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Safe shopping experience.. fact or fiction?

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Bikenut

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Does anyone know how to find the crime statistics for a corporate chain of businesses that bans guns... and the crime statistics for a corporate chain that doesn't ban guns?

I think it would be quite interesting to compare the two because I highly suspect that the company's that state something along the lines of...

"We do not allow guns in our stores in order to provide a safe shopping experience."

are full of BS.

I highly suspect that comparisons made between crime rates of national chain businesses... and even locally owned businesses ... with "no guns" policies vs those with a "gun neutral" policy would open some eyes as to the fallacy of ... "no guns allowed equals safety".

(Posted in both Michigan and General Discussion because I would like local input and general input.)
 
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Bikenut

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malignity wrote:
Are you possibly suggesting that criminals will not abide by 'no firearms' signs? :what:
:D

Actually I'm suggesting that if there is a way to discover a relationship between businesses with "no guns" policies having a higher crime rate than businesses with a "neutral to guns" policy then, what I suspect is just another anti gun myth of, "no guns allowed makes shoppers safer" can be shown for what it is... BS.

And, when presenting the fact that gun free zones (whether by law or by policy) are actually more dangerous because they are gun free with statistics to back that up, we will have yet another fact to combat anti gun rhetoric with.

I actually have faith in the average person's ability to figure things out on their own... and, whether they are for... or against... or just don't care about guns... when given real facts instead of media manure folks actually do figure it out for themselves.

Most average folks know not to go into the bad parts of town after dark... and I think that same common sense will extend to knowing not to go to the store that bans guns if it is proved that banning guns makes the shopper less safe.

But... saying that criminals don't obey the law or no gun policies is a general and impersonal statement. However, most people pay attention to numbers and percentages... so... if it could be proven with numbers that people who shop at a "no guns" store are XX% more likely to be robbed (or worse) than folks who shop at a "guns accepted" store.... folks would figure that one out real quick.

And when more folks than just those who carry guns figure that out and quit shopping at "no guns" businesses... the businesses will figure it out too.
 

PDinDetroit

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I believe that there are other criteria that should be considered in the evaluation between 2 chains - Store Locations, Shopper Demographics, etc. Otherwise, the comparison could easily be argued against.

My Take:

Scenario 1: Safe Shopping does exist! Shoppers ride magical unicorns throughout the store powered by Pixie Dust Farts. All shoppers can afford whatever they want and all sales persons are friendly and helpful. No one would dare offend another, let alone threaten their safety. (Cue the angels harps, puffy clouds, and rose-colored glasses).

Scenario 2: Safe Shopping only exists where persons are allowed to provide for their Personal Safety and the Store provides for General Safety for persons.

Which do you think is more likely?
 
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Bikenut

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PDinDetroit wrote:
I believe that there are other criteria that should be considered in the evaluation between 2 chains - Store Locations, Shopper Demographics, etc. Otherwise, the comparison could easily be argued against.

My Take:

Scenario 1: Safe Shopping does exist! Shoppers ride magical unicorns throughout the store powered by Pixie Dust Farts. All shoppers can afford whatever they want and all sales persons are friendly and helpful. No one would dare offend another, let alone threaten their safety. (Cue the angels harps, puffy clouds, and rose-colored glasses).

Scenario 2: Safe Shopping only exists where persons are allowed to provide for their Personal Safety and the Store provides for General Safety for persons.

Which do you think is more likely?
:) The part in italics above... We know that... anyone with a half ounce of common sense knows that but....

It would be nice to have numbers to back it up.

Perhaps even something along the lines of:

"XXXX amount of robberies and assaults happened in (insert your city/town here) last year and XXX of them happened in the (insert store/mall here) where guns are not allowed by law abiding citizens. Please note that the criminals who committed those crimes brought their guns anyway."

would be a good argument to put forth.

Is there anyplace those numbers could be found?

And anti gunners love to present pretwisted numbers because they do understand that people are impressed by numbers... not general statements.
 

CrimDoc

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That would be an interesting topic for a study.

The difficulty (I think) would be getting the data ... stores might be reluctant to release their crime statistics for fear that people will read the study and judge their Chain "unsafe".

However, a friend of mine at the University has some "ins" with the private security community ...

Let me look into this.
 
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Bikenut

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CrimDoc wrote:
That would be an interesting topic for a study.

The difficulty (I think) would be getting the data ... stores might be reluctant to release their crime statistics for fear that people will read the study and judge their Chain "unsafe".

However, a friend of mine at the University has some "ins" with the private security community ...

Let me look into this.
Excellent! Please do not hesitate to ask if you think I can be of help!:D

Numbers... numbers... who's got the numbers?

But... couldn't those numbers also be had through LE criminal records? A bit more difficult to sift through to count what happened at a certain address and how often it happened there but.....???????

How does one go about accessing records of that nature?

And I wonder how many years it would take to crunch all of that into something factually usable?
 

CrimDoc

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Bikenut,

You probably could compile "the numbers" yourself through UCR data (Uniform Crime Report - Police Arrests). But it would be a lot more work ... you'd need to find out the addresses of "gun friendly" businesses and compare the number of arrests that occurred there to arrests at "not gun friendly businesses". You could also do the same sort of thing based on reported incidents (not necessarily arrests) ... those kinds of records are typically also kept by PDs. But again, someone (most likely the researcher) would probably need to "hand compile" the data.

I'm guessing the stores already track these types of things themselves ... so all you'd need to do is convince them to release it to you. I am going to check into it ... seriously ... it's the kind of research I'm interested in.

Bikenut wrote:
CrimDoc wrote:
That would be an interesting topic for a study.

The difficulty (I think) would be getting the data ... stores might be reluctant to release their crime statistics for fear that people will read the study and judge their Chain "unsafe".

However, a friend of mine at the University has some "ins" with the private security community ...

Let me look into this.
Excellent! Please do not hesitate to ask if you think I can be of help!:D

Numbers... numbers... who's got the numbers?

But... couldn't those numbers also be had through LE criminal records? A bit more difficult to sift through to count what happened at a certain address and how often it happened there but.....???????

How does one go about accessing records of that nature?

And I wonder how many years it would take to crunch all of that into something factually usable?
 

kryptonian

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my theory on stores apprehension is liability. if your gun goes off accidentally and shoots a customer the store would be sued for allowing the weapon in the store. the victim would also go after you too but the store has the money.
 

stainless1911

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I think that we could counter this type of suit with one of our own. If you are shopping at a gun free store and injured by a criminal, then you should be able to sue the store for XX millions because you would otherwise be armed.
 
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Bikenut

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kryptonian wrote:
my theory on stores apprehension is liability. if your gun goes off accidentally and shoots a customer the store would be sued for allowing the weapon in the store. the victim would also go after you too but the store has the money.
I understand what you said yet I'm confused...

If a store has liability from a person legally carrying a firearm having an ND would they not also have liability from a criminal shooting up the place on purpose?

My theory is quite simple.... stores do not want to hear complaints from cry baby leftists, anti gunners, and even some FUDD gun owners, about seeing guns... and because there are more cry baby leftists, anti gunners, and even some FUDD gun owners, than legal gun carriers they opt for catering to those who complain...

And the stores owners/managers know very well that cry baby leftists, anti gunners, and even some FUDD gun owners, do not understand that more legal guns equals more safety from the criminals with illegal guns.

It boils down to.... "He/she who complains gets what they want." so... perhaps it is time those of us who legally carry guns begin to complain about how a store's "gun free safe shopping experience" isn't so safe after all.

But we need proof that those gun free stores actually have more crime than stores that do not ban guns. Actual numbers and percentages...from reliable sources... can provide that proof.

So far I've seen false and manipulated numbers and percentages galore put out by anti gun organizations.... but mostly platitudes from pro gun organizations and pro gun folks. We need actual provable numbers and percentages.............. and we need to have those numbers and percentages given the same, or more, exposure as the lie numbers from the anti's.
 

Bronson

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There's some data in this article: The Armed Criminal In America

It's not specific to retail establishments but it's a start.

This is article and the news story of the Waffle House robbery that was averted by two OCing customers are thethings that havethe best track record atquieting the "why would you ever want to OC"people I run into on other forums.

Bronson
 
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