The main reason I think folks should carry...

If we leave aside the idea that we are likely to be assaulted at any moment, even when taking a shower, it does seem that people are helpful to one another under most circumstances. The bothersome thing is the way it sounds like most people here think the opposite.

The times you will help your neighbor and vice versa is when someone's in trouble. A tree fell down; there was a record snowfall; the car won't start. After 9/11 people didn't flee New York (unless they didn't live there--they just went home out on Long Island). People actually went there to help. It sort of throws into question the whole bug-out idea, even though there is officially an evacuation plan in place for the county. Only I don't know what it is. There's over a million people that live in this county. Lord knows where we'd all go that was worth going to. Do you suppose Harrisonburg could manage with an extra 100,000 people? For that matter, I don't think there's any general expectation that we would either need to evacuate or that we even could, given what normal traffic is like in the first place. Besides, the so-called Emergency Broadcast System made no announcements on 9/11 that I recall, but they did yesterday (tornado and flash flood alerts).

Basically, you're not on your own unless you want to be.
 
Helping behavior is very complex. If there is an immediate emergency, like a car on fire - that versus the bystander effect and one person or two helping draws in others.

Long term disasters where helping impacts you - may lead to not helping.

So when many planes were forced to land in Canada during 9/11, folks took in the passengers. They knew they would be gone.

If they were to be permanent residents in an end of the world scenario - they probably won't have been allowed to land.

Even if they had hammers.

We are going far afield and I feel I might have to hammer this one closed in a bit.
 
Imagine the tactical nightmare of 11 (one "bad guy" and 10 "good guys"), scattered randomly through, say, a 4,000 square foot room, surrounded by perhaps 40 "innocents", none of whom know for sure which of the other 10 guys with guns are good or bad.

Mostly, should I ever find myself in a situation which requires that I use my firearm in public, I thank God that there's a very low chance of there being any other armed "good" guys.

These situations play out a lot nicer in our minds than they do in real life. I always win. I always make my shot. The bad guy always misses his. There are no other good guys shooting back at me. My bullets don't over-penetrate.....

If only it were so simple as the majority of people being good.
 
Good points, Mr. Meyer, even if they had hammers. And an even better point, Mr. Pfeuger, about the good guys and the bad guys. It's the age old question, what does a bad guy look like? Does he look like the guy in the mirror?
 
BlueTrain, are you familiar with Kitty Genovese? You say one isn't alone unless one chooses to be, but the problem with that is that I can think of at least two conditions where bystanders don't tend to get involved.

In the first condition, the bystanders are self-centered, and there is no gain for them in getting involved.

In the second condition - the one for which the Genovese incident was blamed - people would theoretically be willing to help, but each individually assumes that since others are present, others will handle it.

I suppose a third condition would be one where people would like to help, but aren't really sure how they can help.

I was raised by parents who expected me to get involved, and do the right thing. As a kid, I had the nickname "the policeman," because I tended to jump in when smaller kids were getting bullied. As an adult, I earned my commission in the Navy, and for many years I was often the senior guy present, and as such was expected to be responsible for those around me.

On my own time, and in years since, I've encountered situations where people needed help. In some of those, multiple people did in fact help. In at least a couple, since people at the scene knew that I was likely to help, they left it to me to handle the problem (dog fights; woman swimming out too far in a lake).

In the case of the woman out in the lake, two of the people who stood by and did nothing were nurses, both of whom had been lifeguards during high school or college - I know, because they told me afterward. (Good job - but we figured the Navy pilot would handle it...)

I have no faith in group think.

I have a bit more faith in the responses of group members, if they have effective leadership.

Otherwise, for my take on individuals vs people in groups, check Tommy Lee Jones' character, K, for his take on that in the first Men in Black.
 
oneounceload,

You seemed to have read my original post and gathered from it that I need to live on an isolated mountain somewhere. I find that comical. First, because you've kind of read that and now know my total pshycological makeup. As far as carry, I almost never do. Don't have the need in my life circle. I do have a CC permit just for when travels will take me to a place a firearm might be handy to have close. That permit and firearm did come in handy for me once. Glad I was armed that day. Self preservation was my motivation in that particular situation.
Click to expand...

Nothing comical at all. Guess you missed that first word "IF" in my response - but citing those instances makes one wonder........;)
 
I really don't care whether other people choose to carry or not so long as they don't try to tell me what I can or cannot do. The reason I carry is actually the exact opposite of the OP's: I am inherently distrustful of people and, as such, the only person I will count on to ensure my safety andthat of my loved ones is myself.

In my experience, an individual person may be extremely intelligent, cool-headed, and reliable, but people in general are stupid, panicky, and undependable. I am also a believer in personal responsibility and as such, I believe that the burden for providing for one's own safety rests on the individual. I am not a police officer, soldier, firefighter, meter maid, or other such public servant and as such I feel no duty to protect other people just as I have no expectation of other people to protect me. That is not to say that I would not help someone in need, but if I do it is out of my own compassion rather than a sense of duty.

Where the actions of other people do become my business, however, is when the right and ability to provide for one's own safety is taken away so that someone else can feel better about themselves or their own situation, particularly when there is no evidence that infringement upon that right actually serves the public good. The issue of campus carry is a particularly glaring example of this: when I think about the subject, what springs immediately to mind is not "Virginia Tech would've been different if one of those students had been armed" but rather "How many victims of the less-publicized, but just as tragic and reprehensible assaults, rapes, muggings, and murders were robbed of their god-given right to self-preservation because someone can't get past the steriotypical mental image of John Belushi with a ladies' undergarment on his head, a beer in one hand, and a gun in the other?"
 
Personally, I think non-criminal people should be able to carry a gun almost anywhere - including airplanes. Two places I don't believe licensed carry should be allowed are taverns (bars) and courthouses.
 
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