2. If he had a carry permit, he should have known better. I hope he never carries again. He has shown himself to be irresponsible. However, unless charged and convicted, he has every right to carry. You don’t lose rights for just being an idiot or there would be millions of us walking around with duct tape on our mouths.

3. David, please thoughtfully consider The Puddle Pirate’s very civil and very logical arguments. By your stated arguments above, if one person had a fatal reaction to a medicine, it should be removed from the market. That would mean no antibiotics or almost any other prescription medicine. While I can understand the emotional aspect of what you say, it just doesn’t make sense to force your view on everyone. I’m sure there were many people who shopped at the Von Maur store in the Westroads Mall, Virginia Tech, Coloumbine, etc. (gun free zones all) who had the same “it could never happen here, to me” attitude. Please reconsider. Bad things most often happen to people who don’t think they will be affected by bad things. Criminals and crazies don’t respect gun free zones. They think of them as target-rich environs.

4. Puddle Pirate, thank you for your informed, patient, and civil comments on this post.

The first is that the ‘security guard’ in Colorado was not a security guard. It was someone with a concealed carry permit who was at the church. For some reason it got reported as a security guard. But that was not true.

Read this:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226493636/davekopel-20/
by Professor John Lott, Jr. of Yale Law School
Quote from above:
“For those states from which data are available before and after the passage of such [nondiscretionary concealed handgun] laws, the mean per-capita death rate from mass shootings in those states plummets by 69 percent.”

From http://www.davidkopel.com/2A/OpEds/ConcealedCarryNow.htm Quoting Professor Lot:

Lott writes that if counties now without “shall-issue” concealed carry requirements “had been subject to state concealed-handgun laws and had thus been forced to issue handgun permits, murders in the United States would have declined by about 1,400… the number of rapes in states without nondiscretionary laws would have declined by 4,200, aggravated assaults by 60,000, and robberies by 12,000.”

Guns can be handled safely. And there are safe guns that will not go off by accident. It’s up to the gun owner to make sure it’s safe.
As far as your fears are concerned your chances of dieing in a car accident going to the mall are thousands if not millions of times higher than getting shot accidentally by someone who has a concealed carry permit. Should we also ban cars since they cause more deaths than anything else in the United States?

Guns are a lot like terrorists actions. The chance if you getting shot is extermly low in most areas and having law abiding citizens carrying them actually reduces your chances of gettign shot, but we are emotional creatures who fear what we do not understand.
What would your stance be if instead of being present at a misfire you were saved by a person with a concealed carry permit just before a gang member shot you in the head? Or shot your child in the head? Would you be thanking him or her?

This is not to say that concealed carry owners should not be held accountable for their actions. They should be trained. They should be required to refresh their training. They should be responsible and those who aren’t should be dealt with. But fear is not a way to deal with guns in general. You shouldn’t be afraid of guns, you should be afraid of the type of person who would use a gun, or anything else to hurt someone.

When seconds count the police are minutes away.

Weapons are banned in prision but they still exist as does murder.

Countries who have banned guns altogether still have criminals with guns.

Sorry.. I’m on a bit of a soap box but I have lived around guns my whole life and never seen anyone shot accidentally. But then I was always taught to respect them.

This accident could have killed someone but everyone seems to just be shrugging this off by saying “well, he had a concealed carry permit”. If these permits are used as an excuse for accidents such as these than I don’t think their worth keeping.

Oh … I agree with you that the TSA regulations are silly, to put it mildly.

It also strike me as a tad bit ridiculous that people can’t take bottled water on a plane but we can take handguns to the mall.

One thing that softened my stance on this a little is that a business can apparently ban guns, as the K-Mart is now doing. While I still think concealed carry permits do more harm than good, this makes it a little easier to deal with.

Can you elaborate a bit? I’d like to understand what leads you to think that concealed carry permits do more harm than good. For starters, how do you quantify that claim?

One thing that softened my stance on this a little is that a business can apparently ban guns, as the K-Mart is now doing. While I still think concealed carry permits do more harm than good, this makes it a little easier to deal with.

As for the man, they’ve already said he won’t be charged. After thinking about it I have some serious questions about that. Did the man have the safety on? Shouldn’t it be illegal to carry a gun in a pocket rather than a proper holster? I’m sure this was an accident, but I think you’re right about training classes or revoking his permit.

I also read the comments and that’s where I disagree. How can this one incident cause you to decide against carry permits? Does that mean when a person is killed by a car, we shouldn’t allow people to drive? Of course not, that’s silly.

So how do you decide to allow/disallow carry permits? Hopefully not on a single incident. Recent events in Colorado showed what a single armed person can do when a renegade enters a premise with weapons. The security guard who took down the gunman at the Colorado church saved lives. Yes, it bothers me knowing the person next to me at K-Mart might have a gun, but it bothers me more knowing some lunatic could come in shooting and no one could stop him.

In this case, I believe the man should be charged with something. At a minimum, his gun or the permit should be taken away for a time, he should have additional training or something equal. I think of it as if he were my son, what would I do? I’d make him learn the responsibility. The next time this happens, someone could be hurt or killed. He needs to learn how to properly handle the gun or others (like you) will take away his rights.