That's a right, not a shall issue, or may issue privilege, now in five states. It was never a privilege in Vermont of all places. Add up the number of people who can carry concealed in VT, AK, AZ, WY and AR as of this month.
Posted on 07/11/2013 12:35:04 PM PDT by neverdem
Hint: Chicago is NOT an example of gun control working.
The headline on last Sunday's Chicago Tribune was stark and arresting: "A thousand shootings." That's what Chicago experienced in the first six months of 2013. It works out to more than five a day.
So what crime issue got Gov. Pat Quinn worked up last week? The danger posed by Illinoisans holding state permits to carry concealed firearms. "My foremost duty as governor is to keep the people of Illinois safe," he said in issuing an amendatory veto of a bill to legalize concealed-carry in the last state without it.
His changes included a ban on carrying guns in establishments that serve alcohol and limiting each carrier to one gun with a magazine holding a maximum of 10 rounds. But in the end they didn't matter, because the General Assembly overrode his veto. The new law sets up a system obliging the state to issue licenses to registered gun owners who pass a background check, undergo 16 hours of safety training and pay a fee.
Quinn responded: "Following a weekend of horrific violence in Chicago in which at least 70 people were shot and 12 killed, this was the wrong move for public safety in Illinois." But of those 70 shootings -- or the 1,000-plus shootings that preceded them this year -- it's safe to wager that few if any involved legal weapons used by individuals legally entitled to own them.
It's exceptionally rare for a previously law-abiding person to take a legally purchased firearm, load it, walk out the door and shoot someone. But that's the specter that dominates the mind of Quinn when the subject of concealed-carry comes up. It also preoccupies Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
The problem of gun violence in the city, though, is a problem of violence committed by criminals and juveniles who are not allowed to own guns, much less carry them in public. To worry about legal permit holders in that context is like fretting that you may have left a faucet running as you try to escape a flood.
The discussion arises because of a federal appeals court decision last year striking down Illinois' ban on concealed-carry. Noting that the Supreme Court says the Second Amendment guarantees the right to have guns in the home for protection, it concluded there is no logic in denying individuals that means of self-defense in public spaces.
"A right to bear arms," wrote Judge Richard Posner, "thus implies a right to carry a loaded gun outside the home." The court gave the state six months to create a permit system.
Chicago Democrats act as though this is either a) a surefire formula for more bloodshed or b) a reckless leap into the unknown. It's neither. In recent years, we have accumulated a wealth of evidence about what happens when a state establishes a "shall-issue" system under which qualified citizens may pack pistols.
Since Florida blazed the trail in 1987, state after state has followed. During that period, the national homicide rate has fallen by more than 40 percent. Florida's dropped even faster. Back then, its murder rate was far higher than Illinois'. By 2011, it was lower.
It would be too much to assume that the spread of concealed-carry accounts for the improvement. Lots of factors have produced the national reduction in violent crime. But it hasn't gotten in the way.
Opponents, however, never tire of insisting that letting individuals tote firearms will unleash mass carnage. The Washington-based Violence Policy Center makes much of the fact that since 2007, by its count, 516 people have been killed by permit holders.
But a quarter of those were suicides, which are not a danger to public safety. Though the figure sounds high, it's less than 90 a year -- in a country with more than 50,000 homicides and suicides annually.
The number of licensees who make lethal misuse of their guns, likewise, is a microscopic percentage of the estimated 6 million people who are authorized to carry. The overwhelming majority behave in a responsible, lawful way. The people behind the epidemic of violent crime in Chicago, by contrast, don't bother with permits and wouldn't qualify for them.
For this group, the new law is irrelevant. Politicians who use the ongoing slaughter as a reason to oppose it only confirm that when it comes to government's most important function, they haven't got a clue.
That's a right, not a shall issue, or may issue privilege, now in five states. It was never a privilege in Vermont of all places. Add up the number of people who can carry concealed in VT, AK, AZ, WY and AR as of this month.
They don't?
How many Illinois politicians "carry" themselves? Or have armed guards to escort them?
I'm certain the understand quite well.
I mean, I thought there were lots of progressive people in those states.
libs: disarmed law abiding citizens in a world of armed criminals == safe
but libs: armed cops in the same world of armed criminals == great
weird since reality: armed cops shoot more rounds in conflicts than ccw’s, cops miss targets in conflicts more than ccw’s - less accurate, more rounds hitting unintended targets, and cops injure more innocents by gunfire in conflicts than ccw’s do.
Time for Mr. Gura to get cracking. :-) With the drop in crime rates Chicago will realize in the next two years, all arguments against CCW will be bankrupted so completely that none will be able to refute them. Until then, comparisons between Camden and Philadelphia would probably serve quite nicely.
and further weird because real world: while ccw’s can be sued for accidents and tried for crimes with guns, cops acting as agents of the state, almost never are tried for crimes, and have special immunities ccw’s do not, while perfoming their jobs and injuring or killing accidetally.
for now you still need to include IL in this mix.
And how many of those were justifiable homicide? I'll bet it was a very large percentage.
“My foremost duty as governor is to keep the people of Illinois safe,”...
So, they’re safer when they are defenseless against the lawless, who will continue to be armed? Get a clue, MORON!
Then round up one hundred gang bangers, take them to the Daley Center and hang them.
Thank you John Lott, for writing the book that changed everything.
Only 8 States now permit groundless refusal of the right to carry: New York, Delaware, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Iowa, California, and Hawaii.
Correction: New York, Delaware, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Iowa Maryland, California, and Hawaii.
What was I thinking?
The lower crime rate isn't only a function of killing bad guys.
The whole “brandishing” thing, to me, is a farce...
Now, I can see that if you were attempting to intimidate someone, ie, initiate force without using actual force, then that should be prohibited,
but exhibiting a firearm IN RESPONSE TO a threat of force,
and to head it off,
seems to be a morally superior position to allowing the threat to escalate to the point that you have to draw and kill your assailant.
Illinois Politicians Don't Understand Concealed Carry
I'm sure they do understand concealed carry: they merely hate the Second Amendment and all of us who dare assert it means exactly what it says.
Blind hatred never seeks very far ahead.
The problem with self defense, as far as leftists are concerned, is that those that assert the right to self defense just might defend themselves against what leftists want to impose on them.
I think you nailed it.
Bingo.
Some things are so simple that those who seem not to understand them may well be suspected of pretending not to understand to further their own agenda. One of those things is this. If laws against guns could prevent the violent use of guns there would be no need for them because all the laws against the violent use of guns would long ago have stopped the violent use of guns. The solution to violations of law is not to be had by passing more laws. It is like trying to stop a water leak by laying a new pipe alongside the old one and running the water through both, it simply creates the potential for more leaks and the old pipe will stil leak until you fix it. Apparently the concept is too much for some to understand.
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