or more people open carrying the odds of a criminal attack decrease exponentially. OK, that’s a scientific term for a wild-ass guess. Life is a crap shoot (so to speak). Open carry isn’t exactly common practice. How do the bad guys know if someone is or isn’t likely to be carrying concealed (unless they live in a gun-free paradise)? And what if it’s a drive-by shooting like the one that killed a bus driver in Baltimore? Would that craven scumbag have hesitated if he’d thought that Craig Ray might have been armed? John Lott will tell you all day long: more guns, less crime. But what’s your personal take? Does deterrence work? [h/t DB]
Is any one else uncomfortable with the expression” gun lover”? I am a gun enthusiast who loves freedom. That puts the passion where it belongs. In today’s society, love frequently has a sexual connotation which can be used to mischaracterize intentions. You know, the whole small penis thing… its language, I know and maybe I’m splitting hairs…
I think this is a divide that needs to be explored.
People criticize cops for not being gun guys or “gun lovers. I don’t think this is a problem, they treat the gun they have to carry as the utilitarian device that it is, it is just another tool on their belt. As long as they don’t want to deny other people the use of the same tools, why should they have to love the tool?
Think about how it would sound if you criticized cops for not being handcuff lovers? It would get creepy in a hurry. Or carpenters for not loving their hammers enough.
Some people love guns, some people do have gun fetishes, I imagine some do buy them because they have a small penis. To many people though it is just another tool to be used for the right job, no sexualization or anthropomorphism needed.
Obozo is setting himself up for back to back punk bitch of the year awards. First Putin and Syria and now Putin and Ukraine. While obozo is a little bitch I prefer he does nothing, it’s not our business.
…now, back to guns…. I love that grenade launcher. I wonder if they were filled with tear gas or HE?
Somewhat. As Tom Morabito stated, there are plenty of other factors that contribute to violence. I would say that it has the POTENTIAL to work extremely well. But with an average national carry rate of roughly 1%, that’s not doing a whole lot from a deterrent perspective. Now, if we could get it so that 80-90 percent of people are carrying (openly or concealed) and have it be a widely known fact that most are packing heat, I guarantee we would see an exponential drop in crime, even in the crumbling inner cities where we see most of the crime, and where it’s mostly driven by gang violence and poverty.
I don’t think it takes a preponderance of the population carrying. All it takes is that DOUBT in the criminal’s mind, “Is THIS person packing?”
If only 1% carry… but THIS particular potential victim is in that 1%, then it’s 100% bad news for the bad guy.
More CCWs is “more better,” of course. The higher the percentage, the worse the odds are for the bad guys.
Yes it does work. Having a gun isn’t the only way to deter someone though. Appearing alert helps alot, so does eye contact. Being fit helps too, although I understand that there are some for whom exercise isn’t an option due to age/disability/etc. The gun should be the last layer of the “don’t F with me” onion.
This.
Define “deterrence.” Are you asking if open carry is a deterrent? Or just laws that permit the arming of common citizens? In the killing referenced, it seems to me that had he gone inside and shut the door he’d be alive today, gun or no gun. further, this shooting appears to have happened so quickly that had he been armed would not likely have made a difference–he did not even have time to get inside his door before he was shot. (Yes, I am speculating.) And if he’d been standing in he door with a shotgun, the police would have shot him–it was Baltimore after all. (I think that qualifies as snarc.)
You got my attention when you shared with us that the manufacturer asked you to try to break it!
Cops open carry. How often do they get preemptively shot?
Yes it works, although if you are not open carrying you would need to be perceived as armed. That doesn’t work too well in Chicago. Wi had its first DGU years ago at an Aldi’s. They had a sign up & I’m sure the armed perp thought he was the only one. He wasn’t. Never had another Aldi’s robbery that I heard of.
It’s hard to be sure whether or not the bad guys’ awareness of the presence of guns is driving them elsewhere since, as always, it’s hard to prove that something didn’t happen that otherwise would have.
But my gut tells me that, YES, criminals avoid my quiet little neighborhood because they know that its hard-working, Portuguese inhabitants are all armed. Better to try somewhere else…
Just my 2¢.
Our home invasion rate in Idaho is nearly zero, because most of our home-grown criminals know that the gun owner rate in Idaho is around 90% of households. And for those criminals too stoned or too stupid to care, that possession rate takes care of the problem. It may not be a general deterrence on every criminal, but it turns out to be a very specific deterrence for specific criminals.
The common factor in urban shootings isn’t “being stoned” but rather being under the influence of alcohol, liquid courage.
Knowing that people in a neighborhood will definitely rat and will often shoot back clearly leads to a reduction in crime, in my experience.
There is nothing worse for crime-reduction than alienation of residents from police. That alienation is absolutely the worst feature of US urban governance and culture.
If alcohol was liquid courage, I’d be Audie Freakin’ Murphy.
I don’t know if the potential threat of an armed citizen will deter a criminal, but pointing a gun at one (or shooting him, if necessary) tends to deter that particular criminal. It’s like the death penalty – any convicted criminal who is actually executed (after the 25 years of appeals) has a zero recidivism rate.
And I will guarantee you that when California finally decides that Charlie Manson is too old to be a threat, and releases him on parole, Manson will gather another group of mindless followers and start killing again.
I have had to to present a pistol during the Rodney King riots and a rifle during a home invasion. Both instances in Los Angeles in the 90’s. Both instances I walked away from and in both instances the threat evaporated. I knew several policemen out there during the time and asked them all “Should I carry or not?”. They all answered with the equivalent of “You’d have to be crazy not to.” followed quickly by “I didn’t tell you that…”. Short answer: Yes… It is utterly amazing how quickly a persons attitude can change when faced with someone prepared and willing to defend themselves, their family and their property.
Deterrence works, but not as well as a double tap.
My only anecdotal evidence is what I perceived to be a delayed drug deal or other nefarious transaction, where the likely suspects simply halted their activity until I was out of sight.
Other than that, as an engineer I try to avoid extrapolation unless I have verifiable data from which to draw my lines. Though I did see a GM NVH spec once that allowed extrapolation from a single data point. That gave me a chuckle…
I’d love to see an experiment where only women are allowed to carry around campus. I bet crime would dry up right quick….
Kudos to CliffH for a balanced sit rep. However the analogy with SanDiego County is wrong. The way I see it here is a better analogy to what had happened in Ukraine so far. Say A rogue group of Canadians instrumented a coupe in California, burned down some gov property, chased out legislators, installed a people’s governor (also a canadian). French is about to become and official language. The police had self disbanded after having received multiple death threats to them and their families. California is on the brink of civil war, as near half of population is mexican and they don’t want those canadians in charge. Mexico, sharing the border with CA is very interested in not having a refuge crisis at the border with thousands of mexican-americans potentially leaving san diego for mexico 🙂 . So they move in about a 100 federal troops that replace now absent police and maintain law and order in the street. Until the situation is settled and San Diegans can vote on their future.
Does deterrence work? Well, it works for the bad guys. I know I avoid parts of town where there is a higher likelihood of running into trouble. I know traditional bad guys avoid parts of town that have higher housing prices and more police. I know the site of me will cause people to cross the street to the sidewalk on the other side, even when I am not carrying. I know big dogs inside the house and thorny bushes under your windows work. An “ADT” sign in the front yard supposedly works even if you don’t have an alarm.
Then again, there are still people out there who pick a fight with the biggest guy they can find. I suppose open carry as it exists today is only a deterrent to un-determined criminals. As some have already stated, it simply makes you the first target for a surprise attack if the bad guy has decided he deserves what you have more than you do. Since that guy is already willing to kill, and has decided he doesn’t want a confrontation he will likely shoot you in the back regardless.
By my way of thinking open carry only works as a functional deterrent if there is enough people doing it that you can see them in all directions all day. So the bad guy knows, “even if I get the jump on this guy, I still have those other 12 bystanders to deal with.” In the society we currently live in a well publicized campaign something along the lines of, “Study shows that 1 out of every 4 residents carries a concealed firearm every day.” would be more effective. Nothing will stop the crook with Napoleon syndrome and an underdeveloped survival instinct, but like Mark Twain said, “Give me a man with a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep ’til noon.”
^ This !!!!!
I think it is obvious that open carry, were it the norm, would be less beneficial than concealed carry. Assume 10% of the adult population did one or the other. The open carriers would define a small zone of safety, beyond which the perps would feel safe to prey upon people. With concealed carry the boundary of safety is always ill-defined and the perp never knows his odds. If one or the other is to be the norm, concealed carry is a better norm. Given the state of 2nd amendment law, the requirement to allow one or the other but not necessarily both in a state, I’d favor concealed carry as the norm.
I know from personal experience deterrence works.
End of story; gun grabbers can go to hell on that one, especially when it comes to my – or any other gun proponents self defense rights.
Just as a side note, these are fun little pistols. But RTFI before you take it apart for cleaning.
It’s like deja-vu all over again!
Here’s another thought I had for quite awhile. Open carry an unloaded gun. Conceal carry a loaded gun. And if a perp decides to jack your open carry, BANG!, they’d be in for a surprise. Or maybe I read too much manga.
I don’t like that idea. I’d rather you carry two loaded guns.
If a perp grabs your empty gun and points it at you, shooting him wouldn’t be defensible since you know the gun is harmless. You go to jail.
Try again.
Or carry condition three. Again, too much manga.
Regulars or local militia? In all the coverage of all the militias I’ve seen from around the world a couple of things stand out. True local militias are compsed of the very young and the very old with all ages in between, They’re raggedly dressed and armed and their transport is a hodgpodge of mismatched vehicles.
The guys in the Ukraine are all young and fit and uniformly armed and equipped. They’re regulars.
If you want to save a little $ on an Adams Arms rifle or upper, pick up a Huldra upper from Mills Fleet Farm. I picked up a complete upper for $599. These are made by Adams Arms for Fleet Farm and they don’t hide that it’s just a rebrand. Also, the Mills family is SUPER pro 2A and very active in MN gun rights issues.
Well, I would say concealed carry is a deterrent to violent crime. However, I would guess it is not a deterrent to property crime- burglary of unoccupied dwellings vice robbing people, stealing a parked car vice car-jacking etc. etc.
I would be interested to see if someone has done much in the way of studies of property crime rates before/after liberalization of carry in specific jurisdictions.
I have a XDS 45acp and I have other holster for it . But I want to give this one a try . So if anyone is using it with the XDS 45 leave a reply . Thanks
Those Grizzly Custom pieces…DAAAAAAAAAAAMN!!! Those are sweet. With a DAAAAAAAAAAMN price tag as well. Someday…
Is that the tacticool over-under I spy?
From what my concealed carry teacher told me (also a 20 yr. vet with the police department), you DO NOT ever pull your gun to scare or deter. You pull to KILL plain and simple. Dead men don’t talk, and all you have to do is yell “Get out m************, or I’ll blow your head off”, then do it. Oh, you will go to jail, and the family might try to sue, but dead men don’t talk. I believe my life was in danger, so I acted in self defense. I’ve already talked to several lawyers about it, I will go free and they can never illegally enter another’s home. They cannot say they weren’t warned. Also, being a female, any age person, whether it be a child, teen, adult, or old person, that comes into my house uninvited…………..will not be leaving. I’ll also, stick with what I was taught.
$20 for a scope lever, or $0.20 for a hose clamp. If women can’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy….
[Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs] Lavrov justified the deployment of Russian troops in Ukraine as a necessary protection for his country’s citizens living there. “This is a question of defending our citizens and compatriots, ensuring human rights, especially the right to life,” Lavrov said.
http://wtop.com/?nid=220&sid=3573747&pid=0&page=2
Russia has thrown the Sudetenland card on the table.
Nick Leghorn is much cuter than I imagined.
Hi Nick!! 🙂
video is gone. any other places it might be?
I’m not in CT but this is a good message for all of us. Take the .410 bolt action w/ no magazine that I got from my Father-in-law and the Sears .22 rifle.
Live free or Live in Connecticut: http://www.sunjournal.com/news/street-talk/2014/03/03/street-talk-live-free-or-live-connecticut/1497441
In the “door-to-door” scenario he may want to refrain from using a phone or email to call his buddies, since those same 9000 cops will likely have access to it.
The problem with his idea is that it puts you at the mercy of your enemies. You hope that compliance will buy you time to implement part B of your master plan….but you have no guarantees that they won’t shoot you or take you away for “re-education” or any other number of possibilities. I say resist where you are. If you die, then you did it fighting for you and yours. Your goal should be to inflict maximum damage on your attackers. Attrition and morale will end their activities sooner rather than later. When their resolve is spent on taking your life, the lives of your ideological brothers will repay them in kind.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Because dying for liberty is old fashioned
There are some online markets I avoid because of their anti-gun stance but at least I can get accessories, parts, reloading equipment etc on Amazon.
Bible verses are kind of like the Bill of Rights in that certain people tend to ignore or object to the ones they don’t like or that don’t support their ideology. In other news, guns cause the death of innocent victims – again. Thanks Nancy Jo.
Perhaps, maybe, the citizens of CT will shortly begin to fear and distrust their government as much as the people of Russia and China. If so, that’s a good thing. A wise thing.
its a good thing i don’t use FB. it looks like ttag will now be my only site that i socialize on. I’m ok with that.
It’s baaaack….
Hiss.
I hope they are paying you well, RF, because this “win a p22” post is growing tiring.
John
Well , I come to realize my suspicion about (anybody) doing a review is correct. I use reviews as a tool to buy almost all my products. I always keep an open mind when reading a review. Especially when its a person who bought the product that’s writing a review. I expect a professional writing reviews to be neutral . I can’t say that this reviewer is biased but my senses told me something may be wrong. As I read all the controversy . I have to say that I’m more likely to read more reviews and see if these defects surface over and over. So far I have found none. If the gun is this bad it will be shown in other reviews. I’m now leaning toward purchasing an R51.
How about they pass a law requiring people to register the guns they have stolen? That way law-abiding gun owners won’t be burdened and they will have their national registry of stolen firearms.
Deter what? Maybe novice hoodlums or opportunists, but hardened criminals??? Puh-leeeese! I knew a liqour store owner and his,wife that carried .357 colt pythons in plain sight. One evening three Crips gangmembers posed as customers and walked in, pulled a .22 and shot the owner in the face, killing him. They muscled the wife down, disarmed her and stole a lousy $600.00, the owners gun and his wifes gun.
People need to STOP this “goin’ down guns a blazin” stupidity. You have to not only properly arm yourself, but KNOW your state laws about being armed, as well case law to protect yourself. You should also THINK scenarios for when and when not to carry open or concealed? ( large crowd scenario. Multiple armed assailants, rural or isolated area, etc)
Police officers and security guards daily “open carry” so ask yourself WHY that has never been a deterrent to people who want to attack them before you get too comfortable thinking open carry will deter someone from causing you problems……