Here's an update of the CCW brochure that Thumper referred to. The numbers have changed slightly, there's a bit more info and, unfortunately, one idiotic permit holder shot a police officer.
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*********************A LOOK AT CONCEALED
CARRY NATIONWIDE:
Currently, 44 states have some form of legal concealed
weapons carry (CCW) for persons other than law enforcement
officers. On April 29, 2003 Minnesota became the 34th
shall-issue state, "shall-issue" meaning that a person who
passes training and background checks as determined by state law shall be issued a CCW permit. Additionally, 9
states have may-issue CCW permit legislation, "may-issue"
meaning that the issuance of a CCW permit is at the
discretion of local officials. (Oftentimes, may-issue permits
are granted as political favors, a practice that increasingly is leading to lawsuits against officials). Lastly, Vermont has had
no restrictions on either concealed or open carry since
the state was founded in 1791.
Texas is perhaps the most best known shall-issue state, having established their system in 1996. However, other states have had legal concealed carry far longer. Florida, for example, has had shall-issue concealed carry since 1987, Washington state since 1962, and Indiana since 1934.
Based upon contacts with the issuing authorities in the 34 shall-issue states, we estimate that there are nearly two
million permit holders in those states. Estimates from other sources put the number as high as 3.5 million.
Only six states--Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois,
Ohio and Wisconsin--have no provisions for any type of
legal concealed carry for their citizens. As of this writing, though, Ohio is on the verge of becoming the 35th shall-issue state. Missouri also may pass shall-issue concealed carry legislation in the current session, which would raise the number to 35.
Training requirements in the 34 shall-issue states vary. Florida requires a few hours of classroom and range time.
Texas requires a day of classroom time explaining legal and ethical uses of force, followed by another day
of range time required to demonstrate proficiency.
Every shall-issue state has slightly different restrictions on where a permit holder can carry. Nearly all bar the carry
of weapons in government buildings, schools, police
stations, airports and correctional facilities. Most prohibit carrying a weapon in an establishment that derives more than 51% of its revenue from on-site alcohol consumption. Utah and Idaho are the exceptions, allowing carry in taverns as long as the permit holder is not intoxicated.
CCW MYTHS:
If a concealed carry law is passed in Wisconsin, the state will turn into the Wild West. The statement makes for eye-catching editorials, but has no basis in fact. Every state that has passed shall-issue CCW laws has seen a reduction rather than an increase in violent crime, and that reduction has in many cases been dramatic. Yale visiting scholar Professor John Lott conducted the most exhaustive study ever done on the subject of defensive uses of guns, including concealed carry. His findings are published in the book "More Guns, Less Crime" (a sensational title that belies the technical and sometimes ponderous content of the book). The findings of his study show a clear pattern of reduced violent crime following passage of concealed carry laws.
In every state where concealed carry laws were being considered, opponents used the “Wild West†argument. Perhaps the best refutation of that argument is that no state that has passed CCW legislation has later sought to repeal it.
Even officials who initially opposed CCW laws now admit that they were wrong. Glenn White, president of the Dallas Police Association, says, "I lobbied against the law in 1993 and 1995 because I thought it would lead to wholesale armed conflict. That hasn't happened. All the horror stories I thought would come to pass didn't happen. No bogeyman. I think it's worked out well, and that says good things about the citizens who have permits. I'm a convert."
Charlotte, NC Police Chief Dennis Nowicki also has had a change of heart: "The concerns I had - with more guns on the street, folks may be more apt to square off against one another with weapons - we haven't experienced that."
Harris County,TX District Attorney John Holmes once predicted that "blood would run in the streets" when the Texas concealed-carry law came into effect. Today he says, "I'm detecting that I'm eating a lot of crow on this issue."
If Wisconsin passes a CCW law, there will be shootouts
at every stoplight. Again, a catchy phrase, but one that is contradicted by the experiences of the 44 states with legal
concealed carry. Implicit in the myth is the idea that an
otherwise peaceful and law-abiding citizen who owns a gun will, if given a permit to carry, turn into a hot-headed killer. Frankly, the idea is an insult to those of us who work hard and play by the rules.
Of the two million or more CCW permit holders in the US,
and over the decades that CCW systems have been in place nationwide, we've only been able to find two instances of permit holders having killed someone in an incident of “road rage.†In one case, the permit holder was found guilty of manslaughter. In the second case, the grand jury decided that the shooting was self defense, given that the permit holder was being beaten savagely and was being pulled out the window of his car by his assailant when he fired.
It should also be noted that the "Wild West" and "Shootouts at every stoplight" arguments were bandied about during the debate over handgun hunting in Wisconsin in the early 1980's, and our experience since then has disproved those arguments.
Legalizing concealed carry will put police officers lives at risk. Police officers are trained to approach every encounter with a citizen with the assumption that the
person is armed. A concealed carry permit system allows the officer to find out, based on the license plate number, whether a person has a permit, and to do so before the officer even leaves his squad. Further, many states require a permit holder to inform the officer that he has a permit and is carrying a weapon. This gives the
officer complete control of the situation, and reassures him that he is dealing with a person who has no criminal
background. After searching news stories and other sources spanning decades, we have found just one instance of a police officer having
been shot by a citizen who was legally carrying a
concealed weapon. Fortunately the officer, who was off-duty and in civilian clothes working as a bar bouncer, suffered only a minor injury.
The average citizen doesn’t have the training that police officers do. A concealed carry permit is not a badge, nor
is it intended to be. It is not a citizen’s job to chase down criminals, to make arrests or to flush out barricaded suspects. The duty of a permit holder is to try to escape a
confrontation by any means possible, and to use deadly
force only as the absolute last resort.
The US Department of Justice estimates that citizens defend themselves with firearms against criminals over 500,000 times a year. An ongoing study by the Florida
State University criminology department indicates there
could be as many as 2.5 million defensive uses annually.
The data show that 86% of the time, no shots are fired at the criminal; usually displaying a weapon is a sufficient
deterrent. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report shows that, for the most recently analyzed year, just 215 criminals were killed by armed citizens, including CCW permit holders.
During the commission of crimes, the only persons
present are the criminals and the victims. Usually police officers arrive in time to write up a report. The above data
shows that, not only are citizens capable of defending themselves with firearms, but that they do so with
remarkable restraint.
Law enforcement opposes legalizing concealed carry. In general, groups who represent street officers support legalizing concealed carry (the Milwaukee Police Association, the Wisconsin membership of the Law Enforcement Alliance of America, and the Wisconsin membership of the Fraternal Order of Police, for example). It is primarily the top brass from Wisconsin's large cities who oppose CCW.
From our conversations with sheriffs from these areas, we've been able to find two points in particular where these officials object to the change in the law: one is that they harbor the fears that this pamphlet addresses. They simply are not familiar with the experiences of the 44 states that allow concealed carry.
The other misconception that many officials harbor is that the proposed CCW legislation is another unfunded state mandate being forced upon their departments. The fact is that the proposed legislation provides $90 per applicant to the sheriff's department for processing of the application. (The $75 fee plus $15 toward the Law Enforcement Excellence Fund).
The cost of a state firearms restriction record search is $8, so the department realizes $82 per applicant in revenue. The amount of money going to sheriffs' departments statewide if the CCW bill is passed could be more than $7 million, which would represent a 1% to 2% increase in revenue for those departments.
States with legal concealed carry have higher gun death rates than Wisconsin. This is a very clever argument. With Wisconsin being in the tiny minority of states banning CCW, the simple laws of probability would dictate that our state might have a lower gun death rate than 44 other states.
However, oddsmaking aside, there are many CCW states that have lower gun death rates than Wisconsin. Conversly, there are no-issue states such as Illinois, Kansas and Missouri which have higher gun death rates. There is no correlation between legal concealed carry and gun death rates.
The cleverness of the argument, though, lies in the implication that permit holders cause more gun deaths. The opponents of legal concealed carry would never claim this overtly, since the claim can be so easily disproved. Instead, the opponents' aim is to leave lingering doubts in the public mind.
Polls show that the public is opposed to legal concealed carry. We hear this primarily from legislators who poll their constituents on a variety of issues. Generally, the poll contains a question such as "Would you favor changing the law to allow citizens to carry concealed weapons?"
The public is woefully uninformed about this issue, and the media hasn't been quick to give both sides of the argument equal time. However, when legislators present their constituents with a poll question such as "Forty-four states allow concealed carry. Would you favor a law that permitted trained and licensed Wisconsin citizens to carry concealed weapons?" the poll results change dramatically. Just those three morsels of information--44 states, trained, and licensed--have a profound effect on the way the public perceives the issue.
Interestingly, the last election cycle provides some insight into the weight of concealed carry as a political issue. Three state senate candidates were the target of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of TV ads critical of their support for legal concealed carry. All three candidates won. While it is difficult to assess what positive impact their support of CCW had on their victories, it should be obvious that supporting concealed carry is not a "vote-killer."
5,314 CCW permit holders have been arrested for crimes including murder in Texas. This argument is the result of a study by the Violence Policy Center. The VPC is a gun control advocacy group that releases dozens of studies annually.
The VPC used information freely available to the public from the Texas Department of Public Safety to arrive at their statistics. While their numbers are correct, they fail to distinguish between arrests and convictions. More importantly, they fail to compare the arrest rates for Texas permit holders to the public at large.
The best indicator of whether licensees pose an unusual threat to public safety is the number of licenses revoked. License revocations most often result from offenses having nothing to do with weapons, such as drunk driving, credit card abuse or even failure to repay student loans. In Texas the average revocation rate is fifteen one-hundredths of one percent annually. (Oklahoma's annual average revocation rate is ten one-hundredths of one percent, and Florida's is twelve one-thousandths of one percent). To put these figures into perspective, FBI Uniform Crime Report numbers show that five percent of the general public is arrested each year for offenses for which CCW permit holders would suffer revocation.
But it is the murder arrest suggestion that is the most
serious. If a person kills another, even in self-defense, that person is going to be arrested for murder. Police
officers do not have the power to dismiss charges. This is the job of the district attorney, who can decline to press charges, convene a grand jury, or go to trial.
There are 223,390 CCW permit holders in Texas. This
figure gives us our “control population†for permit holders in that state for the period 1/1/1996 to 11/1/2002.
From 1996 to 2000, 27 Texas permit holders were arrested for murder. Of these, 8 had the charges immediately
dismissed. The remaining 19 went to jury trial, where 16
were found to have acted in self-defense. Three were convicted, which gives us a homicide rate of .35 per
100,000 permit holders annually. Compare this to homicide rate for the general public of 4.5 per 100,000. (UPDATE PARAGRAPH)
Florida also provides detailed data on permit holders. From 10/1/87 through 10/31/02, Florida issued 828,608 CCW permits. During that period, only 1,542 permits were revoked for crimes committed after licensure. As of 1996, the Florida Secretary of State’s office reported that only five permit revocations were the result of a conviction for a violent crime.
A group as large as the permit-carrying population is bound to have a few miscreants in its midst. That is
simple human nature. However, data from every shall-issue state shows that permit holders are overwhelmingly more law-abiding than the average citizen.
WHY DOES WISCONSIN
NEED CONCEALED CARRY?
While our law enforcement officers in Wisconsin are among the best, they cannot be everywhere at once. It is the rare officer indeed who is able to stop a crime of violence while it is occurring. With one police officer for every 400 citizens, the odds favor the criminal in non-issue states like Wisconsin. Criminals know their victims are unarmed and defenseless. Recent events, such as the horrible mob beatings and gang rapes in Milwaukee, show just how vulnerable citizens can be when a police officer is not present.
It is not the number of permit holders that changes the
equation, but rather the knowledge on the part of the
criminal that his potential victim may be armed. While the
number of permit holders is small (on average 1.7% of a
state’s population), permit holders serve as a deterrent to
crime, encouraging criminals to engage in non-confrontational “endeavors.â€
Nowhere was this phenomenon more highly publicized than in Florida in the years after the state passed its CCW laws. Criminals, knowing that Florida citizens might be armed, turned to robbing tourists in marked rental cars. Once the state offered CCW permits to non-residents, and the rental companies removed their stickers, the attacks on tourists stopped.
In this pamphlet, we have presented the facts regarding concealed carry laws without distortion or sensationalism.
We feel that the case for CCW laws in Wisconsin stands on its own merits. We also feel that it is time that our state shows its citizens the same respect that other states accord their residents.
You, as a legislator, have an important decision to make regarding concealed carry. And that decision boils down to a simple but fundamental question: do you trust your own law-abiding constituents?
Authorized and paid for by the
Wisconsin Concealed Carry Association
Richard Baker, Treasurer
414-543-1916
www.wisconsinconcealedcarry.com
