Concealed Carry

I am not against the U.S. Constitution, I am not against the 2^nd amendment’s right to keep and bear arms, I am not against gun ownership in general, but I am solidly against the push to legalize concealed carry in the country at large.

Here’s what I foresee as the result of concealed carry legislation.  All of a sudden, all those law-abiding folks packing concealed firearms will imagine everyone else with a concealed firearm.  Now I realize that that is part of their argument: no nut case will dare to do anything stupid when he could be cut down by anyone carrying a concealed firearm (of course, many if not most of the mass killings in the last fifteen years have resulted in the gun man killing himself, so it wouldn’t stop THAT kind of nut case, would it?).  But here is another way to look at it.  Every concealed carry person will imagine everyone else as carrying, and they will be at the ready, always.  And, inevitably, someone will make a movement that some concealed carry person interprets as threatening and out will come HIS firearm (or out will come THEIR firearms) and someone (or more than someONE) will get shot, by accident.  Imagine the 2012 Aurora theater shooting where 12 innocent people lost their lives (and 70 more were injured), think of all those concealed carry guys reacting swiftly to the lone gun man and everyone aiming at the original gun man, imagine the cross-fire carnage.  Worse yet, imagine YOU reacting to the gun man closest to you and how many guns will be aimed not at the original gun man but at some concealed carry owner trying to do a good deed.

So, here is what I think: let the states experiment with concealed carry, one by one, and let’s revisit the subject at a federal level in ten or so years when we have a track record of what happened where.  OK?