Castles and Killing: Booze and Bullets Don't Mix Well, (Nor Does Brainy and Guns)

The Shoot First expansion on Castle Doctrine drastically expands gun carry and when it is legal to shoot, and it does so in a bad way.

We have had people in the past claim that there is no danger in our allowing guns in bars, despite the obvious examples of how badly alcohol and guns combine, in public and private environments.

Proponents of more concealed carry, and more open carry like to assert that the expansion of guns in public places, the expansion of people carrying 'just because' and not because they have an occupational or other legitimate need to do so hasn't resulted in blood running all over the floors of our public places, like Starbucks, where there was a recent firearm murder suicide.

There very much IS blood running on the floors of our public places.

The pro-gunners also like to assure us that they are ONLY carrying their firearms to protect themselves and that they will intervene ONLY on behalf of other innocent victims to defend them.

Bullshit.  We have incidents all the time where there is gun violence in and around the outsides of bars, and plenty of that violence comes from those not-so-law abiding, not-so-very-well-screened legal gun carriers who are NOT defending people from gun violence. They are rather the ones perpetrating it.


The New York Times wrote about the trend back in October 2010; (emphasis in bold /large type is mine)

 “If someone’s sticking a gun in my face, I’m not relying on their charity to keep me alive,” said Mr. Ringenberg, 30, who said he carries the gun for personal protection when he is not at work.

The problem with people like Mr,Ringenberg is that there are plenty of people just like him who are doing that sticking of a gun in people's faces, and doing plenty of shooting as well.

Gun rights advocates like Mr. Ringenberg may applaud the new law, but many customers, waiters and restaurateurs here are dismayed by the decision.
“That’s not cool in my book,” Art Andersen, 44, said as he nursed a Coors Light at Sam’s Sports Bar and Grill near Vanderbilt University. “It opens the door to trouble. It’s giving you the right to be Wyatt Earp.”
Tennessee is one of four states, along with Arizona, Georgia and Virginia, that recently enacted laws explicitly allowing loaded guns in bars. (Eighteen other states allow weapons in restaurants that serve alcohol.) The new measures in Tennessee and the three other states come after two landmark Supreme Court rulings that citizens have an individual right — not just in connection with a well-regulated militia — to keep a loaded handgun for home defense.

Experts say these laws represent the latest wave in the country’s gun debate, as the gun lobby seeks, state by state, to expand the realm of guns in everyday life.

So, how safe are bars and restaurants where there is a mix of booze and guns?  How predictable that the following incident took place in Tennessee, although it could as easily have occurred in any of those other states that made it legal to have guns in bars.  Booze + Bullets = Bleeding Bodies

From MSNBC.com: 1 dead, 19 hurt after nightclub shooting in Jackson, Tennessee

By msnbc.com staff and news services

JACKSON, Tenn. -- One man was killed and 19 other people injured after a shooting at a nightclub, police in West Tennessee said Sunday.
Officers were called to the Karma Lounge in downtown Jackson at about 2 a.m. Sunday and arrived to find one man dead, 17 people with gunshot wounds and two who were trampled, according to Jackson Police Lt. Tyreece Miller.
Miller said a dispute among several people led to the shooting. Evidence indicates at least three people used handguns to fire into the crowd.
According to WMCTV, the nightclub had advertised a Lane College and LeMoyne-Owen College after-game party.
Lecarlos Todd, 19, of Memphis, was killed. Another shooting victim was in critical condition Sunday night at a local hospital.
Authorities released photos of two men taken by the club's video cameras. Miller said investigators want to question them.

Guns kill people.  People with guns kill people.  If you don't want people using guns to kill people --- have fewer guns and keep them secured at home.  Because clearly people are not trustworthy to refrain from violence just because the law allows them to carry, or even because they had a short training course and a minimal background check.  That doesn't guarantee someone won't act violently in an emotional moment.  We have weekly, almost daily murder suicides that demonstrate that.  We have people using firearms in anger, often, in both public and private.

A perfect example of home self-defense use gone badly when combined with alcohol was this example from Wassilla Alaska, another too-pro-gun state with below education and a tedency to right wing priorities.  Alcohol was involved, with both husband and wife being intoxicated, mistaking each other for home invaders, and shooting at each other.  The two residents, engaging in shooting under the Castle Doctrine for self-defense further posed a risk to law enforcement when they arrived to respond.  Pro-'Shoot First' legislation supporters don't like to admit that these incidents happen, just like they don't acknowledge the occurrence of events like the Tennessee bar shooting or the Starbucks murder suicide by legal gun carrier:

Dispatchers received an initial 911 call just after 12:30 p.m. Saturday from Russell W. Tanner, 56. Both he and a 53-year-old woman told dispatchers of armed intruders, said trooper Capt. Hans Brinke, who commands the Mat-Su trooper detachment.
When patrol troopers got to the residence, they heard shots fired inside. Within an hour of the initial call, they saw a man -- later determined to be Tanner -- leap from a second-story balcony with a firearm. At some point, a trooper fired a round.
Troopers and medics took Tanner to the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, where he was treated and released for a gunshot wound to the elbow. He then was jailed on one count of misdemeanor weapons misconduct. Troopers say he was in possession of a firearm while under the influence but haven't released any details.
A woman in the house, Karen Walters, 53, also exited the house and was taken to the hospital, where she was treated and released for an undisclosed medical condition, Brinke said. He said he didn't know the relationship between Tanner and Walters but said it appears that they both live in the house. A Web post by troopers about the incident described the woman as Tanner's wife but didn't name her. Brinke said he didn't know if she just walked out the front door or if she got out another way.
Troopers, including members of a Special Emergency Reaction Team -- the trooper version of a SWAT team, -- surrounded the home. Troopers had to make sure the residence was secure and didn't get in to sweep it until about 4:30 p.m., Ipsen said. Inside, troopers found firearms and evidence that shots had been fired. But they didn't find any signs of intruders or a home invasion, troopers said.
"At this time it is still unclear whether the injury to Tanner occurred within the home, or outside of the home when the state trooper fired," troopers said in an on-line post about the incident.

Expanding guns allowed in public places is a bad idea; making it easier for people to shoot other people in private places is an equally bad idea, for the same reasons.  People act rashly, people act emotionally rather than rationally. 

I don't want to see Minnesota become Tennessee, or Florida, or Arizona.  Those states have lax gun laws, they don't supply or fund providing data to the NICS background check, which renders such checks useless - and Minnesota doesn't either.  And they have more shootings, more gun violence than we do.  They also tend to be Republican states with poor education and poor social services.

In this ranking of states for education, Minnesota is among the top states, well above average.  In comparison with the states where the mindset is to have more guns, like the ones above, Tennessee and Florida made it to average; states like Arizona, where they've been more aggressive in pushing right wing priorities like more guns, and less government (including public education), is far below average.  With the exception of Virginia, which was slightly above average, ALL of the states where there is more open carry, more concealed carry, and more allowance for guns in public places are also the dumb states, the less educated states.  That's not a good mix stupid + guns, either.  But it is part of the same value system, the same belief system that guns are good, that they make us free, and that education is bad, like teaching honest and accurate sex education, or evolution and climate change and other subjects about which there is established scientific consensus which are unpopular with the right wing, or factual history and economics for that matter either.

The push for more guns, more lenient laws on shooting is an emotional appeal to the worst impulses.  It is no thoughtful, it is not reasonable, it is not logical and it is not sensible.  Consistently, having more guns, both publicly and privately results in more gun violence.  That is especially true when guns combine with either public or private consumption of alcohol.

What it doesn't do is make anyone safer, or more free.  It does not reduce crime, and it doesn't keep law abiding people any safer.  And it certainly doesn't make our state any smarter, but it might do the opposite.