By the way, I am also the possessor of a Virginia concealed carry permit.
As well I should be: I was one of the people who testified before the Virginia House of Delegates on the necessity for changing Virginia’s “may issue” law into a “shall issue” law several years ago.
That’s also absurd. By the same logic, you could argue that nothing should be regulated since criminals won’t obey the laws.
Can’t outlaw meth labs because criminals will have them anyway.
Can’t outlaw brass knuckles because criminals will have them anyway.
And so on.
Not at all.
The purpose of criminalizing an act is to provide a mechamism for society to protect itself by removing from its ranks those that commit the act.
When we discuss meth labs and brass knuckles we acknowledge there is no legal purpose behind the use of either item, so criminalizing them is consistent with the purpose described above.
The possession of handguns is quite different. There are both legal and illegal uses for handguns. Here we must enter a balancing act, weighing the results of making handguns illegal against the benefit of keeping them legal. In this weighing analysis, it’s perfactly proper to observe that making them illegal will disarm only those people concerned with abiding by the law.
We don’t make a similar observation for meth labs or brass knuckles because these items are not used by law-abiding people in the first place.
You are quite rational but I still disagree. I don’t see society’s benefit from your handgun any more than I see benefit to brass knuckles, nor do I see what legitimate uses of those guns are. This is where reasonable men need to make reasonable distinctions, I for one would be quite happy if you had your handgun but wouldn’t tote it with you. I believe my safety is in inverse proportion to the number of guns in my vicinity. Of course you would disagree.
Even if we postulate that there are legitimate uses for handguns, where does one draw the line between legitimate use and excessive capability? Do private citizens need the capability to mow down dozens of people in seconds? Do private citizens need the capability to pierce armor? The problem with the “if you outlaw it, only outlaws have it” argument is that it would make it impossible to make reasonable regulations.
Then you have nothing at all to fear - or even get jittery about. In nearly every state, it is illegal to carry a firearm - concealed or otherwise - into any establishment which serves alcohol.
Then again, that only means that persons who’re inclined to obey the law - say, CCW permit holders - aren’t armed. Folks with criminal intent, on the other hand, don’t really give a damn, so you can never know with any certainty if the guy sitting behind you spilling his beer on your head has a gun.
But what the hell, you should feel safer anyway knowing that law-abiding citizens haven’t got a gun; only the criminally pre-disposed.
Enjoy the game.
Please don’t limit the hypothetical to those places where concealed weapons are banned, it might well be a college game where alcohol is not served, the supermarket, the movies, etc.
But all things being equal, if I’m in a crowd of say 5000 people, I feel safer if there are 5 concealed weapons in my vicinity rather than 500.
That’s fine, I guess Bob, but it doesn’t make any sense to me. In prohibiting CCW permit holders (or repealing CCW laws making all CCW carry illegal), you’re only removing guns held by law-abiding folks; those guns just do not pose a threat to you. What remains then are only the guns in the hands of persons pre-disposed to criminal activity - those are the ones you need to worry about. What it comes right down to, tho’, ain’t the gun at all, but the person (and his intents) who has the gun.
Note also please that I am not making any statements which should be construed to mean that you (or anyone) is safer because there are persons nearby with a concealed weapon - that’s a whole other argument. I’m only arguing that permitting law-abiding previously screened CCW permit holders to carry guns doesn’t make you more unsafe. After all, there’s nothing to fear from law-abiding citizens, is there?
I should address this, too. I’d say you only think you’d feel safer. Because you don’t really know how many people around you might be carrying guns. Nor is there any means of knowing the intent of the persons with guns.
I’m just thinking probability. If there are X number of CCWs in my vicinity, and a small (even tiny) fraction of those law-abiding CCW holders are either trigger happy or slightly incapacitated by say alcohol, then my chances of getting shot in the crossfire of an argument escalating into gunfire would increase as X increases. Thus, in my vested interest of keeping old Bob alive, I prefer fewer weapons to many weapons. I prefer to take the chance of someone holding me up at gunpoint to having a couple of people having a shootout in my vicinity. YMMV, of course.
What is hard to do is balance my perceived danger of too many guns around with your perceived risk of not being allowed to carry one. I’ll agree that you might feel safer carrying a gun if you’ll agree that I might feel more nervous around them.
Bolding mine.
How you feel doesn’t concern me. Unless you can present a fact-based rationale for removing guns from the hands of your fellow citizens, I’d say how you feel is your own problem.
But if you feel safer with a gun, then I could just as well say how you feel isn’t my concern either. I have no cite other than common sense, let me pose a scenario for you…
Postulate 2000 cities of 10,000 people. Let’s say in each of the cities there are 5 armed criminals. Let’s split the 2000 cities into two groups of 1000 cities each. In 1000 of the cities , there are 200 armed law abiding citizens (Pool A)
In 1000 of the cities , there are 0 armed law abiding citizens (Pool B)
Monitor these cities for a year. At the end of the year, I believe:
Without a controlled experiment we won’t know. And as we’ve seen before, statistics can be manipulated to suit whatever agenda you want. But if I am correct, I would much prefer to be in Pool B. You may prefer Pool A.
Just so you know, in the US, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, almost 40% of murders in 2000 were commited by other means, like knives, fists, poisons, and such.
But I think we do know. The only variable here is the law abiding armed citizens. (I’m assuming by “law-abiding armed citizens” you mean duly licensed CCW holders who routinely go about armed. If not then what I’m about to say is not applicable.) Thus, we only need to determine how many occurences of “law abiding armed citizens” shooting other law-abiding persons there are. That number is vanishingly small - over many years and in every jurisdiction where CCW laws have been enacted. In fact, the rate at which duly licensed CCW holders shoot other law-abiding citizens is far lower than that of non-CCW-holding (but otherwise law-abiding) gun owners shooting law-abiding citizens.
The reasons for this, however, are not clear. It may be that only the most responsible segment of law-abiding gun owners applies and earns a CCW privilege. Or it could be that by dint of navigating the legal hurdles to earn a CCW privilege, a prospective CCW holder becomes more responsible.
In order to verify this claims, I would need to see some statistics giving gun laws by city, and crime rates by city, and I’d need a big chunk of spare time to do the statistical analysis, adjusting for population size and all that. I’m not likely to get any of those three things soon. i will point out this interesting factoid: the highest crime rate of any city in the country is in Dallas, Texas. Not Washington D. C., not New York City, not Detroit. And while I frankly have no clue what the gun laws are in Dallas, it seems probable that they’re slightly more friendly to gun owners than those of Washington D. C.
On a larger sense, though, your argument is logically flawed. You basically say that gun crime in concentrated in urban areas, ergo we can’t possibly make any link between American gun policy and crime in this country. But the fact that urban areas have more crime than suburban or rural areas holds everywhere. Certainly I know it’s true in Britain, France and Canada, and probably in Australia and everywhere else as well. The thing is, American urban areas have higher crime rates than urban areas in those countries where gun ownership is banned. Thus it’s still perfectly valid to compare crime rates in the two areas.
You are correct in interpreting my scenario, I did mean law abiding CCW holders. Although I admit that it is possible that you are correct, I am not certain we have enough data to verify your statement that there are very few accidental shootings among CCW holders. If there is impartial data out there, I’d like to see it.
But this approach to the issue is nonsense, because it ignores the fact that gun control does prevent some criminals from getting guns. Not all criminals, but some criminals. And if you prevent some criminals from getting guns, then some crimes are prevented. Certain types of crimes can only be committed with guns. There’s no such thing as a drive-by baseball bat clobbering.
One link already presented shows that there were 23 murders with guns in Britain in 2002. Clearly British criminals are not getting guns very easily, or there would be a lot more murders with guns.
From TheEggman’s post that I quoted. He said that gun control laws in places like DC don’t matter, because when guns aren’t available to criminals, they just use knives or other weapons instead. It’s not a big leap from that statement to conclude that there are places where guns are not available, and that DC is one of those places.
I ask again: Without the licensed gun owners in the market, where do criminals get their guns? If you have a manufacturer who’s making guns primarily to serve the illegal gun market, then your problems are simple: Just go after the source, and you can disarm all of the criminals. Which would leave us with the knife vs. knife situation, which is far preferable to gun vs. gun.
It also ignores the fact that a criminal does not need a gun to be a legitimate threat to a law abiding citizen. If a criminal threatens with a knife, the gun carrying citizen can defend himself. A knife carrying citizen, if it comes down to it, no matter how well trained, will get cut. Same thing if a criminal has a bat, or a screwdriver, or even overwhelming strength.
How about the CDC? The CDC says there were total 762 accidental gun deaths nationwide in 2002. This is from all* gun owners: licensed CCW holders, non-CCW holders and even criminal possessing guns. The number of accidental deaths noted in 2002 continued the general downward trend of the previous twenty-plus years. This despite a substantial increase in the number of firearms held by the general public - particularly handguns. And an increase the number of people in the U.S. And also a substantial increase in the number of CCW holders going about legally armed.
You can tease this info out of the CDC’s WISQARS system (as I did) if you wish:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars/default.htm
If you want to dig out the number of non-fatal gun accidents (17,579 of all types in 2002), WISQARS can do that, too.
Guns are designed to kill or at the very least severely wound people. I think in most cases that is an undesirable thing. Yes, it is lawfull to use a gun in self defense, but how does that stack up with the number of undesirable uses of guns in any given year? I think society is allowed to make the judgement that firearms do more harm than good in the hands of its citizenry, and that there’s neither a God given nor a Constitutional right for an individual to own a firearm.