Well, it finally happened. My anti-gun girlfriend has decided to buy a gun and get a concealed carry

[GreenStormCloud]

46. That study has been debunked

Gun controllers love to trot out so-called scientific studies that show that carrying a gun makes one more likely to get shot.

Common sense says that is pure bullshit. Guns are not bullet magnets. Bullets don't curve in mid-air to go to a person carrying concealed. Thugs don't hunt for concealed carriers to shoot them on sight. You don't get shot because you have a hidden gun on you.

The ONLY reason why a person might get shot is that they are engaging in a behavior that will cause someone to want to shoot them, or they have the bad luck to be a victim of a random shooter or other criminal. (Examples of the latter would be mass shootings, serial shootings, gang initiation shootings, etc.) Merely carrying a concealed handgun will not make someone a target as nobody knows that you have the gun, therefore you can't be targeted for having a gun.

So the real question that should be asked is not if the person had a gun, but what were they doing when they were shot? It is well known from FBI statistics that over half of all murder victims were themselves engaged in a criminal enterprise. But criminals do not make up over half of our population, so one draws the reasonable conclusion the being a criminal is dangerous. Certain crimes would be more dangerous than others. Drug dealing and gang banging would be more dangerous than being a business embezzler. The dangerous criminals are well aware that they are targets for other criminals and are extremely likely to be armed. Naturally, those who style of crime is armed robbery are going to be armed. All of them will be engaging in behaviors that have a high risk of drawing gun fire, either from other criminals or from armed citizens.

The law-abiding person who is legally carrying will not be engaging in any of those activities. His behavior won't change (with very rare exception) from what it was before. So he won't be a target unless his luck runs out and a violent criminal targets him. Then his gun gives him the ability to fight back.

None of the so-called studies have ever made any attempt to separate the legal from the illegal carriers but instead have lumped them all together as if they were all legal carriers. Until a study makes such a differentiation they will all be useless and will discover nothing except that being a violent criminal is dangerous.