Carry at Work

[Tennessee Gentleman]

and I'd certainly have had no right to ride the drama llama around proclaiming my integrity.

I like the "drama llama" term a lot. Much better than "high horse".

Yes I empathize with your ambivalence too. Of course you know Mr. Cothran isn't really carping much about this. He accepted his firing but had no remorse for his actions.

 

[born2climb]

For what it's worth, I want to be on Tennessee Gentleman's side when the going gets rough. At least he'll likely be armed with more than an "I Obey All The Rules" pin to stick the perp with.

 

[Tennessee Gentleman]

Well I'll just pull out my "Gun Free Zone" sign and they will have to leave without shooting anyone!

 

[RX-79G]

TG,
It is entirely on topic to compare the moral responsibility a property owner has to a single employee's safety vs. the safety of everyone. You want the untrained employee's desire for his personal safety to override the owner's moral responsibility to protect everyone from negligent death.

If an employer had the ability to control the training and equipment of armed employees it would be different, but his only choice is to endorse any fool endangering the workplace with their incompetence, or allow no one.

Given only those two choices, the only moral choice for an employer is to protect the greater group of people.

One person who wants to carry is a special interest. That special interest should not trump group safety on private property unless the owner wants it to.

If this was about soldiers, cops or any other category of person who's competence was certified, it would be different. Foolish people with guns ARE dangerous.

 

[Brian Pfleuger]

Yeah but like the choice of eat or starve it's not a real one. At least as far as the issue I am addressing.

That's a false dichotomy too. Those aren't the only two choices.
No one in 21st Century America ever starved to death unless by choice. Frankly, no one goes hungry or homeless, except by choice.
I have, in fact, quit a good paying job, while my wife was on fertility treatments even, because the owner of the business was a lying, cheating thief.
We had to sell our house and we lost an investment property through short sale.
It was the right thing to do.

We don't have to be perfect to encourage right choices. Any of you guys ever make an unsafe mistake with a gun? I'll bet every one of you has. Do you still encourage and insist on safe gun handling by yourself and others or do you not bother, since you'd be a hypocrite?

Moving doesn't have to be expensive either. I helped my sister move across several states, twice, and she was stone broke both times. She managed.

There are a lot of choices.

 

[Tennessee Gentleman]

RX,

Really you are off topic but I would refer you to this site: http://www.gunfacts.info/

and you can learn more about CCW holders and their accidents rates compared to police. Start on page 17 and move thru it.

Untrained people defend themselves successfully by the millions each year. After this post I will not debate you about training. But I think you need to know more facts. Hope you enjoy the read.

 

[Tennessee Gentleman]

There are a lot of choices.

There is a lot wrong factually with your post, particularly concerning homeless folk who I have worked with a bit. Many of them do not "choose" to be homeless.

A "choice" of feeding your family or getting murdered by a criminal is no choice. It is just immoral.

You are entitled to your opinion but in my opinion your "let 'em eat cake" choices are neither real nor particularly moral.

Rather than trade anecdotes all day about choices I will say we agree to disagree.

Also, I don't get your analogy about safe gun handling. Since all of us have been unsafe at some point with a gun that would in my view make insisting on good gun handling even more important.

I don't think Mr. Cothran had a real choice and I am glad he was able to defend himself. I'd rather he break some stupid immoral work rule than follow your guidance and be dead. But that's me.

 

[manta49]

Untrained people defend themselves successfully by the millions each year. After this post I will not debate you about training. But I think you need to know more facts. Hope you enjoy the read.

Millions of Americans defend themselves every year with firearms. I find that hard to believe or maybe I misunderstand what you are saying.

 

[Tennessee Gentleman]

Nope it's no misunderstanding. Gary Kleck, FSU professor has done the studies. Check that link I gave above.

 

[manta49]

Nope it's no misunderstanding. Gary Kleck, FSU professor has done the studies. Check that link I gave above.

If that's the case carrying a firearm in work might be a good idea. Then it depends where you get your statistics from and which ones you believe.

A 1993 nationwide survey of 4,977 households found that over the previous five years, at least 0.5% of households had members who had used a gun for defense during a situation in which they thought someone "almost certainly would have been killed" if they "had not used a gun for protection." Applied to the U.S. population, this amounts to (162,000) such incidents per year. This figure excludes all "military service, police work, or work as a security guard."

 

[RX-79G]

After this post I will not debate you about training. But I think you need to know more facts. Hope you enjoy the read.

I wasn't debating you about training, or even comparing accident rates between cops and CCW holders. You missed the point - there isn't even a minimum level of safety training necessary to CCW.

I made a very salient point that on private property, the property owner has ultimate moral and liability responsibility for his guests.

When the owner allows people who he has no idea what their competence level is carry, he's taking on the employee's liability and giving up his moral responsibility to control the safety related things on his property he has the ability to control.

When his dishwasher drops the pistol that he's been carrying on half cock (like some TFL members do) and shoots someone - the owner is going to pay the greatest price (aside from the dead person) and could have prevented it.


That's what you keep dancing around.


The reason you're avoiding the real question is that you, like many firearms enthusiasts, believe that firearms are the only solution to every safety problem. But firearms are not the only "arms" one can carry, and firearms are one of the few arms that do have a real danger to bystanders when mishandled. A baseball bat will also get you back to a parked car at night, but won't "just go off".

When an a business or property owner says "Don't bring a gun here", they are doing the only practical thing they can to prevent people who don't know how their gun works from killing someone at some point in the 2000 hours a year they spend at work.


And before you post more statistics at me, I have nearly been shot - twice - by "gun people". I'm a gun person, I like the sport and have carried for protection. If I owned a store, I would have to know the skills and equipment of any employee really, REALLY well before I let them bring a loaded gun to work. Because if they did hurt someone, I'd bear the guilt, shame and loss of income and property that would result from MY decision to have questionably trained shooters working in my store.

I challenge you to address the moral responsibility of the owner to avoid employee negligence in your next post.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

Of course it's a choice. It is a choice between two possible actions. The fact that you find both options unattractive does not mean there is no "real" choice.

Yeah but like the choice of eat or starve it's not a real one. At least as far as the issue I am addressing.

But the options you have offered are about as unreal as it's possible to get.

"Starve or get killed because you can't defend yourself." Get serious. I quit a job that I badly needed, because of the no gun policy of the employer, but neither my wife nor I starved and we didn't lose our house. We muddled through. When I quit, the employer assigned someone else to staff the closing shift, and insofar as I am aware no employee of the store was killed between the time I quit and the time they changed the close from 11:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. -- nor has any employee of the store been killed since.

So what you put forth as two diametrically opposed and extremely draconian possibilities are both extremely unlikely. Certainly, the possibility existed that if I had stayed I might have been mugged or even shot. And the possibility existed that I might not have been able to get by until I found alternate employment when I quit that job. But neither of those was ever even a high probability; they were only possibilities that had to be weighed against all other factors in making my ... choice.

Choice is choice, and you can't define choices away as NOT choices simply because they aren't attractive.

 

[Tennessee Gentleman]

I wasn't debating you about training, or even comparing accident rates between cops and CCW holders. You missed the point - there isn't even a minimum level of safety training necessary to CCW.

Your premise that CCW holders are a danger is false. Demonstrably so. Read the information I have linked for you. That is the problem with your argument. Therefore CCW holders pose less threat than other forms of employee negligence (particularly regarding automobiles) and so your argument is moot.

Sorry about that but those are the facts. Now as to your anecdotal experiences, I cannot comment as I do not know the facts of the matter.

Read what I linked or I will not discuss any more with you on this issue since we must have a factual basis to continue.

Your idea that CCW holders are a danger is not based in fact.

 

[Tennessee Gentleman]

Choice is choice, and you can't define choices away as NOT choices simply because they aren't attractive.

Yet Mr. Cothran's choice saved his life. Your personal experiences are just that; anecdotal, as there are plenty of other situations I have observed that choice or anther job was either non-existent or deeply hurtful to the family of the employee.

 

[Frank Ettin]

Your premise that CCW holders are a danger is false. Demonstrably so. Read the information I have linked for you. That is the problem with your argument. Therefore CCW holders pose less threat than other forms of employee negligence (particularly regarding automobiles) and so your argument is moot...

I'm sorry, but that's no good. You linked to a site with a lot of information about a lot of gun related topics. It's not our job to search that site for material to support your claims. You need to direct us to exactly what information is material and demonstrate that it's relevant and supports your claims.

We do have some studies, like Kleck's, which show large numbers of defensive gun uses (DGUs). We also have some studies, such as the one alluded to by manta49 in post 150, showing far fewer. Both sets of studies have generated challenges.

We know from reported incidents that some people have successfully defended themselves. Such reports tend to have little information about the defender's training or skill levels. We don't seem to have much data on DGU failures; but as Nassim Nicholas Taleb points out repeatedly in his books Fooled by Randomness, the Hidden Role of Chance (Random House, 2004) and The Black Swan, the Impact of the Highly Improbable (Random House, 2007), "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

We know that private citizens have misused their guns, although again we don't have comprehensive data. Nonetheless, incidents such as Douglas Sheets, Jerome Ersland, and Gail Gerlach suggest that some private citizens indeed make error deciding when or how to use force.

 

[Tennessee Gentleman]

Frank,
I told him what page to go to. Moreover, the chapter index is very easy to read as well.

RX is basing his argument on what HE THINKS is a danger and the stats in the pages I gave him show that not to be true.

RX THINKS that because CCW holders may not get a lot of training that it therefore makes them dangerous and that is a FALSE assumption. There are millions of CCW holders throughout the US with little or no training and who successfully defend themselves without harming innocents. The argument is false.

BTW you know Kleck's studies were replicated by Donahue and he found virtually the same conclusions? Millions of DGUs each year.

Gun Facts is not an academic tome that is hard to read. It is easy to check AND supported with extensive footnotes. I always keep the most current one on hand.

 

[Frank Ettin]

Frank,
I told him what page to go to. Moreover, the chapter index is very easy to read as well....

Don't be silly. In fact you said exactly:

...Start on page 17 and move thru it...

In any case, that is no way to support a claim. To support a claim, you show the data and source and demonstrate how the data supports the claim.

...RX is basing his argument on what HE THINKS is a danger and the stats in the pages I gave him show that not to be true....

Really? Exactly what stats and how do they show that people with guns can't be a danger. Indeed that fact that with a gun one can project considerable force and be a danger to others is the very reason a gun is a useful tool for defending oneself from a potentially lethal attack.

Sheets and Ersland certainly show that a person with a gun can misuse it and be an unjustifiable danger. Sheets apparently did not commit his manslaughter during the course of his employment, but if he had, his employer would have faced considerable liability. Ersland was on the job at the time, but I don't know if he was an employee or the owner of the pharmacy. If the former, it would be interesting to see what happened with his employer.

...There are millions of CCW holders throughout the US with little or no training and who successfully defend themselves without harming innocents. The argument is false....

So let's see some actual evidence to prove that.

 

[Tennessee Gentleman]

In any case, that is no way to support a claim. To support a claim, you show the data and source and demonstrate how the data supports the claim.

Actually, RX made the claim and provided no evidence to support it. I linked him to evidence that says otherwise but he and apparently you won't read it. Not much I can show there.

As to these anecdotal incidents which show exactly bupkis. Yeah people may misuse guns, and cars and on and on but RX's claims about CCW in general are not factual. They are just his opinions.

If you haven't downloaded (its free) and read Gun Facts then I recommend you do so.

So let's see some actual evidence to prove that.

http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/kleck2.html

This might be a good start.

 

[Frank Ettin]

In any case, that is no way to support a claim. To support a claim, you show the data and source and demonstrate how the data supports the claim.

Actually, RX made the claim and provided no evidence to support it. I linked him to evidence that says otherwise but he and apparently you won't read it....

His so called claim is essentially the hypothesis that an employer may reasonably be concerned about the potential liability that could be associated with employees have no or minimal training could present a liability risk.

Your so called data shows only that there are a reasonably large number of successful DGUs. Your so called data includes no data regarding circumstance or the training of the defenders involved. And even showing that people have successfully defended themselves does not establish in any rigorous way that there is no risk nor the extent of such risk.

Showing successes does not show an absence of failures. Ersland, Sheets and perhaps Gerlach (we'll know more about him after his trial) in fact demonstrate the possibility of failures. All we're lacking is quantification.

 

[Tennessee Gentleman]

His so called claim is essentially the hypothesis that an employer may reasonably be concerned about the potential liability that could be associated with employees have no or minimal training could present a liability risk.

No, it is more this:

I doubt most gas station owners view their $9 an hour employees as the type of people that are likely to always make great life decisions.

or this:

Just reading this board for a few weeks would convince me that the average gun enthusiast is fairly unlikely to be a practical minded, well trained and smart weapon user.

Those are claims and there is no evidence to support them. Just opinion.

Your so called data

Data from numerous academic studies from a well known and respected researcher is "So-called data"? What data would you accept?

As to the risk, again look at what actually happens. Look at the stats. Other than these three anecdotes you keep dutifully repeating what do the overall stats about DGUs and all these CCW holders shooting up innocent people. Where is your "so-called" data?