Maybe they should issue more concealed carry permits in bay area counties. It's wrong for the police to simultaneously neglect your protection and also prevent you from protecting yourself.
I get the logic you are putting down here. But I think you are overlooking the fact that people are panicky and stupid in group settings. Give em all guns and a reason to panic in tight quarters. It doesn’t add up man.
I think the better counter-argument is that bad people could carry guns, and have a lot more opportunities to use them. But this is based on the assumption that my first sentence in this post is correct.
But in areas where few law-abiding citizens are armed and most people have no inclination to arm themselves, all lax gun laws do is put more guns in the hands of high-risk individuals. In most of the incidents discussed in this thread pepper spray would have been more than sufficient to thwart an attacker, but nobody is carrying that, either.
It's also worth pointing out that in rural areas you're rarely in a situation where you're in physically close proximity to potentially dangerous people. I suspect both urban and rural folks are similarly averse to escalating violence, but there's much more ambiguity in urban environments, which explains why people don't even bother carrying, let alone using, pepper spray in cities, whereas in extremely rural areas people keep loaded shotguns in the corner. That and violence is much less common than we believe, and we actually behave accordingly even though we say that we feel unsafe. The calculus is the same in both urban and rural areas, but the input parameters produce wildly different results.
But I've met people out here who do not believe in self-defense. Somehow in their theoretical mind they believe any form of violence is evil. They also believe people who believe in self defense are evil too.
The lunacy has no end. But my stay here sadly might...
It is not a license to kill.
In a life or death situation, your last concern should be moderating your force against your assailant to stop the threat.
If your life is threatened, you use the necessary force to stop the assailant. That may include the use of deadly force, but that threat of deadly force (brandishing a firearm) should absolutely not be the first cause of action.
A lot of people seem to have worked themselves into a paranoid mindset, where every unpleasant altercation is a life or death situation. That is a very dangerous state of mind, and one that results in completely unnecessary loss of life.
> The vast majority of self-defense situations involve the threat of simple material loss
What are you citing here?
There WAS one police chief in Contra Costa County that had a shall-issue policy for CCW (after clearing training and background checks). In response to this, the Legislature actually changed the law, disallowing all police chiefs except your city or residence to issue you a CCW.
In the longer run, abolish (crony) capitalism, abolish lobbying and "campaign donations" (bribes) and break the military-industrial complex. Make the wealthy actually pay their taxes and give back to the society that they built their wealth on top of. Increase equality.
Sounds like you need to get your facts straight.
> A Pew Research Center analysis of IRS data from 2015, the most recent available, shows that taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 or more paid well over half (58.8%) of federal income taxes
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjK...
Taxes need to be way higher. Federal revenues this year barely cover mandatory spending.
Percentage of a lowering tax base (Trump's tax cuts) is irrelevant. They need to pay more tax in absolute terms.
The wealthy should pay more, that is why progressive tax systems exist. They reap the largest benefit of society's goods, by a gigantic margin.
When the police in a municipality have the monopoly right to posess and use force to protect citizens, then citizens should expect them to actually keep them safe. If they fail in this duty, citizens should have recourse.
Oakland in particular has a very difficult problem prosecuting criminals. The "stop snitching" culture that is prevalent in urban, black communities, combined with historical mistrust of police, translates to no cooperation and no arrests. Criminals aren't being deterred, and are acting with impunity. Probability is on b your side in keeping you safe, until one day you're the unlucky target. You won't be able to defend yourself, the other riders will not help and will pretend to not see you, and you will feel the helplessness that I once felt when I was savagely beaten by several laughing teens in DC next to a metro station. None of them were caught, but the police were sure helpful in telling me that the station I went to was a bad place for white people to go and I shouldn't go there anymore.
Layman with weapons isn't ideal, but neither is the delusion that the police can keep you safe in an area rife with cultural dysfunction and the young, borderline psyco men who target anyone that looks like they are productive for predation.
Stray bullets don't care about the shooter's intentions.
And that it would not be used.
What about criminals? What about someone who is high, drunk or coming down off of something? What about someone who is mentally ill?
Of course I'd like my chance of death-by-bullet to be zero. But for whatever reason, that doesn't seem to be an option on the table.
I'm of the opinion that it's better for a criminal to walk free than for an innocent person to be punished or killed for something they have nothing to do with.
They aren't: conviction rates are high and crime rates are at record lows.
Move to a SHALL ISSUE state. I did.