Surely you have heard the tale of The Utah NRA Militia defending the Klean Kar Spot-free Karwash against invading hordes of North Korean Fifth Columnists? It is the ability to repel foreign invasion with a cheap .25 caliber pawn shop automatic that makes us so strong!

Then perhaps you can enlighten us on the reason that all governments seem so focused on separating the citizens from their guns.
It can';t be about reducing crime or violence as those stats go down when concealed-carry goes into effect.
Why the push to remove guns?

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

Strategy of deception.
You may have noticed, they are actually separating us from ammunition.

Those politicians have a lot of time on their hands to work out some clever plans.
They scare everybody with "gun bans", so we all go and buy guns like crazy. But, in actuality, they are pulling ammunition of the shelves without telling us a word.
So, what you gonna do with all your guns and no ammo?

You got to admit, we voted for some clever folks ...

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Apart from some unstable third-world countries, gun control is indeed about crime and violence. What else would it be about? Notice in the US the strictest gun restrictions are in those places that are most plagued by violence, like Chicago and DC. If it were about reducing our rights and freedoms, the federal govt would restrict guns everywhere equally.

The notion that concealed-carry reliably and consistently reduces crime is a myth and oversimplification. It may reduce some crimes but raise others. It's not a cure-all. If it was, we'd have the perfect solution to crime.

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2004 VW Jetta TDI (manual)

Past MB's: '96 E300D, '83 240D, '82 300D, '87 300D, '87 420SEL

One of the things that amazes me is all of the hooting and hollering about the second ammendment.

While the patriot act was signed into law.
It stamps on more of our constitutional rights and infringes on more of our civil liberties
than any of the gun laws so far.

Why is there not the same amount of ferver over:
Warrentless wire tapping, or habeas corpus ??

I think you guys might be politically blinded by the talking megaphone heads.

Wise up a little bit, we need you to be coherent and able to help defend the entire constitution, not just little peices.

Evert statistical study I have seen shows that right-to-carry does indeed lower crime. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but there is truth in the title of the book, More Guns=Less Violence
The myth is that right-to-carry will produce blood in the streets. However the experience in Virginia, and Florida run counter to that assumption.
Criminals will not obey the law anyway--guns are one of their tools=of=the=trade. and they will get them, and use them. Law-abiding gun owners are not a threat to other citizens.

Why is it that the places with the strictest gun laws have the highest crime? Hint--the high crime rate did not come first....

So again, I ask, of what purpose are gun laws?

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

I agree with you on the ills of the Patriot Act. The title alone suggested that it was pure evil.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

The problem with that logic is that every criminal is initially a law-abiding citizen. For example, Cho purchased his guns legally, as did many other campus shooters.

As to Virginia and Florida, I'm not familiar with their experience. What exactly happened? Did all crime stats go down, or just some? Did any go up?

I've seen a study on the DC gun ban that was rather inconclusive, i.e. the gun ban didn't have a clear effect on crime stats. I think gun bans are most effective when the people don't already have guns. If you issue a gun ban in an already gun-infested area and you don't enforce it well, of course it won't have much effect. I'll admit that high gun ownership on its own isn't bad. But it is a problem when a good percentage of gun owners are crooks or have hostile intent. Look at what happened in Iraq right after our invasion. Guns suddenly everywhere, no more laws, high unemployment and anger = recipe for violence.

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2004 VW Jetta TDI (manual)

Past MB's: '96 E300D, '83 240D, '82 300D, '87 300D, '87 420SEL

I certainly haven't seen anything here in Texas on crime stats going down since concealed-carry went into effect. And a look at other societies where guns are legal will certainly not make your case, private gun ownership is legal in Iraq< Somalia and Afghanistan, for example. Where guns are strictly controlled, like England, France and Germany, they have no where near the gun violence we do. For the most part, guns are removed because the people in that country are sick of the violence they cause. It really is simple common sense, if you become angry and a gun is handy, the results are going to be much more catastrophic than if you are limited to a knife or a rock.

I myself am not against gun ownership, I think everyone who is qualified to own one should own one. Like our devastated economy, the problem stems from un-regulated ownership of firearms by anybody. I am against that, and I also think it is unConstitutional, as the Constitution states that gun ownership is linked to a well-regulate militia. How is a street gang hauling a load of perfectly legal 12 gauge shotguns to their next driveby a "well-regulated militia"? If guns were required to be registered, licensed and insured, the cops could confiscate them and arrest those who possess them in any other manner. I want to see gun ownership restricted to those capable of fulfilling the Constitutional requirement that they are able to do duty in a militia if called upon to do so. Anyone else should be prohibited. Certification of militia status would require the militia member to obtain a license showing he has been properly trained, at the very least, and a registration showing he has passed the same mental examination tests given Army recruits, which are surprisingly good detectors of those who should not own guns, and has obtained insurance from a company that maintains standards of liability that precludes ex-cons, teenagers and illegal aliens.

This isn't Iraq.
Anecdotes do not make for good laws., There are always out-liers in the data set.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

That's another good point - US law gives every nut a free first shot. Go buy a gun, and then prove you are a nut, by shooting people. Brilliant. Another point in favor of a reasonable registration system.

A quick search produced this information--you may find something different:

Last Updated: 11/5/2005 |GunCite Home|
Liberalized Concealed Carry Laws

Introduction

First, what are "liberalized" concealed carry laws? They are a set of requirements, when met by an applicant, require the issuance of a concealed carry permit, which allows a permit holder to carry a gun (concealed) in public places. These requirements may consist of a license fee, a safety training program or exam, fingerprinting, a "clean" record, no history of mental illness, etc. In other words it is not left to the discretion of local authorities to decide whether or not to issue a permit. Liberalized concealed carry laws are more often referred to as "shall-issue concealed carry weapons" laws.

In 1987, when Florida enacted such legislation, critics warned that the "Sunshine State" would become the "Gunshine State." Contrary to their predictions, homicide rates dropped faster than the national average. Further, through 1997, only one permit holder out of the over 350,000 permits issued, was convicted of homicide. (Source: Kleck, Gary Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, p 370. Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York, 1997.) If the rest of the country behaved as Florida's permit holders did, the U.S. would have the lowest homicide rate in the world.

David Kopel, Research Director at the Independence Institute comments on Florida's concealed carry experience:

"What we can say with some confidence is that allowing more people to carry guns does not cause an increase in crime. In Florida, where 315,000 permits have been issued, there are only five known instances of violent gun crime by a person with a permit. This makes a permit-holding Floridian the cream of the crop of law-abiding citizens, 840 times less likely to commit a violent firearm crime than a randomly selected Floridian without a permit." ("More Permits Mean Less Crime..." Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 1996, Monday, p. B-5)

Thirty-five states have enacted "shall-issue" concealed carry laws , and two states, Alaska and Vermont, do not require any permit of its residents (state map of concealed carry laws).

The Lott-Mustard Report

John Lott and David Mustard, in connection with the University of Chicago Law School, examining crime statistics from 1977 to 1992 for all U.S. counties, concluded that the thirty-one states allowing their residents to carry concealed, had significant reductions in violent crime. Lott writes, "Our most conservative estimates show that by adopting shall-issue laws, states reduced murders by 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7% and robbery by 3%. If those states that did not permit concealed handguns in 1992 had permitted them back then, citizens might have been spared approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and 12,000 robberies. To put it even more simply criminals, we found, respond rationally to deterrence threats... While support for strict gun-control laws usually has been strongest in large cities, where crime rates are highest, that's precisely where right-to-carry laws have produced the largest drops in violent crimes."

(Source: "More Guns, Less Violent Crime", Professor John R. Lott, Jr., The Wall Street Journal, August 28, 1996, (The Rule of Law column).

Whether or not one believes a portion of the drop in violent crime is due to "shall-issue" legislation, Lott's study provides strong evidence that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons does not increase gun crime or fatal gun accident rates.

Do states with right-to-carry laws have lower violent crime and homicide rates?

John Lott's paper (PDF format) and datasets.

John Lott refutes claims that Texan concealed carry permit-holders are not as law-abiding as other Texas citizens. [ HTML] Former New York Congressman (now Senator), Charles Schumer makes an insinuation regarding the funding of John Lott's research, William Simon rebuts, in letters to The Wall Street Journal.

A Reason Online interview with John Lott who "discusses the benefits of guns--and the hazards of pointing them out."

An interview with John Lott Jr. (with a plug for his book).

A paper by Mark Duggan, "More Guns, More Crime," which as the title suggests comes to a different conclusion than Lott's research, is summarized in this article from the Economist magazine. Lott's response to the article is available here.

A Critical Examination of John Lott's Paper

* Links to papers discussing Lott's research.

* Although this article by Rutgers University professor Dr. Goertzel is critical of Lott's study, regardless of which side of the gun control debate you reside, he offers sound advice: "When presented with an econometric model, consumers should insist on evidence that it can predict trends in data other than the data used to create it. Models that fail this test are junk science, no matter how complex the analysis." (Goertzel's comments bring to mind the old saw: Economics is the one science that makes astrology look respectable.")

* An exchange between John Lott and physics professor and author, Robert Ehrlich, who claims more guns simply means more guns.

John Lott's Newest Paper on Concealed Carry (April 1999)

From the conclusion of John Lott's latest paper titled, "Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings,and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement:"

The results of this paper support the hypothesis that concealed handgun or shall issue laws reduce the number of multiple victim public shootings. Attackers are deterred and the number of people injured or killed per attack is also reduced, thus for the first time providing evidence that the harm from crimes that still occur can be mitigated. The results are robust with respect to different specifications of the dependent variable, different specifications of the handgun law variable, and the inclusion of additional law variables (e.g., mandatory waiting periods and enhanced penalties for using a gun in the commission of a crime). Not only does the passage of a shall issue law have a significant impact on multiple shootings but it is the only law related variable that appears to have a significant impact.
--- To view the entire paper (Adobe Acrobat Reader required) click here.

(A critique of Lott's study is available in the links cited in the previous section.)

Should Permit Holders be Subject to the Same Training as Police Officers?

No. Of course permit holders should be knowledgeable and proficient in the many aspects of defensive gun use, however as Jeffrey Snyder says in FIGHTING BACK: Crime, Self-Defense, and the Right to Carry a Handgun :

"Permit holders need concern themselves with only one thing: protecting themselves from a sudden, violent assault that threatens life or grievous bodily injury. Rape, robbery, and attempted murder are not typically actions rife with ambiguity or subtlety, requiring special powers of observation, great book-learning, or a stint at the police academy to discern. When a man pulls a knife on a woman and says, 'You're coming with me,' her judgment that a crime is being committed is not likely to be in error."

"Police, by contrast, do not carry arms solely for the purpose of defending themselves, but also for the purpose of enforcing the law. They deliberately inject themselves into potentially dangerous and violent situations, responding to calls for assistance, investigating crimes, intervening in domestic violence, and making arrests."

The police have much wider duties and responsibilities than civilian concealed carry weapon (CCW) permit holders do. As a result, opposing CCW laws because police receive greater weapons training or requiring civilians to receive the same training as police officers is unwarranted. (Snyder's article also points-out that police mistakenly kill roughly 300 innocent victims per year versus around 30 per year by civilians.)

Additional Sources

The NRA's viewpoint on right to carry laws.

Handgun Control Inc.'s Carrying Concealed Weapons - Questions & Answers and Concealed Weapons, Concealed Risk.

One attorney's opinion why carrying a handgun in public may not be for everyone, but it is a right that government ought to respect. A brief, but informative history of concealed-carry laws, the motives behind early handgun licensing and registration laws, and misconceptions regarding concealed carry are discussed.

The Florida Department of State - Division of Licensing, concealed weapons/firearms reports concerning CCW holders.

The Texas Department of Public Safety, arrest information for Texas concealed handgun license holders.

Concealed carry statutes at gunlaws.com.

Additional concealed carry statute information by state from packing.org.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

Or post to Open Discussion and prove you are a nut.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

If it's good enough for CCWs, then it's good enough for gun ownership in general.

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1984 300TD

That's all fine by me. These right-to-carry-laws which require background checks and licensing, are in fact a form of gun control. Like I said high gun ownership on its own is not a problem but it needs to be well-regulated.

__________________
2004 VW Jetta TDI (manual)

Past MB's: '96 E300D, '83 240D, '82 300D, '87 300D, '87 420SEL