“Guns tend to draw out other guns. [Constitutional Carry] will create opportunities for police shootings or for police officers or deputies to get hurt more.” – Greenville, South Carolina Police Chief Ken Miller quoted in Police and lawmakers in a shootout over carrying guns [via greenvilleonline.com]

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66 COMMENTS

  1. Sooooooo, police should disarm ’cause their open carry of handguns invites armed attacks? Got it. Thanks.

  2. “Guns tend to draw out other guns.”

    Ain’t it the truth! As soon as I open the safe there they all all clamoring to be let out and shoot something. And when I do pick one, whoo boy the cauterwalling and complaining from the rest. (Except the H&K. It doesn’t like getting smudgy.)

  3. “If I go into a restaurant and I see someone sitting next to me with a gun, I don’t feel more safe, I feel less safe,” she said. “How do you tell their intent?”

    Well let’s see. One person is having dinner with friends and family and another is robbing the joint… wow you got me, I just don’t know.

    • It’s true. The guy laughing it up and enjoying a round of Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity stacks with family or friends, probably isn’t about to stand up and start wasting people just because he’s constitutionally carrying openly or otherwise.

      If cops can’t figure that out, then that whole story about some academy candidates being rejected because they scored too highly on their I.Q. test is starting to make a lot more sense.

  4. Just ask, “Why would that happen in your jurisdiction, when it hasn’t happened in the hundreds of cities that allow it? Is it because of your officers training?”

  6. So he only cares about the safety of himself and his fellow officers? Wow, glad to know that their ow self preservation is at the top of the list should they be reaponding to a threat and I cannot legally defend myself.

    Totally worth it.

    • The Supreme Court ruled that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm. Anyone is kidding themselves if they think the police force at large or any other government agency is in it for the betterment of the country. They exists to get theirs.

      • The police only enforce the law and then only at their own discretion. They never have anyone available to arrest criminals in the act of a crime, but they’re always there after a criminal gets shot. There’s a reason we call them Law Enforcement and never Crime Prevention.

  7. Except that’s not how it works in reality. He must be some kind of liberal. Speaking of that, on a somewhat related note, has anyone else noticed that people with liberal bumper stickers typically drive like total jackasses?

    • You know how many ‘Hillary 2016’ Prius I’ve slmost totatalled because apparently Stevie Wonder taught them how to drive?

    • It should come as no surprise that overly emotional people with markedly poor critical thinking and decision making skills, who appear to have neither a grasp of the recent past nor the ability to accurately predict the near future based on obvious environmental cues, perform poorly at tasks such as driving, which requires all of these skills, and which are severely degraded by strong emotional response to the task.

      You know, tasks like choosing a candidate who will best serve the country, or formulating a possition on civil rights that isn’t blind to the history and realities of the human condition.

      They don’t JUST suck at driving….

    • Professional driver. Approximately 1.5 million miles on the road (hard to keep track after the first million).

      It’s always been a wonder to me that so many people can drive at all with their head up their a$$. Must be something magical about those Liberal bumper stickers, kind of like the Progressive version of a plastic Jesus on the dash?

  8. Sheriff, please provide your data that in states that allow open/conceal carry, have more police involved shooting. Please further break that down to compare legal vs illegal carriers. No? Now I grant the point that more guns on persons in public COULD lead to more incidents, but I have never seen or heard a study (sorry Blumberg/Trace u don’t count) that statistically proves it

    • You’ll never see that study because they know it would defeat the narrative. Just like you’ll never see a study showing the positive effects of ‘climate change’, even though we’ve known for centuries that our ‘polution’ is plant food. If it doesn’t advance the agenda it will not be tolerated.

      • Actually there are studies on this in the agriculture field. At some point the facts they have are going to collide with the theories climate con men are pushing.

        • They’ve been pumping CO2 into greenhouses for over a century, this isn’t exactly new. Higher levels of atmospheric CO2 makes plants grow faster, produce more food and require less water. I’ve seen several studies showing that trees are growing faster now, even the redwoods that were supposed to be wiped out by climate change. Besides, we’re living in an ice age and before we came along the CO2 was at it’s lowest level since complex multi-cellular life appeared on the planet. I’m sure there’s somebody out there that will get adversely effected, but seems like a giant net plus to me.

        • It’s worse than that, TX_L. Before the industrial age the C02 was ~260ppm, however during the last glacial advance (13,000 – 100,000 years ago) the level was down to ~110ppm (as biomass gets trapped under the glaciers I assume). A level of 50ppm would cause a mass extinction of plants. Now when the last dinosaurs were croaking off the CO2 level was ~2000ppm, so do the math – the atmosphere was losing about 29ppm every million years. So without human activity the earth was on the verge (in geological time frames) of possibly the last and final mass extinction that would wipe out all life on earth forever. Because of a lack of CO2!

          • He’s got a few on that channel. In one of the videos (not sure if it was the one I linked) he shows there is no correlation between CO2 and global temperature.

        • I can explain the exact effect the additional CO2 has on climate. Here’s your no-sh!t fun fact of the day – CO2 absorbs more long wave radiation than O2. That’s because you’re taking a molecule with a combined atomic number of 16 and attaching an atom from the ground with an AN of 6, increasing the mass of the molecule by 37.5%. If you spill your entire beer all over the bar and the bartender walks up with a roll of paper towels, which will absorb more beer – 16 paper towels or 22? But considering that we’ve only added that extra atom to 140 molecules out of every one million, the effects are negligible. Probably less than the actual heat we produce creating the energy. For instance when you drive your car under normal circumstances it’s operating at a 20% thermal efficiency. There’s 125,000btu in every gallon of gasoline and you’re dumping 100,000btu of pure heat into the atmosphere for every gallon of gas you burn, and that doesn’t count the heat created drilling, refining and transporting the gas to your car. Overall, just about any means we have of generating energy (including nuclear) ultimately ends up dumping about 95% of it’s energy as heat into the atmosphere.

          Now compare this to say, the Milankovitch cycles ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles ) which each are thousands of times more influential on climate. For instance the variance in eccentricity of earth’s orbit. Right now summer in the northern hemisphere (the one with most of the land mass) lasts 112 hours longer than winter and at the same time the earth gets 6.5% more solar insolation in winter than in summer. But at its most eccentric the earth gets 23% more solar insolation at the perihelion than the aphelion and at it’s least eccentric the orbit is almost perfectly circular. Combine that with the fact that the ellipse itself rotates so that the date of the perihelion (currently January 3) is constantly changing. The tilt of earths axis moves up and down, the axis of rotation wobbles, the earth bobs up and down from the solar plane, etc. and what do you come up with? Nothing. Because all of that means jack squat compared to the cycles that go on inside that big ball of fire in the sky.

    • My first thought after reading the chief’s diatribe. Second thought, he is one of those cops who think they are the only ones who should be able to carry a gun. To serve and protect who exactly?

  9. Because that stupid paragraph in a dusty book at the legislature is totally blocking Jamarquavius from sticking a gun down the front of his pants and be-bopping down the street with it to the local stop-and-rob. Dumbass. Every time I hear some imbecile like this say that the law requiring a permit somehow stops felons from carrying guns when the penalty for unlawful carry is usually a wrist-slap compared to the felony they’re on their way to commit, I want to scream!

    • Don’t you understand, we have to make robbery and murder more illegaler, and then there will be a rainbow every day and even people who won’t work will have a nice middle class lifestyle and and and, you’re mean!

  10. I feel like collecting all of these “guns begat guns” quotes from LEO’s and proposing a bill locally to disarm the state and local PD’s for their own safety. Lord knows there’s a shit ton of these asinine statements by uniformed “experts.”

    Seems an obvious enough solution to the mythical problem of cops dying everywhere.

    See, all these “experts” agree that open carry makes you a target, more guns on the streets mean more criminals will seek out guns in a manner of an arms race, having a gun on your person or in your home makes you X-times more likely to be killed or injured.

    So please do what is right for our brave boys in blue and take away their guns. This will make them safer at home and safer on the street since the criminals will, as stated by “experts”, disarm in kind.

    If you don’t support this bill you hate cops.

    • I’m reading this, and thinking about some of the arguments I’ve seen put forth from the left, and I’m reminded of Poe’s Law.

      See comments on critical thinking skills above…

  11. “Guns tend to draw out other guns.”

    This is true! Just yesterday, I arrived home only to find several strange guns hanging out in my home with my guns, playing Johnny Cash music and swigging Hoppe’s No. 9.

    I scared off those strange guns by showing them a picture of Shannon Watts. But it was still a frightening experience.

    • I hope your those guns weren’t adolescents. Otherwise you know they’ll be coming around at night to TP your house!

      The leftist belief in animism of firearms is both loony and cultish.

  13. The Badge Cartel wants a monopoly on violence. Again, Still. And its not because they simply want to “go home at night”.

    They are all crooked.

  14. Another moron who took the oath and feels we should give up our rights while he “oversees” us….

  15. So police fear legal guns more than illegal guns?, the problem we legal gun owners face are pooly trained law enforcement officers harassing and bullying those of us that are exercising our rights and are not posing a threat to anyone. Maybe it’s time to hold LEO’S accountable when they willfully violate our rights

    • Even if, big IF, the bad guys in States where it is not unconstitutionally prohibited started carrying there sidearms openly I submit this would be a benefit to the police, and to civilians.

      Cops – They would not be lulled into a sense of false security by believing they were the only person in the AO that was armed. They would see the weapon and adjust their situational awareness to allow for the attitude and actions of the person observed and have ample opportunity to see them reaching for a weapon as opposed to wondering why they were fumbling with their clothes.

      Civilians – They could observe the presence of a weapon as easily as any cop and operate on that knowledge, being prepared to respond if the person reached for the firearm without justification.

      No comments about Cops/civilians, please, I know that cops are civilians. The terminology is difficult.

      The only downside I can see is that more people might begin to forget about the fact that bad guys prefer to hide their weapons in order to obtain the advantage of surprise.

  16. As a small town reserve Cop in 1983 Ohio, I was trained to treat every traffic stop as a possible assassination attempt. Ohio had no concealed carry at that time. So no honest citizens carried. The ONLY people who would try to harm us were criminals, who, if they wanted to carry, would do so despite the law. Hence, the training to be cautious with every traffic stop.
    This joker’s lame excuse is rebutted by the fact that he knows law-abiding citizens won’t hurt him, yet he will still approach every car cautiously NOT because Good Guys are armed, but rather that the Bad Guys are.
    Constitutional Carry has NOTHING to to with officer safety.

    • If this is surprising, you should look at how blue Greenville was in the last two presidential elections. That town is not representative of the rest of the state.

      • Sadly you’re absolutely right. Greenville’s still a great place to live and be from, but now with all the influx of outsiders, it’s kinda gone to the dogs…

      • Check out a map of the last election by county, it might just suprise you. The I-95 corridor and some coastal counties are the problems. That and the State Senator that killed a similar bill in commitee last year. It didn’t open up open carry, but did away with the requirement for a permit to conceal carry. He’s from somewhere in the upstate, can’t remember where right now. That being said, I’ve spent very little time in Greenville, and that’s been years ago.

  19. At least SC is having the constitutional carry debate. In Tennessee, our “republican” supermajority wont even let permitless open carry out of committee. They are too busy racing to imitate Californias new double digit gas tax increase. Then they will inevitably go back home and talk about how conservative they are.

  20. Cops know their beats. What this cop says is probably true in his city: i.e. open carrier in Vegas would probably cause the SWAT team to come out even though open carry is legal in NV.
    Conversely, OC in a small town where everyone knows each other won’t get you more reaction than the usual hello.
    Environment matters! Leave the decision to City Councils.

    • Except when they’re detached from reality and don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. Btw, open carry on the Strip does not generate a SWAT response. Been there, done that. No one batted an eye, except the weenies that freak at their own shadow. Honestly, my service dog generates more attention because he wears shoes -__-

    • I open carry in Las Vegas from time to time, and occasionally see others doing the same. I have never been approached by a police officer nor seen anyone else detained or even questioned for open carrying.

      Open carry is not legal in Nevada. The fact is that it is simply not prohibited, and therefore presumed legal, and that the State of Nevada has a preemption law preventing local jurisdictions from enacting local gun laws not in accordance with State law.

      That said…North Las Vegas is a crap shoot (pun intended). They do not like open carry and given a little provocation will make your life interesting for you. In Las Vegas itself, even though it is not prohibited by any law, open carry on the Las Vegas Strip or into any casino will get you a whole bunch of face time with the Metro police, heartache and wasted time, at a minimum. Possibly shot if you want to take a bet on giving the cops or security forces attitude about it. In the casinos, best case, you will be approached, surrounded, and asked, firmly but politely, to GTFO, now. Refusal is trespass and you will be detained by armed security and then arrested when Metro shows up. You lose.

      Now if you want to wander down the streets with a rifle or shotgun open carried, all bets are off. It is highly likely that you will spend a good portion of your time on the street discussing your life choices with various police officers and eventually with a good defense attorney, if you can afford one.

      • Um, anything and everything is legal unless specifically prohibited. We don’t ask permission for everything in our lives (in theory anyway).

  22. While we are on this topic, let’s require and chief and his men to carry “smart guns.” That will protect his officers from having their guns turned on them. Yes, the only “smart gun” is a .22, it jams, and you have to re-enter the PIN number when the connection is lost. But if one officer can be saved…./sarcasm

  23. you want to save cops? do away with “no knock warrants” especially in the middle of the night, you enter someone’s home in the middle of the night and I for one won’t take the time to ask if you are here to rob or arrest me, I’ll shoot, there have been a few cases here in my own state where the homeowner blasted a cop at 2a.m. not knowing they were a badge. be smart, don’t be a retard.

    • Okay, this is slightly off point but is about those no knock warrants and the “experts” who execute them. You might want to sit down your coffee for this.

      About ten years ago in Henry County, GA, a task force of local and federal officers assaulted a home and executed a no knock, blow the door down warrant, searching for drugs. Things rapidly went sour.

      First, they hit the wrong address, the proper one being several doors down. Learning that, the officers decided to search the residence anyway and, for good measure, arresting the elderly home owners.

      The search turned up nothing, until one of the intrepid searchers noticed a small container sitting on the fireplace mantel. She grabbed it, opened it and espied what she called a “suspicious substance” inside.

      Being a narcotics expert, she dipped her fingers into the substance, tasted it–and pronounced it was definitely cocaine. Just one problem there… The container, actually a small urn, was filled with the cremains (ashes) of the mother of the female home owner! There is no record of the reaction of the “narcotics expert” when she learned she had ingested human ashes but methinks it at least caused her to gag a bit.

      Maybe my sense of humor is warped but I still get a belly laugh every time I think of it!

      As for this dunce police chief, he has apparently had one of those progressive lobotomies.

  24. Oh I dunno, maybe the police officers shouldn’t just blindly shoot everyone with a gun? Maybe they could utilize their eyeballs and brain to distinguish between good guy and bad guy by their actions rather than just reacting to the fact they have a gun in hand.

    I find it quite sad that one of the most oft-repeated warnings for anyone in a DGU is holster your weapon before the police arrive or you run a high risk of being shot. Really? That’s what it has come to? Rather than fix the obvious gap in police training where some police officers have problems IDing good and bad guys or worse, shooting at people due to poor judgement (out of fear), I find that to be a gross injustice to place that burden on the law-abiding citizen.

    30-50 years ago, Officer Friendly seemed more level-headed and slow to shoot anyone holding a gun unless that person was committing a crime.

    Now it seems just holding a gun is a crime by default and punishable by deadly force.

  25. Black shirt: check
    Shiny insignia : check
    “Papers please” smirk : check

    Did they make him take off the hat with the skull on it for the picture?

  27. I think you mean “South Carolina Politically Appointed Police Chief Criticizes Constitutional Carry”

  28. Memorize:
    * Police have no legal duty to protect individuals.
    * Police have no legal liability when they fail to protect individuals.
    * Police not assigned as bodyguards have no physical ability to protect individuals.

    Take into account the above every time a cop says something in favor of limiting citizens’ rights to own, possess and carry firearms.

  29. Chief Miller was the prior Chief in my city, Greensboro NC. He pulled the pin to gain full LEO retirement benefits, then skated to SC. Some of his command decisions here were of a questionable nature, in my opinion.

  31. Drove through Greenville 2 weeks ago, had my concealed carry in my pocket, even when I was pumping gas. Funny, didn’t see any other people waving around any firearms.

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