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p.3 #25 · Bag for Camera & Gun - Wait, hear me out! | |
Nill Toulme wrote:
Shane Canfield wrote:
...My guess is that far more people die from crummy driving than being shot by legally carried firearms.
...
Shane has my dear home state of Virginia come to the point where there are as many people using firearms daily as there are using cars? ;-)
My point is that these discussions invariably contain some component of "If you're properly trained in self-defense, you're safer with a gun, and if the bad guys end up with your gun, it means you aren't properly trained and shouldn't have the gun in the first place..." — which leads me to ask, how many of the hundreds of thousands of people running around with guns in this country are so "properly trained?"
Nill
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www.toulme.net
"has my dear home state of Virginia come to the point where there are as many people using firearms daily as there are using cars?" Nill, not sure what this has to do with it. 
And here, we are FAR safer on a percentage basis than just a couple of miles away over the river into DC where you can't own a handgun of any kind...I'll keep my family here. 
My point is that it would seem to be that the percentage of shooting incidents of those with firearms seem to be far fewer than with cars...in living here for 25 years with a community of 115,000, I have not heard of one single shooting incident involving someone with a C&C permit. However poeple die constantly with cars. My point remains, and it strikes me as obvious, although none of us have the numbers to actually prove it, that those with C&C permits are far less likely to cause a problem, even on a percentage basis, than auto drivers.
The larger point about cars is that why don't we have a national uproar about auto training? Why don't poeple seem to care about all the people killed by autos, which is IMO, at least partly due to the crummy training?
Would it not make more sense to focus on the real and easily solvable problem to getting drivers trained in the "defensive arts?"
I can tell you with 100% certainty that if every driver went through the training my daughter did, and it was only one day of training, we would have far fewer auto deaths...and those that run the program (Goodyear tire company) had numbers to prove that one.
It just seems that with guns, many people don't think clearly and rather focus on it a political issue instead (Nill, this comment, while true in my observation about most on this issue, is NOT about you...I know you to be very level headed and clear thinking...most likely because you hail from Virginia. ). So much hyperventatling about handguns and none about something which kills far more people. Having lost several very close friends to auto deaths perhaps makes one look at the issue with more clarity. Although just reading the paper every day should do the trick...but we don't seem to read as much any more.
My guess is that there is no answer to your second question. My gut tell me that I have far less to worry about from the C&C permit holder than I do from hundreds or thousands of bozos out there driving on the road that would not give a lick about killing me to get to work 120 seconds faster. or talking on the cell phone, or whatever they are doing that seems to be creating the very real and more dangerous problem of road rage.
I would further guess that of 100 permits issued to for C&C or drivers, those with C&C have more skill and training than the drivers...and present a far smaller danger to me or my family.
So let's deal with real issues that could actually save lives as this one strikes me as a red herring. 
Edited on May 17, 2008 at 01:37 PM
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