Bill to allow state workers to bring guns to workplace passes through committee

[primavera]

95. I'll concede that

But the trouble I have with your assertion that most "successful self-defense by gun" incidents don't involve shots being fired is that, in most of those cases, we never really know whether there was, in fact, a bona fide threat to life and limb, so we never really know whether those were necessary uses of guns, ergo, we don't know whether they were "successful." How many of your "successful" incidents involved someone the gun bearer merely perceived to be threatening, s/he waived a gun at them, and they went away, when, in reality, they were no threat at all? We experienced one of your "successful" incidents here recently at a Whole Foods parking lot, where the gun owner waived a gun at someone over a contested parking space. He got the parking space, so I guess it was a "successful" use of a gun, right? Of course, the only person whose life was ever in any danger was the person being threatened by the gun owner. How many of your "successful" incidents fall into that category? Don't bother to answer, I know, there's no way for you to know any more than I do, and I don't dispute that some of those incidents do indeed involve a bona fide threat to the safety of the gun owner. But it's so subjective. The gun owner feels threatened, they have more pure adrenaline coursing through their veins than hemoglobin, their ability to accurately assess a situation is severely compromised. Yet, when the red haze fades from their vision, they're going to go home firmly convinced that their gun saved their life and who is going to challenge that interpretation? The moral of the story is that there's no way to reliably know how many of the incidents you describe as "successful" are, in fact, "successful." Again, to be sure, some undoubtedly are. But is it 75%? 50%? 25%? Less? With no way of knowing, I don't know how much weight to give to your claim of "successful" uses.