But despite all their bluster, carriers do not make themselves or others safe. If carrying made someone safe, no one from President Reagan to Chris Kyle to Sean Collier, the officer allegedly killed by the Boston bombing suspects, would be shot. Nor are carriers trained like the Secret Service, Kyle or law enforcement personnel. Yet despite fallen officers and carriers whose weapons were used against them, the myth that carriers protect themselves and others continues. When a 20/20 special revealed that trained gun carriers could not stop an assailant they knew would attack , there was a cascade of "yes buts" from gun rights activists, rejecting the terms of shootout. Maybe the assailant should have approached from two blocks away and yelled "draw."
The myth that carriers protect themselves and others harms
innocent bystanders, as two recent shootings at Starbucks illustrate. In both
cases, women were given guns by their fathers to "protect" them, only
to drop their purses and shoot, or almost shoot, other customers. Starbucks
welcomes guns into its stores.
At a Cheyenne, Wyoming Starbucks in 2011, a juvenile girl
dropped her purse, discharging her gun. "The bullet missed John Basile,
43, by about 12 inches," reported the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. The unidentified girl had never taken a hunter safety
class or any kind of formal firearms training and had been encouraged by her
mother to point the gun at a "bad person" if she were in trouble.
Right.
This week, an eerie replay happened. Another woman given a
gun by her father dropped her purse and discharged her weapon at a Starbucks,
this time in St. Petersburg, Florida. The woman said she'd forgotten the gun
was in her purse and had never taken it out to clean or service it, reported
the Tampa Bay Times.
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