Of course, there are plenty of instances of Americans shooting other Americans. I do not wish to engage in a gun debate (at this time), but I am curious if anyone knows of the answer to the above question. Can you cite instances where a person with a lawfully issued Concealed Carry Handgun license then used his lawfully carried weapon to shoot a person in an unlawful manner?
Brief background: A teacher I work with wants to get a CCH license. He intends to take the classes and have a license lawfully issued. He wishes to carry his handgun at school and even during class. This teacher tends to lose his temper on occasion. Of course, it is a big jump to go from throwing a 3-ring binder, as my coworker did yesterday, to pulling out a gun and shooting someone. I just wonder if there is any precedent for someone doing that.
Thanks for staying GQ. The GD about whether or not guns should be on school campuses may come later.
They don’t explain whet “crime after Licensure” means, I’m guessing it’s such things as carrying in a school, Federal building, a bar and similar violations. Notice there were only 168 “firearm utilized” revocations in 25 years out of 2,031,106 licenses issued.
I don’t know what the laws are in your state, but where I live ¶ you can’t carry a gun into a school even if you do have a concealed carry license. I was under the impression that most states had similar laws.
I can’t comment on the accuracy of this page, but there’s a web site called Concealed Carry Killers with a list of such incidents. (Warning: Web site contains PDFs.)
EDIT: That’s from the Violence Policy Center mentioned in the Wikipedia excerpt above.
It’s a statistical inevitability that someone with a CCW permit has “snapped” and killed somebody.
What would be of more interest to me is the rate in which CCW permit holders commit crimes compared to the general population, or what percentage of those 117 documented killings were actually justified yet not reported that way by the VPC.
In any event, it’s an incredibly low percentage of CCW permit holders that do kill somebody.
Anyone have data for how many concealed carry owners there are, so you can compare their percentage to that percentage. I know it’s probably more than 0.5%, but how much more?
I’ve been told by a policeman in Texas (so YMMV with the trustworthiness of the info) that police tend to be less worried with a CHL holder. The reasoning goes if you’re the type of person who goes out of your way to obtain a license to legally carry concealed rather than carry illegally, you’re more likely to be the law abiding type.
Not sure if it’s true, and I’m cautious about anecdotes, but at least it sounds plausible.
An equally interesting question to me is a comparison of gun-related crime rates between people found to have a valid firearm permit vs those who carry illegally.
Nitpick: I’m not sure if it’s what you meant, but I believe that in most or all states, a license to carry is general- that is, you don’t have a particular gun you’re permitted to publicly carry.
Not only are permit holders statistically more trustworthy than the population at large, I’ve heard anecdotal claims that in some places they have a better record than the police.
My home state of Minnesota has a number of outstanding permits equal to just over 2% of the total population.
Ok, my numbers are rough. The VPC lists 381 deaths from concealed carry killers, based upon law enforcement reports since May 2007. Of course that’s an underestimate, since not all of them are caught. Divide by 4 and you get 95 per year.
MSNBC says that there are 6 million concealed carry users in the US, up from 1 million during the 1980s. Too bad that number isn’t better. This blog seems to think the number was 3.08 million in 2004, if I’m reading it correctly.
So 95 is an underestimate of the number of deaths and 6 million is an overestimate of the average CCW holders over the 2007-2011 period. So we have a conservative estimate of the CCW murdering rate of 0.000015833, or 1.58 per 100,000: the actual number is higher. Anyway, that’s 32% of the US murder rate of 5.0. But it’s also 24% higher than the UK murder rate of 1.28. So generally speaking you should feel safer with an average European than with a random CCW holder. I guess the next inquiry might involve the murder rate among US citizens who don’t own firearms.
Feel free to check my arithmetic [1]. I got the murder figures from the “Intentional homicide” page at Wikipedia. I suspect the CCW figures include manslaughter. So this post could be investigated further.
Impressionistically, the idea that CCW holders are especially “law-abiding, upstanding community leaders who merely seek to exercise their right to self-defense,” is a little misleading. I would characterize them as “Normal, ordinary people who blah blah blahdy blah”: I see no evidence that they are extraordinarily adverse to mayhem.
[1] Especially for those pesky and mortifying order of magnitude errors.
Apart from the order of magnitude error, and the distiiction between “intentional homicide” (the general population) and “killings” (concealed carry licensees, per the VPC), there’s also the fact that the VPC is only counting incidents where firearms are involved, whereas the intentional homicide figures presumably count homicides by any means.
You’d expect concealed carry licensees to commit firearms homicide at a lower rate than the population at large, since concealed carry licensees are presumably subject to some level of screening to exclude those with evidence of a propensity to violence, whereas the general population is not.
Oh yeah, the OP. The VPC link has boatloads of examples. CCW holder Kevin Hooper was drinking and shot his father in law during an argument: he had carried his trusty 45 on his hip to the party. CCW killer Bobby Ray Bordeaux Jr. only remembers bits and pieces of the day he killed one and wounded another during an argument at the Hogs
Pen Pub: he was too drunk. CCW killer Matthew R. Culbertson was drinking with Jerri L. Vernon: Culbertson decided to shoot a few rounds outside. When he returned Vernon asked him whether the gun was loaded. “Let’s see” said Matt, and shot her dead.
Michael McLendon was a CCW holder and survivalist. He went on a rampage and shot 11 people, including himself. CCW holder Paul Michael Merhige allegedly shot 6 of his relatives during Thanksgiving, killing 4. He has not been caught. Terrance Hough Jr. killed 3 and wounded 2: apparently he was known by his co-workers as a “ticking
time bomb that finally exploded.” White supremacist and CCW holder Richard Poplawski allegedly shot 3 police officers and wounded another. The website notes that Poplawski’s mother told police that he had been “stockpiling guns and ammunition…because he believed that as a result of the economic collapse, the police were no longer able to protect society.” She additionally stated that “her son ‘only liked police when they were not curtailing his constitutional rights, which he was determined to protect.’”
So what criteria do most US states use for assessing if a person should get a concealed carry license? I assume Law Enforcement by default get one… Presumably it weeds out the schizophrenic, the loner who lives with his mother and has never been on a date, and the guy in the middle of a nasty divorce?
I know that in Canada, it is difficult to get even a FAC (firearms acquisition certificate) to even buy a weapon if you have mental problems, are or have recently been divorced, a criminal history especially violence, etc. Though, there have been some spectacular cases - the fellow in Montreal who shot up a school and killed several women and just before that had no difficulty getting his FAC: a guy in Vancouver who was given a pistol permit (!! Almost impossible to get!) because even though his ex-wife complained about assault, she was too scared to file formal charges. This was before zero-tolerance. He went into the inlaws’ house and shot 10 people.
Most states are what are called “shall issue”, which means that they issue a CCW license to anyone who applies, unless there is a specific reason not to. Typically, the applicant must be a resident of that state, must be of legal age to carry, and must pass a background check. Some states require you to take a safety course. Some states require fingerprinting.
The typical criteria for rejection are things like if you have been convicted of a felony or have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution at any time.
In Pennsylvania, you must provide references, and the form asks if you use marijuana (I can’t imagine that there’s anyone stupid enough to actually check yes on that box) or if your character and reputation is such that you would be a danger to the public.
There’s no reason to exclude the loner who never got a date or the guy in the middle of a nasty divorce. If there is a protection order against you though you will be denied.
In California, you’re must register the specific serial number of the firearms you want to carry concealed, and are only allowed to register two (maybe three) of your firearms, regardless of how many firearms you own. Those are the only ones you’re permitted to carry concealed.
As a teacher in WI, where the yahoos have just passed concealed carry, I’ve been meaning to look up the statistics. Glad to see that the carriers are safer than I’d feared.
And I’ve always thought there should be a simple test we could give teachers to determine if they’re smart enough to allow them up in front of the room.
And PRESTO! We’ve got it. Anyone who thinks carrying a weapon into the tinderbox that is a classroom, ain’t got the smarts.
BTW, I’d bet my entire savings that if that gun was discharged in the classroom, it’d be after a student wrestled it away from the teacher.