States that have passed these laws saw no dramatic increase in shootings, and optional permits actually went up in these states. Everything related to buying, owning, shooting a gun is exactly the same, the only difference is you no longer need to pay $50-400 to carry it on your person, which criminals do for free.
If anything it has made it better, which I'm sure a lot of people will roll their eyes at, but people are much less likely to start anything if they know most people are carrying. I know the media skews your views on america, but it's not like the movies, we're not over here root'n toot'n with our guns out like it's the wild west. I have lived in Texas for 10 years and have seen 1 or 2 guns in holsters. Every other one is concealed. I have never heard a gun shot other than a gun range, and have never witnessed anyone pull a gun or shoot one at someone. The only guns I've seen pulled are those of the police, pistols and rifles.
Yeah, having visited a few times I get that the media portrayal of the US being a 21st century Western is off. And I sort of get the idea that "people are much less likely to start anything if they know most people are carrying". But there's a tacit assumption in there that criminals have guns. For all that legal owners may not be a problem in the vast majority of cases, the more firearms there are, the bigger the pool of firearms there are for criminals to get their hands on. Having read through a few of these responses it seems to boil down to how much US citizens trust their government compared to other countries. The fact that there are federal bodies - such as the army - with enough firepower to flatten a city, yet people insist on carrying guns because they don't trust the government feels a bit off. But I think I'm straying from your point there.
I don't want to go further down a tangent here, but you also see how little Americans trust their government in the number of people reluctant to get vaccinated and the number of people who seriously believe the election was stolen. Both of those examples are mostly right leaning people. But this is also the same group that's most interested in gun rights. Is there similar distrust for the government on the left, if so how does it present? What irrational behaviours do democrats have because they distrust their government - or is distrust of the government mostly focused in the right of the political spectrum?
