NavyLCDR said:
It makes absolutely no sense for a criminal to attack Joe Citizen who is known/seen to be armed.
It may or may not make sense to a given person at the time; you're off to a shaky start by trying to apply your logic to what another person may or may not do.
People are not rational in general; this is even moreso the case with "criminals."
If your argument is hinging on the premise that "
all violent criminals are rational and skilled at cost/benefit analysis, and only care about material benefits vs risk of danger, then I think you have the least correct conception of criminality that I could possibly imagine.
NavyLCDR said:
When 99.5% of the population does not visibly carry a firearm, why in the world would any criminal pick the .5% that does as a target?
Though this was clearly posted in a rhetorical manner, I'll bite. The violent criminal
already forgoes conventional cost-benefit analysis (which, as I alluded, is being disproven every day in legitimate scientific journals dedicated to inquiry in economics, psychology, etc -
without even introducing the element of criminality).
Would it be rational to pick "safer" targets? Yeah, sure. It would also be rational not to try to do something for, say, $20-100 a gig that carries with it a 5-to-life sentence, no? Violent criminals (as opposed to the much more broad, straw-man, "Criminals [presumably in general?] you refer to) are
universally possessed of little or no impulse control.
NavyLCDR said:
Criminals have 3 main goals: 1. To get what they want. 2. To get what they want with the minimal amount of effort. 3. To get what they want without getting caught.
Oh, cool, are you a behaviorist? A psychologist? Criminologist? Got any citations?
Even if we accept "2" and "3" as a given, it's a known and proven fact that many
violent criminals value their reputation (and thus seek reputation-enhancing opportunities such as going after harder targets - not to suggest they preferentially hit harder targets, but that their processing software does not view a 'harder target' the way a lay-person might imagine) at least as much as a "take" from a given crime.
As quoted by Lonnie H Athens in his work [I said:
Violent criminal acts and actors revisited[/I]]"Most commonly, [criminals] kill during some trivial quarrel, or their acts are triggered by some apparently unimportant incident, while deep and unconscious emotional needs are their basic motivation. Most murders occur on sudden impulse and in the heat of passion, in situations where the killer's emotions overcome his ability to reason.
NavyLCDR said:
Attacking an armed citizen greatly reduces the chances of any of those three goals from being accomplished. Mom, and the concealed carry only crowd, says you give up the element of surprise. But you gain the element of deterrence. The MAJORITY of criminals say they will be deterred by a known firearm. Why? Because there is absolutely NO REASON whatsoever for them to attack Joe Citizen who they know has the ability to kill them.
I concede the majority of criminals say that. Criminals in general, people who break laws, even the ones who end up incarcerated, are not violent. You may have seen a 20/20 interview but you haven't looked into serious inquiries of the psyches of these people if you think "deterrence via a visible firearm" is a viable option for the worst of the worst. By that logic, most criminals won't target a big, muscular guy - so let's just go to the gym instead of carry at all. Most criminals won't go after you if you don't have the appearance of wealth, etc. So let's just not wear fancy things. Etc etc ad nauseam; the point is that most people who carry do so for specific eventualities, not "the majority of situations (or criminals)," etc.
With that out of the way, and having addressed many of the premises of your argument, I will posit a counter-argument to the lynchpin of these Pro-OC posts we see all the time, which I interpret as follows:
"Though there is some small percentage of situations where it may be advantageous to conceal a firearm, the majority of potential criminal encounters will be thwarted by the visibility of a gun, and in cost-benefit analysis, OC is
a (if not
the) rational choice."
After the following counter-argument, I will continue to reply to NavyLCDR, and offer counter-points, because I feel his arguments are fairly representative of the OCers and thus of their often-fallacious reasoning.
The OCer (if represented by NavyLCDR's arguments) views the criminal assessment, and indeed the entire criminal interaction, as a relatively static interaction that is the result of pre-determined factors, such as "apparent value of target," "goal of criminal," "risk of targeting potential victim," etc. This goes against not only the consensus understanding of
violent criminals, it also goes against sound strategy because deterrence through posturing is not necessarily a viable strategy in every situation, or even the majority of serious violence situations. Violent criminals are known to shoot it out with multiple police offers, take hostages with no intention of negotiation, etc.
Posturing I am defining here as a set of four possible options when confronted with the possibility of violence, and the other three are: Fight, Flight, or Submit. In the animal kingdom and the world of human interaction, these are essentially the four default choices.
The goal of posturing is to deter violent behavior through appearance of superior ability to do violence.
OCers on the whole claim that OCing is an effective strategy to deter violent crime on a consistent basis, but seem to never give a citation for how effective, nor even draw on criminological data to support their arguments - it is essentially a "common sense" type of argument, which is problematic as violent criminals clearly lack such "common sense."
As alluded to above one of the most problematic assumptions of the OCers is that posturing with a gun gives one the ability to deter crime, at little or no practical trade-off (argument addressed more in-depth below, in further reply to NavyLCDR). This is based on an almost
Dungeons & Dragons-esque view of violent encounters that is not borne out in real life.
Two of the most important concepts I myself have learned, and utilized, in force-on-force training are the
OODA loop as coined by Col. John Boyd, and the concept of
unequal initiative. The OODA loop can be researched easily with Google and I'll leave anyone who wants to do that to it; the concept of
unequal initiative is much more important and feeds into the OODA loop anyway.
In a serious encounter with a violent criminal, the potential victim does not possess the same initiative as the attacker. The attacker presumably has an understanding of how to commit violence, a plan to do so or ability to improvise, may well have an accomplice, and has the leisure of beginning an attack at his or her leisure. The victim, to respond with self-defense, no matter how well he or she is trained, has to play catch-up. A common ruse of predators is to engage the victim in an "interview" which is a very dynamic, not static, process. The interview interaction serves two purposes: to screen out certain types of people, yes, but also - and I would argue, potentially
more importantly - to distract the potential victim and allow the use of a ruse, e.g. pincer attack, close the distance unnoticed, cognitive lag due to task load, etc.
More info about the interview and potential strategies to thwart it found here courtesy of SouthNarc:
http://www.google.com/search?q=mana...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
One of the main problems of OC is that it gives clever predators more information to distract you with, and
if the predator calls your bluff, it increases initiative deficit and turns your focus more to protecting your gun.
NavyLCDR said:
Relying upon the element of surprise, you are betting the you will be able to get your gun out of concealment and effectively fire at the criminal before they notice you doing so. It's like playing wild west quick draw. Is that what you really want to hope for? ESPECIALLY since you will be drawing your firearm in response to an attack that has already begun?
This exact same scenario can happen with an open weapon, too. In that case we can grant that it would be
worse. You seem to be assuming here an openly carried weapon will
always deter attacks, and I again ask: where's the data?
I also put it to you that you are misrepresenting the argument against OC on tactical premises. "Element of surprise" is a clumsy way of saying "not giving potential attackers any more information than they already have." If we view it that way, a lack of information about
you for your potential attacker is an advantage in the case of uneven initiative, ploys, etc.
The fact is there are plenty of criminals who aren't afraid of guns or don't think you would use it. In fact in the above quote you sound pret-ty darn sure you AREN'T going to use it. I believe that would be obvious to someone approaching you.
NavyLCDR said:
Why would I take the chance to put my family through the trauma of the attack, seeing me shoot at someone, possibly killing them, and then the expense and process of a possible court case, either criminal or civil?
So don't carry a gun at all. You simply have more options with a concealed than open.
NavyLCDR said:
With open carry, I have a CHANCE of deterring the attack from ever happening. With concealed carry, I have ZERO chance of deterring the attack; concealed carry only allows me to defend my family AFTER the attack has already happened, which means the criminal ALREADY has gained the upper hand. So, why would I willingly give up the deterrence factor?
And here we have the MOST flawed assumption of all, that there is NO way to deter an attack other than posturing. Again, the attack process is not a static D&D style roll of the dice. It's a dynamic process. You are projecting your absolute lack of tactician-skills onto everyone else, which is an inherently bad assumption. Disrupting the attacker's OODA loop, which can not be done through static posturing such as being muscular, showing a gun, etc, would be a much more effective means of thwarting an attack. At least, if the concept of the OODA loop is valid, and the training I've had -which entails extreme pressure-testing of these concepts - was not pure fantasy - then I'm right.
I have yet to see anything - data, experience, or anything other than conjecture - that supports your assumptions. I see a lot that refutes them.
