An Argument for Conceal-and-Carry Gun Laws
Uploaded by Joe_Man500 on Oct 09, 2002
While most citizens are not concious of the fact, it has been a proven defense in court cases across the country that the police are to act only as a general deterrent to benefit the community as a whole. The police are not responsible for the protection of any single person from crime. Department of Justice statistics reveal that the police can get to a crime-scene within 5 minutes only about 28% of the time. And according to FBI estimations, there is a violent crime committed somewhere in America every 22 seconds. I’m here to address the advantageous aspects of conceal-and-carry laws for firearms. I will present the problems a lack of conceal-carry laws presents, the causes to these problems, and practical solutions to this hotly debated argument.
To understand the controversy surrounding conceal and carry laws, one must realize the problems that arise from the lack of such laws. To paraphrase the often cliché adage, if concealed weapons are outlawed, only the outlaws will have concealed weapons. There appears to be no reason to make carrying a concealed weapon illegal, if criminals are already walking around with concealed guns. But because of this lack of logic by law-makers, innocent, law-abiding people walk the streets, next to and at the mercy of violent, gun-toting criminals.
Another problem with infringing on people’s right to carry a concealed weapon is that it promotes high crime rates. If these gun laws didn’t work, there wouldn’t be such a dramatic fall in crimes once they were enacted. According to John R. Lott Jr., professor at Chicago University, author of “More Guns, Less Crime” and co-author with David Mustard on “Crime, Deterrence and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns,” counties that enacted right-to-carry laws between 1977 and 1992 saw a 2.2% drop in robberies, a 5.2% in rape, 7% fall in aggravated assaults and a whopping 7.6% drop in murders. When expanded to a rational number, this would calculate to 1,414 fewer murders, 4,177 fewer rapes, 11,898 fewer robberies and 60,363 fewer aggravated assaults. All of this missed out on in states where conceal-carry laws are illegal. This information, coupled with the FBI data from 1992 to ‘97 that said that the nation dropped 19% in violent crimes, while Missouri (which enacted a right-to-carry law in that time dropped almost 25%. Even government officials recognize the importance of conceal/carry laws. In the wake of the devastating school shooting at Columbine...