Why Do You Carry Concealed?
- Thread starter lukem
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Jason Brumley
New member
I'd just rather have one and not need it, than to need one and not have it. Kinda like a condom. Be prepared.
I'm a small middle-aged woman. With all of the craziness in the world I carry concealed to protect myself. I have a concealed carry permit, and a purse made for concealed carry. This way, I can protect myself and others if ever necessary. I practice regularly at a range to keep up my competency level, have taken handgun training courses, and consider myself a pretty good shot! So, I pray I never have to use my gun and that it stays concealed, but I'm ready if needed!
I carry concealed because I have a wife and three kids and I value their lives a lot more than the scumbags that make the second ammendment necessary. My wife carries also, and as my kids get older I take each of them to the range and teach them to shoot and teach them gun safety. We have the right to bear arms, so my family takes advantage of it. Better to be prepaired than caught unaware.
MilShooter
New member
While I don't want to lecture to you, I will - but just a little bit. I'm sure you agree that in order to protect yourself through the use of your firearm, you must possess your firearm. Consider that many, many crimes involve what was, in the past, called "purse snatching". A fleet-footed criminal may be able to grab your purse and run away from you. Your handle here of "Pokeylady" suggests to me that you will not be successful in running after the perpetrator. In that instance, you've lost not only your purse, but your weapon as well.
It has been suggested that women (or others) who carry their firearms in a purse or something similar, reconsider their decision. Another argument is that, stored in a purse, the firearm is not immediately accessible. My second argument is discussed above.
I would hate for something like this happen to you. I urge you to reconsider your carry method. Some women like a shoulder holster because many women (evidently) wear jackets or sweaters more frequently than men. My best lady-friend carries in an ankle holster. I know of other women who use a high-rise pancake holster. There are lots of choices.
Please consider what I've said. Criminals like to have easy targets - and a dangling purse is very inviting. They would not immediately realize that they stole your firearm, but when they got around to it, they would have hit the jackpot! I shudder to think about the turn of events if the perpetrator grabbed your purse and then stuck around, rummaging through it in your presence. Do you really want to be assaulted with your own weapon?
I offer this advice because you may not have thought about the consequences of carrying concealed in a purse. In the end, you have to do what you have to do. If there is no other way for you to comfortably carry, by all means, keep it in your purse.
Best regards.
MilShooter
New member
I think that maybe you don't understand how things are usually done with the Supreme Court. It is not really the complainants who choose what is ruled-upon. When a complaint is made, the Supreme Court decides what issues to rule on. In the case you mentioned, the Court decided to rule only on the constitutionality of whether or not the 2nd Amendment applied to states as an individual right. It was brought by McDonald because of the uncertainly left behind from the "District of Columbia v Heller" case wherein it was determined that Heller had the right to have a handgun in his home, regardless of the laws of Washington DC. There, the Court remained silent on broader rights - they limited their ruling ONLY to the constitutionality of the Washington, DC laws forbidding handgun ownership.
The Court almost always decides to limit their decisions to very specific issues and to ignore the broader issues brought in the original complaint(s). The Court does not rule on abstractions - they rule on very specific issues. And the issue before them was the "is the 2nd Amendment an individual right and does the 2nd Amendment apply to states" - the issues that was not answered in "Heller". One tool they use to narrow their choice of "what to rule upon" is whether or not the complainant has "standing" to argue before the court. They have to show specifically that they experienced harm from a specific law. Chicago held that the "Heller" case did not apply to them - but rather only to Washington DC.
By way of a brief example, the Court is now deciding only upon the legality of the mandate to buy health insurance, and not the constitutionality of the whole health care law. Why? Because no one yet has standing to pursue legal action by demonstrating damages. And that is because the law has not yet fully been implemented. Once it is implemented, there may be an avalanche of filings against various aspects of the law by people who believe they've been harmed by the legislation. Until they've been directly harmed, they have no "standing" before the Court.
And by the way, in "McDonald v Chicago", the case was brought by McDonald and not the NRA. The NRA filed a suit "NRA v Chicago" by a "Petition for a Writ of Certiorari" with the 7th Circuit Court. (A Writ of Certiorari is basically a request to have the case reviewed by a higher court.) Their suit was incorporated into the McDonald complaint. The actual question asked by the NRA is as follows (verbatim from the Writ):
"Whether the right of the people to keep and
bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment to
the United States Constitution is incorporated into
the Due Process Clause or the Privileges or
Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment so
as to be applicable to the States, thereby invalidating
ordinances prohibiting possession of handguns in the
home."
If my memory serves me correctly, there were more than 30 Amicus briefs (also known as "Friend of the Court" briefs) filed by various legislators and states. In the end, the decision rendered by the Supreme Court AFFIRMED that the 2nd Amendment was an INDIVIDUAL RIGHT and not a collective right. By that measure, I'd say that the cases were rather successful.
Without the NRA, we would all be disarmed by now. You may not agree with everything they do, but to make the claims you've made about the NRA "Blowing it" is simply inaccurate. They work hard every day to protect our gun-owner rights. But they recognize that they must disassemble existing unconstitutional laws one by one. They can't do it all at once, and they MUST HAVE STANDING in order to bring a legal action. So they pick-and-choose among "test cases" and associate themselves with ones that (1) matter, and (2) stand a reasonable chance of success.
And so it goes...
David Newberry
cowboy
For protection of my family
I understand very well how the Supreme Court works. The NRA BLEW IT! The difference in Heller and McDonald is this: Heller was in a Federal Enclave...Washington, D.C. McDonald wasn't, and that case represented the rest of us that don't live in Washington, D.C.
No as to What the Court was ruling on...that is set forth in the brief, and the NRA didn't include it....specifically. But unspecifically, they actually did. AS a matter of fact, the Justice writing the Opinion actually mentioned the "right to KEEP and BEAR" arms several times, even though the "carry outside the home" specific wasn't put in the brief(which s my beef with them).
AS far as I'm concerned, from reading the Opinion, the Justice DID give us the right. However, it is basically a mute point now. 49 of the 50 States allow concealed carry anyway. Really, the only thing missing from the "concealed carry" or "carry" laws now, as I see it, is making the States "must issue", rather than "shall issue". Of course, the "OPEN CARRY" crowd wants that option in there too. And they have the right to have it. But, really, all this time spent on making laws to cover this angle, or that angle, is wasted time that needs to be spent on REAL issues that need to be fixed in our Country. We just need a Supreme Court decision that backs up the 2nd Amendment. All these laws are just are just reinforcing that the GOVT, be it Federal or State, has the RIGHT to "give" or "take" permission to Bear arms. I am TOTALLY against that premise. The Sates, nor Feds, have that right. Its not in their power to have that right..the right of gift or withholding. That right was SPECIFICALLY given to the INDIVIDUAL CITIZEN, and FORBIDDEN from the GOVT. How in the heck did we ever get to this stage in the first place? By not raising hell about the first gun law passed in this nation...the Sullivan Act.
And there is the Senate Bill for National Reciprocity that as been introduced. I hope it is pretty much like the House version that passed. The very fact that the bill was allowed to be introduced by Harry Reid says a lot about its chances of getting passed. Besides, the House version passed by a 2:1 margin. Contrary to what you hear on TV and read in some newspapers, this is NOT a Partisan issue. Many Democrats are just as heavily behind this "right to keep and bear arms" as Republicans. In fact, Harry Reid himself got funding for a very nice shooting range in Nevada.
No as to What the Court was ruling on...that is set forth in the brief, and the NRA didn't include it....specifically. But unspecifically, they actually did. AS a matter of fact, the Justice writing the Opinion actually mentioned the "right to KEEP and BEAR" arms several times, even though the "carry outside the home" specific wasn't put in the brief(which s my beef with them).
AS far as I'm concerned, from reading the Opinion, the Justice DID give us the right. However, it is basically a mute point now. 49 of the 50 States allow concealed carry anyway. Really, the only thing missing from the "concealed carry" or "carry" laws now, as I see it, is making the States "must issue", rather than "shall issue". Of course, the "OPEN CARRY" crowd wants that option in there too. And they have the right to have it. But, really, all this time spent on making laws to cover this angle, or that angle, is wasted time that needs to be spent on REAL issues that need to be fixed in our Country. We just need a Supreme Court decision that backs up the 2nd Amendment. All these laws are just are just reinforcing that the GOVT, be it Federal or State, has the RIGHT to "give" or "take" permission to Bear arms. I am TOTALLY against that premise. The Sates, nor Feds, have that right. Its not in their power to have that right..the right of gift or withholding. That right was SPECIFICALLY given to the INDIVIDUAL CITIZEN, and FORBIDDEN from the GOVT. How in the heck did we ever get to this stage in the first place? By not raising hell about the first gun law passed in this nation...the Sullivan Act.
And there is the Senate Bill for National Reciprocity that as been introduced. I hope it is pretty much like the House version that passed. The very fact that the bill was allowed to be introduced by Harry Reid says a lot about its chances of getting passed. Besides, the House version passed by a 2:1 margin. Contrary to what you hear on TV and read in some newspapers, this is NOT a Partisan issue. Many Democrats are just as heavily behind this "right to keep and bear arms" as Republicans. In fact, Harry Reid himself got funding for a very nice shooting range in Nevada.
LkWd_Don
Banned
I would agree that Concealed Carry is more than likely a term made up since our Founding Fathers drafted our Constitution.
However, the tone of your post gives the impression that our Founding Fathers would not have known that people would carry concealed. That I do believe is a highly mistaken perception. It is probably more a case of they did not think about concealed carry vs open carry as to them it was simply your right to carry.
I know that is wasn't considered wrong in that era to have a sidearm and then to wear a coat or jacket over it. So that tells me that our Founding Fathers would have been outraged at the laws that many of our several sovereign states have passed that do infringe on our ability to keep and bear arms.
Charles Austin Miller
New member
Well, except that statistics SHOW a drastic reduction in homicide rates in those states with Concealed Carry.
When I was taking my concealed carry class, both of our instructors were active police weapons trainers, and one of them was a former Marine weapons trainer. Our class lasted 13 hours, much longer than the typical concealed carry class, because the trainers insisted on an extended "deadly force" (gun law) portion of the class, as well as a more intense level of gun range training.
What our instructors stressed, over and over, was that the police are NOT here to "protect" the public, because that's a physical impossibility. At best, the modern police force can be considered an agency of "first response" — meaning, the police only RESPOND to reports of crime, they SELDOM actually prevent crime.
Our instructors emphasized that CIVILIANS who are armed and observant actually PREVENT FAR MORE CRIME than do police forces. Additionally, they emphasized that those who are trained in basic deadly force laws and basic firearms use are MORE LIKELY to think twice and are LESS LIKELY to use deadly force when the Moment of Truth arrives.
Now, these are professional LEOs saying that. These are experts on firearms and violent crime and gun laws. These are cops who agree and who teach that observant and armed Civilians do DETER CRIME better than a police force that arrives 15 to 45 minutes AFTER the FACT.
kensethfan
New member
Why Do You Carry Concealed?
I grew up around firearms and have been in one form of or another through my working life have had to carry a firearm as part of my job. I have also have been traveling more (road trips) in the last 4 years since meeting my girlfriend and we have come across some situations while on the road that I would have felt more comfortable knowing I had self defense options.
So in general I feel comfortable and have working knowledge of firearms there for why not use that for protection of my family and myself.
I grew up around firearms and have been in one form of or another through my working life have had to carry a firearm as part of my job. I have also have been traveling more (road trips) in the last 4 years since meeting my girlfriend and we have come across some situations while on the road that I would have felt more comfortable knowing I had self defense options.
So in general I feel comfortable and have working knowledge of firearms there for why not use that for protection of my family and myself.
Stegahorse
New member
CCW for personal protection as things have gotten dangerous out there.
Rayb
New member
I carry for all the reasons stated in this thread, mainly to protect myself and my family and because the Constitution says its my right. I have been carrying over 30 years (many of them before licenses were implemented) and have drawn once and never had to fire. I hope that record continues, but I know I will wnever have the regret of having needed it and not had it.
christison4
New member
I worked in an area we call the hood in Columbus , Ohio for 4 years . If you didn't carry down there your life was at risk .
I carry for the same reason why I wear a seatbelt. I never know when an idiot is going to do something to hurt me or my family. I wear both, but hope to never need either of them. I prefer concealed carry and I would never suggest anyone NOT open carry, but I wouldn't do it. I just feel like I would get hassled by the police and the public. And I can't be stopped. I'm a business owner and I am too busy to have the Libs mess with my flow. Also, I feel if a bad guy notices my open carried firearm, he might target me first to neutralize me before I could realize that a threat is upon me/us. I don't know... just carry, practice, drill and reverse. The public may not know it, but you're doing them a favor.
Kourtjestr
New member
Simple answer: because I can, and want to. If I won't defend myself, why should someone else?
