If we are going to apply the law of the jungle to a shopping mall, why even bother with the pretense of a civilized society? This is why human laws apply to humans, and not non-human animals who we can’t directly communicate with. The same thought process doesn’t occur with me, since even nasty people tend to be averse to eating each other. With dissimilar means and motivations I’d say there is no equivalence here.
Working even within this analogy, succumbing to fear would likely be fatal. Tigers could smell people’s fear, and know that a frightened person facing away from them is much easier prey than one who observes them and doesn’t flinch.
Assuming that everybody around me is part of my same civilized society. And assuming that Humbabella’s tiger isn’t there. And assuming that whatever supposed weapon has no other uses. With me. “society” is based upon communication, and I can still communicate with other people, whether or not they or I have weapons. My personal policy is usually that if somebody starts trouble with me, I use their weapon, because it’s advantageous, and I can travel more lightly.
Oh, and thanks for reminding me that I can lay off the police and military later today, I have been meaning to get around to it.
Being faced with a tiger is a situation where you don’t stop to apply a huge amount of rational thought. Your best chance of getting out alive is to let your unconscious mind pick a course of action and go with it (unless you are extremely experienced with being around tigers). A person with a gun in a mall is not the same kind of threat as a tiger in a mall is, and it’s nothing to go into run-on-instinct-because-I’m-95%-dying-here mode over. It’s still a threat (I also see people without guns as threats, cars as threats, overhead electrical wires as threats, glass panels on tall buildings as threats, etc.)
There is something super-crazy irrational about jumping someone and putting them in a chokehold based on the mere fact that they are carrying a gun. There is nothing irrational about preferring to be further from guns than closer to them. And yes, I absolutely 100% apply that to the police.
People carrying guns ARE communicating, just without words. And for the most part that communication would be, “Don’t fuck with me because I will shoot you.”
This is where I think a lot of the emotional immediacy in such discussions is coming from, how these things are framed semantically could cause or indicate different sorts of personal relevance. There is a conflation here between the notions of “threat” and “risk”. And when people discuss such topics which are largely framed by ethics and legality, I think this difference is relevant. Threat tends to connote a personal, targeted sort of implicit danger. Whereas risk tends to connote something impersonal, based upon probabilities. But subjectively, ones injury or death is always a personal problem for obvious reasons.
The existence and proximity of weapons I agree involves a degree of risk, and it definitely worthwhile to be aware of and manage exposure to risks to whatever extent one is able. But weapons I consider a threat only if they become a personal problem, such as having them directed at me or others, this I see as a matter of specific intent. This is why I was stressing that I think it’s poor risk assessment to assume that the presence of weapons are threatening anybody. When people let their fear override their impulse control, they tend to unwittingly cause the same kinds of problems they supposedly seek to avoid, It’s a pair of ducks!
I’d say that you are fabricating a personal message to yourself on behalf of people who might not even know you, or know that you are there. Again, it’s probably unreasonable to assume that strangers around you are doing what they are doing because of you. It could be, but I find it far more likely that your fear is making your thoughts self-centered. I am not judging this, it’s understandable. But I think risk assessment benefits from more accuracy, and situational awareness. Projecting your insecurities would make it hard to do this.
The kinds of people who make a point of carrying a gun into a shopping mall are operating more on a law of the jungle mentality than behaving as if they live in a civilized society. As a result, they provoke a primal fear in those nearby. It’s a rational response, because what the gun tells you is that the person carrying it chooses physical means to solve problems.
It tells me that the open-carrier is willing to use lethal force to resolve perceived problems. You know, rather than use words. Like a responsible adult.
There are some assumptions here which I do not share. I am not comfortable with classifying certain “kinds” of people. Also, I see most human activities - including commerce - as being rationalizations of similarly base instincts. I am probably at greater risk of being killed by people’s belief in money and economics than I am weapons, but nobody cares because it seems abstract, even though it is likewise merely a dangerous, inaccurate, instinctually-driven behavior. Since most human culture operates this way, I do not expect to ever find any “safety” in it.
I think it’s quite a leap to equate “primal fear” and “rational response”, I don’t think it jives conceptually nor practically. If one prefers civility, then refusing to allow oneself to be provoked would be a more cogent strategy. Also, fear is more likely to get one killed than is calm observation - in any circumstances.
And this still inspires me to wonder why you would assume that whatever problem they mean to solve would have anything to do with you. Perhaps they use physical means to solve problems, because they are confronted with problems of a physical nature? This seems to me something of a double standard, because in other posts people are dismissive of me having an overly philosophical perspective on such situations. I don’t seek physical conflicts, yet it doesn’t occur to me that I might philosophize my way out of them.
This involves jumping to quite a few different conclusions! You specify open-carry - should I assume that those with concealed weapons are not willing to use lethal force? Is it even remotely reasonable to assume that a person who has a weapon is not able or willing to communicate by other means, such as written and spoken language? Or that they prefer to not communicate? Suggesting that it need be one or the other seems more indicative of a bias in your reasoning than anything you have observed in reality. Going beyond that, you claim that this gives you insight not only into the actions of strangers, but also their perceptions? This “insight” coupled with the way both you and chgoliz equate the presence of a weapon with a personal message to yourself seems to clearly indicate that you are projecting insecurities from your own mind upon people around you.
No, nobody is telling you anything. You are simply being reactionary. And this, if I may respectfully suggest, can put you at risk of making clouded judgements. If you feel entitled to judge people and situations in such terms, I’d say that you may be creating your own problems.
How many implicit value judgements can be loaded into a small sentence fragment? Is an adult one who is physically mature? Who has been initiated as a participating member of their society? Initiated by whom, with what cultural values? Responsible in what way? To whom? What are they presumably responding to? And the point of all this supposition is because you claim that a person who has encountered conflict cannot, or cannot be expected to, engage in your standards of civilized activity?
I am sure you have your opinions, and reasons for feeling as you do. But I am having trouble following your reasoning as explained here.
Just saying “I don’t like the look of that! It’s got to go away!” seems to put you in the same boat as those you profess to be criticizing.
Even if I make an erroneous judgement I will not kill or maim anyone.
BTW, my assumptions are based on knowing a significant number of OC and CC permit holders, in about a dozen different states. It’s because I know so many that I know it’s rational to be concerned when seeing them in crowded public areas.
But because of the prevalence of self-serving bias, most people believe this to be true about themselves. Even if it is true in your case, I am not convinced that this is generally the case. Anecdotally, in seems that that many people simply panic if there are armed people, and/or hypocritically send police to bother them. This amounts to fear being a pretext to escalate tensions and even trigger violent events where there wasn’t anything happening before. Unarmed people who seem to “mean well” not infrequently cause violence based upon subjecting others to their fear. Instead, it would seem more prudent - like it nearly always does - for people to relax.
Fair enough. But be aware that your assumptions and knowledge of these people do not automatically become obvious to other people, or true of people in general. It usually is rational to be concerned. Which is not the same as “primal fear”, “terror”, “overreacting”, or “jumping to conclusions”. But somehow when people feel strongly about this issue those seem to become easily conflated.
These two posts brought to mind a classic and must-read essay which is not technically about gun-carrying in public (except metaphorically, if you catch my drift): Schrödinger’s Rapist
It is reasonable and rational for humans to assume the worst when their safety is at risk due to the presence of a potential threat. Better to be over-sensitive than insufficiently cautious. Or as I tell my kids within the context of driving: it’s not about who’s right, but who’s left.
The horrific semantic quagmire continues. No, it may be pragmatic to assume the worst, which is not the same as doing so as a result of reasoning. What many people in the topic have stated is that they are motivated by primal emotional reactions which preclude them from bothering with risk assessment. Feel what you like, but this does not make you entitled to act upon it in ways that affect others.
This might not be untrue, but it is, in various forms, the root of basically all human oppression. The feeling that one is entitled and justified “no matter what” to make others accommodate their reactionary fears and suspicions. Sure, it’s easy to understand, but no, it does not give one that right - especially not when they explain that they don’t care what the reality may be. Deciding that your emotions are more important than the reality of what is happening around you is pretty much the definition of “delusion” and is anything but a basis for making sound decisions about anything. The horrific paradox is that the more important such decisions are, the more people seem to insist upon letting their personal feelings make the decision for them (and those around them), precisely when it matters most.
This is kind of what I was getting at. By forcing the situation out of fear, people are becoming the attacker who they wanted to avoid. Once you force others to confront your fear, you have stepped into the role of aggressor, precisely what you were afraid of. With no-one to blame but yourself. It is easy to say that others in society are obliged to conduct themselves with decorum and self-discipline, but if that’s what you require, you need to develop those capacities in yourself first. Saying that you “shouldn’t have to” or “could have been in danger” seem like an evasion of responsibility.
