Depending on who is crunching the data, the effect of concealed carry on crime is either 1) concealed carry causes a reduction in violent crime, or 2) concealed carry has no effect on the rate of violent crime.
My amateur analysis is just a little different. Reports out of Chicago show a decrease in crime as a result of Illinois CCW. Reports out of Texas, show that more concealed carry does nothing to reduce crime. The way I see it, concealed carry is a deterrent. Some percentage of criminals will avoid committing certain crimes because of the risk that a CCW permit holder will shoot back. As more people get carry permits, the crime rate decreases, until as many criminals who can be deterred by CCW will be deterred, and the decrease in crime levels off. An increase in the number of CCW after this point has no additional effect. So a state like Illinois, which didn’t have concealed carry, adopts CCW and the crime rate goes down. Texas has had CCW for years, so adding more permit holders really doesn’t do much at a statistical level.
What we can agree on, is that concealed carry has not turned every fender bending into a shootout at the OK Corral or caused the streets to run red with blood. This is the inconvenient truth that anti-gunners do their damnedest to play down. They will lie, they will obfuscate, they will look rape survivors in the eye and say concealed carry wound’t have protected them, or that their gun would have been taken and turned against them. They will tell you that 0.0066% of carry permit holders are representative of concealed carry as a whole and so CCW needs to be banned (849 “concealed carry killers” according to the VPC out of 12.8 MILLION people with CCW permits nation wide).
So when 6,000 Minnesotans a month apply for concealed carry, it causes the anti-gunners to go into rectal pucker mode. Not content with that fact that Minnesota requires CCW applicants to go through firearms safety training and a comprehensive background check, antis feel compelled to try and “reeducate” their fellow citizens with lies.
“[A] significant number of Minnesotans believe that having a gun makes them safer, and unfortunately, this is not true except in very narrow circumstances. It means we have a lot of work to do in educating the public about the hazards posed by guns..”
They antis are losing on the issue of concealed carry big time. The demands for permits is shooting through the roof. So what is it that the antis do?
In the words of Adam Savage:
Howdy,
I saw my name mentioned here so to speak and thought I’d make a comment. I’m one of the over two hundred twenty thousand carry permit holders in Minnesota and I also saw the article you mentioned and spent some quality time commenting on it on the newspaper’s website.
The Star Tribune is a very liberal paper and they had a tough time with this article because permit holders tend to not follow the predictions of the gun control lobby and are much more law abiding than the general public. In fact, Minnesota actually publishes an annual report on the carry permit system and actually documents crimes committed by permit holders’
https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/bca/bca-divisions/administrative/Pages/firearms.aspx
And of course, the comments left by some were entertaining though as usual fact-free. During the recent open carry legislation hoopla in Texas, I just started referring to it as “Minnesota carry”, because when the law mandating a shall issue permit system was written, it didn’t require concealing the firearm. So we have some twelve years of what Texas is starting with no issues.
“They will tell you that 0.0066% of carry permit holders are representative of concealed carry as a whole and so CCW needs to be banned (849 “concealed carry killers” according to the VPC out of a 12.8 MILLION people with CCW permits nationwide.”
I also love it when they refer to the VPC’s “study”. About a full third of all of those deaths is a suicide. One thing you left out in your math though is that those 849 deaths took place over a period of about nine years.
Minnesota has a very active group that supports gun rights called the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance. Last year five gun rights bills got passed into law, among them being the legalization of suppressors. And this after a promised veto by a Democratic Governor.
Isn’t that the conclusion from “More Guns, Less Crime” by John Lott?
It’s been a few years since I read the book but it said (and I’m painting with really friggin broad brush here) that concealed carry lead to a (more or less significant) drop in most violent crimes and break ins but sometimes other crimes rised – mostly car theft or other crimes where no criminal/victim confrontation takes place.
But most times overall crime rates are dropping.
” It means we have a lot of work to do in educating the public about the hazards posed by guns..”
“…and, once everybody understands the dangers of guns, we can explain how the Earth is flat!”