As a former LEO, I will say that I was never concerned about good citizens being armed. The bad guys have guns and other weapons illegally and know the penalty for their possession when they get caught, but are still willing to ignore that portion of the law as they do the rest. In the CLEET training academy, we were taught that when the need for deadly force arises, you put two center of mass and one in the head. End of argument. We were told that we must NEVER shoot to wound, that if the situation justified the use of deadly force, that is exactly what was required. No warning shots! After rejoining the citizenry, I went through the CHL process and obtained my concealed weapons license. The majority of the training was the legal ramifications of the use of deadly force, when and how it applied and what the probable outcome would be after the fact. We did have to demonstrate that we could safely load, unload and fire the weapon we were using in the course. The training goes a long way to eliminating the vigilantism by making the possessor of the weapon understand when deadly force is authorized under the law. Under the statutes here in Oklahoma you are restricted to family /employees or employer that you can cover under the umbrella of your protection. You may not come to the aid of a total stranger as a police officer would, unless you or someone in the above classification is in immediate danger. You can always defend yourself! I would like to see a national recognization of the rights of law abiding citizens to carry weapons for self defense. That will probably never happen.
Just my thoughts on the issue.. Blitz

Handguns are my least favorite firearms… because their specific design is solely for killing people; and idiots and criminals too easily obtain (and use) them. I wouldn’t cry if all handguns disappeared forever. However, if you possess one, make sure it’s registered, carry and store it legally, educate yourself with proper firearms training (safety and marksmanship), keep your training current, and always remember the basics of firearm safety that I learned in the armed services:

1. Always treat your weapon as if it is loaded.
2. Never point the muzzle of your weapon at anything that you do not intend to kill.
3. Keep your finger off of the trigger until you are ready to fire.

These weapons are not play-toys or talismans. No one should ever know that you are carrying. Do not show them in public… if you want other shallow idiots to think that you’re a big man, do it by showing off your muscle car or your trophy wife… for my fellow geeks that would translate as hard drive space and processor speed.

Blitzfike has a lot of good info… warning shots and shooting to wound are for TV, movies, and naval warships. These kinds of shots will likely to get you killed and have the possibility of striking innocents. A double tap, center mass, will almost always take down a target. One shot may not do the job. I don’t agree with taking the head shot, though. It’s a difficult shot to make and you’ll have a hard time convincing others that you were only trying to defend yourself or protect others.

If you can not carry a weapon off of safe you shouldn’t be carrying them. When the time comes that you need to use it you should be ready and able imo. Flipping a safety in the heat of the moment is bad. If you positively absolutely have to have a safety get a gun with a grip safety (like 1911) and keep the slide safety off when in holster and only flip on when in storage. Glock has a trigger safety that is also good. My Sig has no safety and I like it that way. The only thing that makes a gun safe is being in the hands of a competent shooter who fully understands the consequences of using deadly force hence the training class.

Catalyst, your unforgivably ignorant and boot opinion concerning safeties is noted. Please make sure not to be standing next to anything living while you play at being Yosemite Sam. The safety is not designed for the shooter’s sense of well-being or pleasure. Safeties exist to prevent unnecessary loss of life. The safeties you listed do nothing other than prevent a misfire from a dropped weapon, which most basic weapons since the Vietnam era have long since overcome. Safeties are so important that even the US military employs safeties in their most basic infantry weapons. The TOE anti-tank missile has a safety. The Stinger has a safety. The AT-4 has a safety. The LAW has a safety. (By the way, the previously listed weapons are f***ing rockets.) Military-issued Browning 9 mil handguns have safeties. Even the M16A2 service rifle has a safety… there is a reason for this policy and design. The only weapons that I have used in the field that lacked safeties were crew-served, open-bolt, link-fed automatic weapons like the M2 .50 cal, the M240G, the SAW, and the 60… and these weapons are for military applications only. Your comments show a lack of field experience, whether military or otherwise. Unless you’ve ever had to flip a safety in combat or as a law enforcement officer, your opinion is untested conjecture.

Your information concerning Australia bears honest review. However, your historical listing of nations employing “gun control” is wrapped in a degree of naivety or willful ignorance only seen in Soviet and Red Chinese propaganda. These millions did not die due to gun control, gun restrictions, or gun seizures.

13 million Jews and others were killed by the Nazis because they didn’t have guns? Have you ever bothered to talk to any Jewish survivors of the Holocaust? Do you honestly believe that the 6 million Jews that were executed by the state of Germany between 1933 and 1945 died because they lacked a legal right to arms, or had a restricted right to arms? Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, Negroes, the insane, the mentally retarded, the physically handicapped, Jews, resistance fighters, Socialists, Communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others were not killed because they had illegal guns or surrendered weapons to the state. They died because the Nazi regime considered them to be “life unworthy of life” or they occupied territory that the Nazis considered part of their “lebensraum” (living room).

Soviet dissidents, whether they had arms or not, were hunted down and exterminated by Stalin’s purges. The assassination of Trotsky was carried out by the complications that followed from being struck with a pick-ax. More people have died in Cambodia from mines than from guns since 1975… which would suggest that gun control, in spite of the abominable genocide, was a good thing by comparison. Please stop regurgitating someone else’s BS or propaganda.

You stated, “The next time some idiot wants gun control, kindly remind them of this history lesson.”

First, make sure that what you’re passing is truly a history lesson, and not a steaming crock of sh**. Second, define your terms. Americans already exist in a state of government supported and enforced gun control… but by no means is this a condition whereby arms are illegal or sought for seizure. The problem was not gun control in the historical cases you listed. The problem was that in each country the people, with and without arms, were persecuted by a tyrannical government.

Dez,

Pete has argued and I would tend to agree here that an armed population is a deterrent against tyranny. Unless the governing body is insane, and especially back in the early years were WMD weren’t so widely available; if you’re faced with a majority of the population that is armed and can defend itself, you’re apt to think twice about rounding up “life unworthy of life”, less your own army is left at each armed residence shot in the head.

Catalyst:

I hope to purchase a firearm in the next few years and it will most certainly have a safety. I would argue that your point:

“If you can not carry a weapon off of safe you shouldn’t be carrying them…”

…is really machismo and rather ignorant. Anything that in some form or another can cause bodily harm or death will usually have safety measures to better protect its intended and sometimes not intended user. (i.e. cars – safety belts and brakes, portable heaters – tip switches, hairdryers – breaker plugs). I would gladly argue the point that if you’re not trained to keep control of your emotions and find that safety in a tense situation, you should not be carrying a gun, either. It may be one more step you need to take before aiming center of mass at a person who’s just violated your home, but it’s one more moment you have to think, one more moment you have to breathe, and one more moment you have before changing your or someone else’s life forever. (especially if that person who just broke into your home, was your teenage daughter/son who was just coming in from sneaking out earlier in the night.)

I enjoy shooting, I really do. 90 percent of the weapons I’ve used for target practice have had a safety and to be honest, I’ve felt better holding something in my hand that not only makes me take those few extra seconds, but protects me from a possible accident as well.

“Self defense” — hahah.

How many guns do you have? Do you go camping and shoot into the river? You can’t argue that your guns are strictly for self-defense when you enjoy shooting them at targets, or at tennis balls in the river. Sorry. Which is why I offered up the comparisons to other “every-day” uses of recreation and necessity. There are safety measures/devices on most everything we use, and personally, I would steer clear of something so capable of ending my life, if it did not have some measure of security to protect me.

I was discussing buying a gun with a co-worker the other day and she said she loves her glock. When she mentioned it had no safety, my gut reaction was to ask her about other models she enjoyed that had a safety.

Actualy… I’ll save you from having to re-read my post and missing what I’m saying again. I only spoke about “concealed carry” weapons for self defense not having a safety. My Mini-14 has a safety and I use it when not firing and I engage it even before I move from my target. Your nonsensical comparisons do not apply to “concealed carry” weapons.

“If the law is on your side, argue the law. If the facts are on your side, argue the facts. If neither the law nor the facts are on your side, assassinate the character of your opponent.”

If you can not “carry” a weapon off of safe you shouldn’t be carrying them. The topic of the post is “Open Carry”. The word “carry” is synonomous with “concealed carry” when speaking about “concealed carry”

When you quote me stating:
————————————-
““If you can not ***carry*** a weapon off of safe you shouldn’t be ***carrying*** them…”

…is really machismo and rather ignorant”"
————————————-
Is a character assault, not a debate or discussion.

A trigger safety does NOT keep you from making mistakes. Once you pulled the gun you must fire the gun. There is no change of heart. If you do not understand this you do NOT need to be carrying a fire-arm. Once you have made up your mind to react, you MUST react. Life and death situations are not for the faint of heart. If you need a safety on your firearm for any of the reasons you stated other than safe storage then you do not need to carry one, because it will be used on you while you stand in stunned silence rethinking your position on lethal force and when is the right time to use it.

Kate,

With some minor semantic differences, I agree with you. I have not provided an opinion in this thread concerning changing the level of existing gun control. I’ve only stated that I like handguns the least out of all firearms.

“Pete has argued and I would tend to agree here that an armed population is a deterrent against tyranny.”

I do not see Pete arguing that case in this particular thread, though I am sure he has stated such elsewhere. I agree, but I take it a step further… an armed and ORGANIZED citizenry is such a deterrent. Whether or not an armed population will deter crime is another matter. I am honestly interested in hearing more details from Catalyst concerning Australia’s gun control consequences. However, my experience in other countries, in which the populations were armed, has shown me people are sometimes indistinguishable from criminals. Armed populations that are not organized or trained have sometimes turned into opportunistic mobs, for looting, rape, and revenge killings. I don’t know for sure if that would apply to the US, but my memory of the last run of LA riots robs me of hope for groups of altruistic citizens.

“…is really machismo…”

I whole-heartedly agree. Whether one is for or against the use of safeties, the comment was poor.

“…one more moment you have before changing your or someone else’s life forever.”

I agree, and use this statement to answer, in part, GK’s question about the purpose of a safety. If employed, safeties can prevent misfires. Safeties can prevent panic shots. Safeties give shooters one more reminder of the gravity of their actions. Even for the first shot of a revolver, which has no safety switch, has a much harder trigger pull (unless illegally modified). The gent that prefers the weapon with no safety because he’s concerned that he may forget that the safety is “on” tells me he’s not thinking when engaging a target, or not properly trained, and therefore a danger to himself and all around him. If a person can (attempt to) fire while in a panic, and yet forget the safety, that same person can also forget the cardinal rule of keeping one’s finger off of the trigger until ready to fire when using a handgun with no safety… once again, an argument for the use of a safety.

I do agree with GK concerning training… range firing for simple marksmanship, though fun, is not complete training. Timed trials over varying distance with multiple clips/speed loaders and drawing from the holster are critically necessary parts of training. I also agree with GK that in such training one acquires the learned response (which becomes almost instinctive) for using a weapon with a safety.

Catalyst,

“Once a weapon is pulled you have already made up your mind to use lethal force.”

I disagree. Once you’ve pulled a weapon you’ve made a decision that lethal force MAY be necessary. Once you pull the trigger you have decided that lethal force IS necessary. It is true that you may be faced with making that decision before you draw, but your assumption is not true except in that case. Some may view my argument as a point of semantics. I view it as a point of real world experience.

“If you can not carry a weapon off of safe you shouldn’t be carrying them…”

If the military felt the same way that you do, there would be no safeties on any military weapons… or we’d have lots of safety-less weapons and no one to fire them.

“I can not recall there ever being a time in history that a soldier had to make a split second decision with an AT-4, LAW, or TOE. Tanks and bunkers just don’t sneak up on people…”

Apparently you’ve never fired one of these weapons… nor have you ever served or had cause to fire one. I have… and you’d better believe that tanks, bunkers, and attack helicopters can and do sneak up on you. You seem to have a Napoleonic view of combat. True, bunkers don’t move… but soldiers and Marines on patrol do, and sometimes they happen upon a bunker by surprise… and sometimes who shoots first determines life or death… and sometimes a misfire gives the enemy advanced warning of your presence and location. True, tanks are noisy… but combat is often noisy from gunfire, mortars, artillery, your own tanks and air support, your Sergeants and Officers barking orders, etc… something known as “the fog of war.” You may or may not hear a tank coming. You may or may not be blessed with open terrain in which to view an incoming tank. Whether you know it or not, tanks have improved since WWII, and most are very fast, fire quickly, and can target you from a long loooong way away… again, sometimes who shoots first determines life or death. But whether such a tank is up close or far away, sometimes you just don’t have enough time to call in air support or artillery. I hope my examples illustrate how military and civilian defensive postures can be, and often are, similar and appropriate for discussion in this thread. I think we won’t need to cover helicopters, recon patrols, entrenched defenses, or ambushes.

“Gun control wasn’t the only liberty that those countries gave up, but it is indicative of the passive mentality toward the loss of liberty that eventualy led to the death of millions.”

No kidding… but that was not the argument you were presenting. You covered nothing but gun control and presented it as the SOLE reason for the deaths of millions. Quoting you: “The total number of victims slaughtered during the 20th century because of gun control: 52 million.” That is what I was objecting to… not to having or rescinding gun control, but that this was your conclusion.

“self defense” weapon

No such firearm exists. Just like any other tool, it’s all in how you use it.

“*The Smith and Wesson 36 Lady Smith Revolver is one of the most widey recomended carry weapons for women. Its simple operation, small size, low maintenance, and missing complex safety mechanism’s make it the best choice for self defense.”

That statement may be true, but it begs the question, “Recommended by whom?… Smith & Wesson?” As for “complex safety mechanism”… you’ve got to be kidding me. That comment is not only sexist but it insults the intelligence of women. If any person cannot handle the complexity of a safety, the trigger is going to boggle his mind… not to mention the clip release. This is an example of a person who should not be carrying a firearm of any kind, loaded or unloaded.

“*”Millions of Glock pistols (trigger safety only) sold in over 100 countries to government and civilian customers underlines Glock’s dominant role of the market.”

Glock is dominant in the market for two main reasons: popularity (sales) and performance… as were the varying models of the .45, the .357, and the .38 that preceded it. It’s a reliable weapon, lightweight, easy to reload, and holds more ammo than any revolver… and when government agencies buy them in quantity, they are relatively cheap. Some may consider the lack of a safety a bonus, but this is not the primary, secondary, or even tertiary reason for why Glock’s sales dominate the market.

My apologies to you Catalyst. I have been a tactless horse’s back-end. But I assure you that I am not picking on you. I just don’t agree with you. Please get us some more info on Australia’s woes. That looks quite interesting.

“If the law is on your side, argue the law. If the facts are on your side, argue the facts. If neither the law nor the facts are on your side, assassinate the character of your opponent.”

I love you Catalyst.

Blitzfike,

I think you misunderstand me. You and I will never have to declare a legal war on each other. I have no designs to add legislation to increase or decrease our current level of gun control. I am also very conservative when it comes to constitutional freedoms, so I do not vote for candidates who seek to limit the second amendment further. If I ever tried to change the law, you’d never hear from me again, as my own mother would shoot me. My uncles will likely be there too, helping her to locate a hollow-point or some 00 buckshot. Ironically, I hope she gets me with a handgun, ’cause I’ll die quick. If she gets me with a shotgun, it’ll be messy and I may suffer for a spell.

I just don’t like handguns in principal. I honestly have never heard of a handgun made specifically for hunting game… I feel that such a firearm would be impractical as far as accuracy is concerned, but it’s got to be a lot more comfortable lugging around than a rifle or two and the ammo.

I agree with you on the shotgun… that is a respectable all around survival tool.

Interesting read, I Just out of habit always use my safety,I do not “carry”. however It’s a personal choice if the gun has one to use it or not.

Dez says:

Somewhere in the web-iverse sits a lone man (with a belly scar) at his computer… grinning with evil glee at the chaos he has inspired… (and his horns have become entangled) (if the furies are out of balance, as they are in Lo Pan…)

Foxbat… I think I just got fragged by a quote bomb… or something close to it.

Maniacal laughter.

Blitz,

It ain’t no hunting pistol, but…

My folks have an old Luger that you might find interesting… very weird… made during or shortly after WWI, it has an elongated barrel, long range sights, and a clip-on wooden stock so that you can fire it from the pocket of your shoulder. It also has two 15 round clips and a barrel mag that attaches to the bottom of the grip. It also comes fully contained in a leather case with belt straps. I don’t recall the caliber, but it is likely .22 or .32

The pride of my personal collection is a 20 gauge double barreled Beretta, breach loaded, which I hunt dove and quail with. Yes, it has a safety… It isn’t as convenient as a pump action or an automatic, or as powerful as a 12 gauge, but its use forced me to be very accurate and very fast at reloading. Somewhere I have an old 10 gauge double barreled goose gun that my dad used to own. One of the triggers is a nasty hair trigger. I also have a very old 25-35 lever action Winchester rifle… like you used to see John Wayne use, as well as similar in design as the one from the show “The Rifleman.”

…and then I woke up.

You can’t trick me! Pete put you up to this, didn’t he? You’re a plant, who’s goal is to stir the pot with more controversy. Shame on you, Pete, for abusing us so!

What? The tool is not at fault? We are responsible for our own actions? OUT-rageous! Somebody silence that man before we are forced to acknowledge or own culpability!

One of the actors in an old western once said… “I’m a peace lovin’ man, and there’s nothin’ more peaceful than a deadman…” Just a juxtaposition on the arguement made with tongue in cheek.. Blitz

“”Harrison Bergeron” is a dystopian science fiction short story written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and first published in October, 1961. The theme of the story is egalitarianism and is set by the first line: “The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.” Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the story was re-published in the author’s collection, Welcome to the Monkey House in 1968.”

“This short novel is an allegory in which animals play the roles of the Bolshevik revolutionaries and overthrow and oust the human owners of the farm, setting it up as a commune in which, at first, all animals are equal; class and status disparities soon emerge, however, between the different animal species. The novel describes how a society’s ideologies can be manipulated and twisted by individuals in positions of social and political power, including how a utopian society is made impossible by the corrupting nature of the very power necessary to create it.”

If only we were all equeal what a Utopian society we would have!

You nailed it!

“If the law is on your side, argue the law. If the facts are on your side, argue the facts. If neither the law nor the facts are on your side, assassinate the character of your opponent.”

Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got… an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.
[...] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now if I could find some kind of darkly tinted spaghetti strainer glasses I might be able to filter out the nonsense that is Nina’s opinion.

Catalyst, I like Vonnegut… good reference… good author, weird, but good.