Recently there was a lot of news about how the Mayor of Seattle WA wanted to prohibit lawful carrying of handguns in Seattle City parks. All of the counter arguments I have read here or elsewhere in opposition to his stance always made the argument that simply posting signs will not keep bad guys from carrying weapons in public parks. While this is a valid argument in and of itself I think it misses the real reason that mayor and others like him do not want law abiding citizens to possess handguns in public places. I suspect that they believe that citizens who have concealed handgun licenses or permits are just as likely or almost as likely as people in the non-carrying population to commit crimes. That is to say that we who have gotten those permits or licenses are just not trustworthy enough to be allows weapons in public places.
I disagree with this. I believe that we who have these permits or licenses are far less likely to commit crimes, by many factors, than the general non-carrying population.
I would like to see if anyone can come up with specific information to confirm this. By that I mean comparing the percent of the adult population of a given state that are convicted of crimes against the percentage of the CCWer part of the population that are convicted of crimes in a given year. I only want convictions and not arrests or indictments because in many jurisdictions no matter how justified a civilian legal defensive homicide or gun use may be the SOP of the police is to arrest and charge the CCWer with a crime and leave it to either the grand or petite jury to make the final ruling.
To be accurate you must be careful to leave out the part of the population of people convictioned of crimes those not old enough to get a CCW in the state in question.
I did this once myself for the state of Texas for the year 2007 but I did not write down all the particulars and when I tried to recreate my previous work I could not find out all the information I needed. I will try again.
I disagree with this. I believe that we who have these permits or licenses are far less likely to commit crimes, by many factors, than the general non-carrying population.
I would like to see if anyone can come up with specific information to confirm this. By that I mean comparing the percent of the adult population of a given state that are convicted of crimes against the percentage of the CCWer part of the population that are convicted of crimes in a given year. I only want convictions and not arrests or indictments because in many jurisdictions no matter how justified a civilian legal defensive homicide or gun use may be the SOP of the police is to arrest and charge the CCWer with a crime and leave it to either the grand or petite jury to make the final ruling.
To be accurate you must be careful to leave out the part of the population of people convictioned of crimes those not old enough to get a CCW in the state in question.
I did this once myself for the state of Texas for the year 2007 but I did not write down all the particulars and when I tried to recreate my previous work I could not find out all the information I needed. I will try again.
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