There's a debate about whether Zimmerman should have been carrying

[Atypical Liberal]

101. There is not enough evidence to make that case.

Do you think that our society will be safer they more law abiding people carry guns? I wonder.

That whole more guns, more safety argument. The same argument that some places, like that podunk berg in Texas, that passed a law that said that every citizen who wasn't legally prohibited from carrying, had to carry. Does it work?

Are we all safer, the more folks are legally allowed to pack? And sure, I always hear that argument, "Better me than the criminals", but again most people are only at risk of being killed by a stranger in only one of five times… Your friends, relatives, neighbors, associates and co-workers make up the other four.

There simply is not enough evidence to make the case that "more guns = less crime".

The best the CDC could say is that there was no evidence that gun control laws had any impact on crime.

What we do know is that violent crime of all kinds has been in decline for over 20 years. Over the same time period, the numbers of firearms in circulation of increased, skyrocketing in 2008 with the election of President Obama over fears of renewed anti-gun legislation.

We also know that people with concealed carry permits are hardly ever involved in any kind of crime, let alone firearm-related crime.

So I won't claim that more guns = more safety. What I will claim is that more guns in the hands of law-abiding people probably won't hurt anything.

Who you are, where you live, what politics have and how poor you are have the greatest relationship to the possibility of you getting shot. Someone like you; educated, liberal and law abiding is much less likely of being gunned down than any one of our winger brethren.

Absolutely. I'll go one further - I bet you your biggest determinator for getting shot is your proximity to illegal drug activity, which of course is greatly linked to poverty.

I'm thinking that your own personal experience is not indicative of situations where irresponsible gun ownership is involved in causing death by firearms.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/01/the-geography-of-gun-deaths/69354/

This map is misleading, because it includes suicides. I don't like to include suicides in discussing firearm violence because people who are serious enough about suicide to use a gun are likely serious enough to find a way regardless. And it certainly isn't related to violent crime, which is my primary concern.

You say that, "A firearm should never be produced in a confrontation unless you intend to use it." Which is my point exactly, why people like Zimmerman, an idiot who's scared of his own shadow and is armed, is more of a threat to society than the possibility of criminal behavior. People like that feel that they're ENTITLED to bring a gun to a Skittles and Arizona Ice Tea fight. They've got the Second Amendment that says they can.

He had no good reason to carry that day.

Don't make the mistake that I'm arguing against guns… Not at all, I'm arguing against idiotic cowards with guns. People like that ATTRACT gun violence. The more people who are like that out there makes it more likely for someone to get shot when there was no need to be.

I agree with you - I don't want people like Zimmerman carrying guns, either. The problem is that all of us are entitled to bring a gun just about anywhere we please, because the Second Amendment says we can. That means that we are going to have to live with people like Zimmerman doing what they do. I'm not willing to give up my rights because of people like Zimmerman.

One last thing, I really don't think that the vast majority of people who illegally carry firearms do so because they're out to prey on the law abiding. The best reason why I think that criminals carry guns is so that they are able to defend themselves from OTHER criminals.

This may be. But there are for sure people who use firearms (and knives, and hands and feet) against law-abiding people. And law-abiding people deserve the right to carry the tools to counter that threat if they so desire.

Law abiding folks who are not involved in situations where they would come across some crook who's out to do them harm to them harm makes it very unlikely that confrontations would occur.

Again, I agree 100%. It's why I've never bothered carrying a firearm. I'm not likely to encounter criminal elements in my daily life, and thus it's not worth the hassle.