Crimes Lessened or Stopped by Concealed Carry

Status
Not open for further replies.
J

javacodeman

Member
Joined
Sep 29, 2006
Messages
293
Location
Charleston, SC
Does anyone know of a list or database of crimes that were either completely stopped or lessened by concealed carry? Specifically concealed carry--not home based guns.

This came up in a discussion today.

Thanks.
 
I think such data would be unreliable. Seems to me if someone were to fend off an attack by drawing a weapon, a significant number would be disinclined to report it for fear of running afoul of some obscure law or having the weapon confiscated.

Having been the victim of several petty crimes over the years, I eventually learned that reporting the event to the police accomplished nothing other than annoying them and wasting my time. If the report were to involve a weapon, I'd accomplish all that plus invite unwanted scrutiny. Forget it.
 
It's a difficult one to get a fix on,mainly because if a crime has been stopped the chances of it being reported into any kind of searchable database is nill.

I think one of the best aspects of concealed carry is simply that most who do so have a heightened sense of awareness and responsibility.Just being more careful lessens crime without a weapon ever being displayed in any manner.Of course,there is the aspect that the majority of people who CCW are unlikely to be the targeted victims of crime.Statistically,being a middleclass,middle aged, white American is a fairly safe proposition.
 
Does anyone know of a list or database of crimes that were either completely stopped or lessened by concealed carry?
Click to expand...


Impossible to compile.


Any database like that would be dependent on subjective perspective.


I've been watching a lot of Foxnews with my job. There has recently been a lot of discussion there about Concealed Carry due to that teacher wanting to carry in the classroom.


The Antis will not acknowledge ANY arguement that suggests that Concealed Carry can lessen or prevent a crime.

They dogmatically state that CC will only get more people hurt and is a bad, bad, bad idea. Nevermind that they cannot bring to bear ANY fact supporting this.

Guys, I have had my eyes opened regarding this debate recently. I've seen the way that antis are now arguing their position.


No amount of databases or statistics will EVER matter to them. Since they cannot come up with anything to support empirically thier position, they refuse to go in that direction.


Sometimes I think we are just spinning our wheels bringing evidence to them.


On that last Foxnews debate, the anti finally just stated (paraphrased):


Come on now...


Guns in schools? Do you really think teachers are qualified to have a firearm?


"I mean COME ON... how can ANYONE think that we'd be safer with guns in schools?"


"You'd have to be crazy to think that this is a good idea."


And strangely, no one challenges this unsupported, clearly biased, and overly emotional position for its lack of credibility.




We are better off, IMO, using anecdotal evidence with them. Make sure you bring up the Pearl, MS school shooting as an example of firearms lessening a crime.


-- John
 
Lotsa luck

You won't get any help from the print media. Here's an example:

In January of 2002, a student at the Appalachian Law School in Grundy, Virginia, decided to go on a VT-style shooting spree. It went nowhere because two legally armed students pulled their own weapons and pointed them at him. Great story for our side, right?

Out of 294 stories listed in Lexis/Nexis, how many reported that this potential mass murderer was stopped by ARMED students?

Three (3).

Though the facts were well known from the start, the papers reported that the shooter was "subdued" or even "tackled" by other students. Their guns were not mentioned.

http://johnrlott.tripod.com/postsbyday/topic-appalachianlawschool.html

Internet websites, on the other hand, generally reported the facts.

Anyone who denies that the mainstream media's news reporting is driven and shaped by a left-wing agenda should be asked to explain the reporting of this incident.

Here in Dallas, the local media report armed-citizen crimestopper incidents two or three times a week. I've never seen one in the national press.
 
Last edited:
No way to have an accurate list as too many crimes and prevented crimes go unreported especially in crime ridden cities with anti 2nd amendment laws and double or triple digit annual homicide rates people have a distrust of the system and LE and either fear retribution or don't want to make an issue or get involved..

May be worth checking the FBI's uniform crime reports then again maybe not?
 
You won't get any help from the print media. Here's an example:

In January of 2002, a student at the Appalachian Law School in Grundy, Virginia, decided to go on a VT-style shooting spree. It went nowhere because two legally armed students pulled their own weapons and pointed them at him. Great story for our side, right?
Click to expand...

You apparently can't get a completely accurate story from here either. Why? Because those two legally armed students who pulled their own weapons and pointed them at the gunman were not concealed carry students. They were both cops. Both had to go to their vehicles to retrieve guns and one even grabbed a ballistic vest and handcuffs. I see none of the concealed carry folks even mention the UNARMED participants in the arrest, who actually helped tackle the suspect.

Nobody likes Wikipedia. I understand. However, you can verify the sources yourself. I have.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shooting

Not to give you a hard time, cnorman18, Ted Nugent actually called these two off duty cops "average" students (not mentioning their LEO training or the fact that they were cops) on CNN and completely failed to mention the help provided by the unarmed students. http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/19/commentary.nugent/index.html

So, you can and will get help from the print media if you search appropriately for the information. Gross generalizations that the media and/or print media won't help you is a defeatest attitude.
 
All of the research about concealed-carry laws has been eclipsed by the most comprehensive, methodologically sound research on CCW laws in the U.S., conducted by University of Chicago law professor John R. Lott, Jr., with graduate student David B. Mustard. Examining crime data for every county in the nation (3054), and for the ten states that adopted “shall issue” CCW laws between 1977 and 1992, Lott and Mustard found that while all counties generally benefited from licensing reform with respect to the most violent crimes, concealed-carry reform had less effect in rural counties, but in urban counties reform was followed by a substantial reduction in homicide and other violent crimes such as robbery, and such laws had the greatest deterrent effect in counties with a population in excess of 100,000 with the attendant high crime rates. At the same time, there was a statistically significant rise (2.7%) in nonconfrontational property crimes, such as larceny and car theft. Apparently many criminals concluded that the risks of encountering a victim who could fight back had become too high. Lott and Mustard estimated that if all states that did not have concealed carry laws in 1992 adopted such laws, there would be approximately 1570 fewer murders, 60,363 fewer aggravated assaults, 11,898 fewer robberies and 4177 fewer rapes annually. In terms of dollars and cents, they used 1996 NIJ estimates to conclude that “the estimated annual gain from allowing concealed handguns is over $6.21 billion in 1992 dollars.” Thus the adoption or improvement of concealed carry laws in more than a dozen states since 1992 may be one of several causes for the current decline in murder rates. When state concealed handgun laws went into effect in a county, murders fell by 8.5%, rapes by 5% and aggravated assaults by 7%. “The potential defensive nature of guns is indicated by the different rates of so-called ‘hot burglaries,’ meaning residents are at home when the criminals strike. Almost 50% of the burglaries in Canada and Britain, which have tough gun control laws, are ‘hot burglaries.’ By contrast, the U.S., with laxer restrictions, has a ‘hot burglary’ rate of only 13%.” Lott and Mustard also asserted that allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns “appears to produce no increase in accidental deaths.” The accidental handgun deaths rose by about 0.5% when concealed carry statutes were passed. Based on 1992 numbers, this means that if all other states without “shall issue” statutes had adopted them, the laws would have resulted in less than one (0.645) more death. The Lott/Mustard results were obtained after controlling for other factors that might account for the decrease in violent crime rates. Of course, data alone cannot measure the benefits of concealed-carry reform. If a gun permit helps a woman feel safe enough to go jogging, her increased sense of security is an important social benefit. - David Kopel, 1996, Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns, John Lott, Univ. of Chicago Law School professor, 1996
 
Yep, concealed carry works so well in places like Texas that the crime rate was in decline years before the law went into effect. It was so powerful that when it did go into effect, crime dropped in New York, California, and Illinois as well. In fact, in 1996, violent crime dropped in a total of 43 states. Is that amazing or what? In fact, violent crime dropped by several times the amount it did in Texas for states like New York, New Jersey, and Kentucky.

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/Cius_97/96CRIME/96crime2.pdf

Sorry, but I find Lott's analysis to be spurious. He fails to consider and account for major crime drops in states where concealed carry isn't allowed or is heavily restricted.

Could concealed carry in Texas really show to have reduced crime when in fact crime was already in decline before going into effect? That would be a hard sell, but folks talking about how much crime has dropped will use states like Texas to "prove" their points and conveniently leave out data that don't support their claims.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top