I'm happy to hear your friend is doing better.

 Cj  How sweet. I was wondering to myself how Vastet was holding up. All of kindest wishes are with you Vastet, that's outside of any debate with what you said about the ICU.

I was actually thinking of the classes I read about for police officers.  You are put in situations that are designed to raise your heartbeat.  From what I read, you need to practice to be able to think clearly while your adrenaline is up.  Unless you have the ability, you will likely make poor choices and have worse aim.  It's too late and I'm too lazy to look it up.  But I will tomorrow if you really want.

That just isn't always possible.  Think of the shooting at Fairchild Airforce Base Hospital in Spokane, WA.  If you are incapacitated and someone starts shooting, it doesn't matter how fast you can pull the pistol out of the holster when you are well.  It doesn't matter to me anyway since my prejudice is to not carry.  And I would just as soon there weren't a lot of vigilante types around me who do carry.  I just don't trust you - or the police - to save my ass.  I'll do my best for myself in my own way.  Thank you.

I am familiar with them and similar classes are available to the public. As I said, I wouldn't be completely opposed to requiring stricter training to carry in public, I am well aware of the lack of quality in current requirements for both civilians and police. I would be opposed to such training being a condition to purchase a firearm.

Nothing is always possible, so what. If you are armed you have a chance to shoot the attacker, if you are unarmed you have virtually none unless you are close enough to go Bruce Lee on him. 

I don't expect you to trust me or the police, your protection is ultimately up to you. 

You probably walk right by them every day and don't even know they are carrying. No doubt if they ever had to actually draw their gun near you, you would be quite thankful. 

I wouldn't dream of forcing you to do anything else. All I ask is that others be allowed to protect themselves their own way, which I think is reasonable enough. 

http://www.gao.gov/assets/600/592552.pdf

For relevance to the discussion I found some GAO numbers of the number of permits issued in each state that calculates the percentage of the above 20 population that has a concealed carry permit in each state. (Appendix V)

It turns out the most heavily armed state is Utah with 19.3% of the population having carry permits (don't mug anyone in Utah!). I shall await the news story of a massive crossfire happening in Utah. In Oregon, 5.1% of the population above 20 has a permit. Texas is rather disappointing given their reputation with only 3.0% and Ohio rings in at 3.2% (a little higher than I wrote earlier because I calculated based on the entire population rather than only those over 20). The only other states that get into the double digits are Georgia 11.5%, Iowa 10.9% and South Dakota 10.6%.

Of the states we have talked about recently, Colorado it is 2.5% and New York it is 0%. 

The data for Utah and Iowa does include permits issued to non-residents, I'm not sure how many people traveling to either state feel a need to apply for a permit since both have really low crime rates, but I can't tell how much of an effect that has on the number.

Glad to hear that your friend is doing better.

Thank you very much everyone, it means a lot to me.

I saw him the night after and he was in & out of consciousness, understandably, but he instantly recognised me and said a few things that made it obvious he was still him, which was a big relief. Over the next two days his progress was incredible. He could stand with only a little help, was eating ravenously and chatting away. It'll be awhile yet before he's in tip top shape, but everyone is encouraged at his progress.
All this after having two cysts growing on a tumour removed which were destroying his vision and causing him headaches the doctors say he shouldn't have been able to withstand anywhere near as well as he appeared to.

I love you guys. We can be venomous to each other when we disagree, but I'd stand with any of you as you stood with me.

Apologies for the derailing.

                                                                         Fighters not haters.

Speaking of which, I have never got a chance to ask anyone from England this. But is it true that firearms are next to non-existent over there and that crime is pretty high ? I hear a lot of pro-gun owners use that argument, but have never heard anyone FROM England comment on this.

I know that most of the British movies that I have seen, seem to have an awful lot of bare-knuckle fighting in them, almost like fist fighting would be a bit higher over there than here. Although I guess that depends on who you run around with and who you hang around with.

A lot of pro-gun political lobbies will state that England has an almost non-existent rate of gun owners, yet has a higher crime rate than most countries. Implying less guns = more crime. I have not heard that argument in a long time, but I remember when the NRA type groups were throwing that around quite a bit.