HandyHamlet said:
Most people here don't carry weapons.
... I NEVER carry a weapon. I don't own a weapon.
Ditto.
Weapons are intended to harm people.
I hope I NEVER have to harm anyone.
But if I do have to stop an attack, I won't be shooting to harm, I'll be shooting to stop.
Problem is that the most effective way to stop an attack is to do serious damage to, or kill, the attacker (assuming he doesn't mind his manners one he sees you have a gun).
Once you cross the mental line from "stop hurting me!" to "I'll show you" you've gone from citizen acting in self-defense to a criminal attacking someone. (And if you DO, keep your mouth shut, esp. to the cops.)
I first bought & started carrying a pistol when I was 40.
I've carried a pocketknife since probably middle school. (Don't do it so much any more.) Imagine a kid doing that today would be expelled. I used it to cut apples or whatever at lunch, since I had braces & couldn't eat them the usual way.
In fact, one semester in high school I got permission to schedule a math class instead of lunch, & the teacher agreed to let me eat lunch in the classroom.
(It was a divided class, 2 levels of instruction, so when he was teaching the other half of the class we'd be doing our work & I could eat.)
So not only did I have a knife in school, I used it regularly, in front of a teacher & other students, and absolutely nothing bad happened. Imagine that.
As for the reason the legislators title bills things like "concealed weapons permit" is because they can't conceive of the attitude most of us have - it's a tool of last resort, kind of like an airbag or seatbelt. They only see the negative, the damage.