You'll never see that bit of truth on the front page. Or anywhere, for that matter.
Posted on 12/28/2011 4:28:49 AM PST by marktwain
A front-page story in today's New York Times tries to stir up alarm about liberalized carry permit laws, which let people carry concealed handguns if they meet a short list of objective criteria. To illustrate the hazards of that policy, the Times cites crimes committed by permit holders in North Carolina. How many crimes? Excluding traffic offenses, the Times counts 2,400 over five years, of which 200 were felonies. More relevant (since critics of nondiscretionary permit laws worry that they contribute to gun violence), "More than 200 permit holders were also convicted of gun- or weapon-related felonies or misdemeanors, including roughly 60 who committed weapon-related assaults." That's a dozen gun assaults a year. How many permit holders are there in North Carolina? According to the story, "more than 240,000." So 0.2 percent of them are convicted of a non-traffic-related offense each year, about 0.017 percent are convicted of a felony, and only 0.005 percent are convicted of a gun assault. The Times concedes that the number of permit holders convicted of crimes "represents a small percentage of those with permits." More like "tiny." By comparison, about 0.35 percent of all Americans are convicted of a felony each year--more than 20 times the rate among North Carolina permit holders. It seems clear these people are far more law-abiding than the general population, a finding consistent with data from other states. Such data are not surprising, since law-abidingness, as measured by a clean criminal record, is one requirement for a carry permit.
Between horror stories that suggest letting people carry guns in public fosters violence, the Times admits there is little evidence to substantiate that fear:
Researchers acknowledge that those who fit the demographic profile of a typical permit holder --middle-age white men--are not usually major drivers of violent crime. At the same time, several states have produced statistical reports showing, as in North Carolina, that a small segment does end up on the wrong side of the law. As a result, the question becomes whether allowing more people to carry guns actually deters crime, as gun rights advocates contend, and whether that outweighs the risks posed by the minority who commit crimes.Gun rights advocates invariably point to the work of John R. Lott, an economist who concluded in the late 1990s that the laws had substantially reduced violent crime. Subsequent studies, however, have found serious flaws in his data and methodology.
A few independent researchers using different data have come to similar conclusions, but many other studies have found no net effect of concealed carry laws or have come to the opposite conclusion. Most notably, Ian Ayres and John J. Donohue, economists and law professors, concluded that the best available data and modeling showed that permissive right-to-carry laws, at a minimum, increased aggravated assaults. Their data also showed that robberies and homicides went up, but the findings were not statistically significant.
In the end, most researchers say the scattershot results are not unexpected, because the laws, in all likelihood, have not significantly increased the number of people carrying concealed weapons among those most likely to commit crimes or to be victimized.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the people who are most inclined to commit crimes are the ones who are least inclined to worry that carrying a gun without a permit is illegal. But that undeniable reality does not stop the Times from insinuating otherwise with scary anecdotes, some of which are not even relevant. For example, the Times cites a permit holder who "shot his neighbor to death with a rifle in 2008 over a legal dispute." In what sense was that crime facilitated or encouraged by the fact that the attacker was legally allowed to carry a concealed handgun in public?
The MSM, of which the NYT is the flagship, is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
I wonder how many of those 200 felonies were concealed weapons carriers who thought they were using their gun properly to prevent a crime against themselves but the State thought otherwise?
Regards,
More than 200 permit holders were also convicted of gun- or weapon-related felonies or misdemeanors (emph added)
What are the odds that a permit holder brought up on unrelated charges is ALSO brought up on baseless and illegal misdemeanor weapons charges by police who don't like the idea of "civvies" carrying weapons?
And how many of those baseless, illegal charges are "copped to" in order to plea-bargain out of more serious -- but unrelated -- charges?
Why does the NYT care, I didn’t think people in NYC could get carry permits anyway? Let the NYT worry about New York and leave North Carolina alone!
New York is a scourge. I am mad because we just got redistricted into a Democratic district here in PA. We got shoved up with Stroudsburg, which is just full of Democrats from New York and New Jersey, overflowing out of their runined areas, coming out to ruin more ground.
More Guns —> Less Crime
An armed society is a polite society.
Been done and was buried.
Doesn’t NC have some flaky, as in hard to comply with, concealed carry laws?
Hmm... I wonder why they would pick North Carolina, of all places...
Here in Texas, crime doesn't pay if you can get your butt shot by a bystander. Moreover, CHL folks have saved the lives of more than 50 law enforcement officers to date.
My guess is that factoring in any reasonable estimate of crimes deterred and lives saved yields a large net positive for allowing the public to protect themselves.
It contained an "anecdote" about a man who was minding his business riding his bike, with his 4-year old son. A "North Carolina Concealed Carry Permit Holder" drove up to him, accosted him without cause, and shot at him. The man was saved by the bicycle helmet that he was wearing.
Sez me....I had a hard time swallowing that one. I wasn't there, so you never know. But to have a perfect storm of..
1) A man riding his bike like a good, politically correct liberal
2) with his 4-year old kid
3) Accosted by someone who was patently unstable
4) And a CCW permit holder
5) And who was carrying at the time
6) And who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn
7) And to have the victim take the hit in his politically correct, yet ever-so-stylish bicycle helmet.....
I dunno. Sez me, the author would do better writing fiction for Hollywood.
That's why it was chosen.
The total number of CCW holders was NOT published. The article DID, however, detail their crimes.
This is delightful!!! Every time the NY Times validates my tagline, I put $5.00 in a safe place. I think in about 5 months I’ll be classified as RICH. Happy New Year.
I will be scrupulously law abiding. Until ‘they’ try to take what the Second Amendment says I have a right to.
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but the people who are most inclined to commit crimes are the ones who are least inclined to worry that carrying a gun without a permit is illegal.”
Bronze it, mount it, repeat it over and over again. Well said.
Colonel, USAFR
The key data point to shut up the anti-gunners on this topic is to ask them if they compared the crime rate among CHL holders to the crime rate among cops. Never mind that cops have certain advantages in avoiding criminal convictions, cops invariably have a crime rate many times greater.
A summary:
1. Castle doctrine, with protections for CCW holders carrying guns in their cars at employers, just went into effect Dec 1, along with some other simplifications of CCW and full-auto/suppressor law.
2. Still no restaurant/bar carry. Nor movie theatre, college campus, or city bus (!) carry.
3. Must inform police on contact if carrying.
Really not too hard to comply with. However, I know a LOT of people who ignore the restaurant and movie theatre law and deep-conceal anyway.
You'll never see that bit of truth on the front page. Or anywhere, for that matter.
Note that he touts 2400 "felonies and misdemeanors." Per the NY Times article, there were only 200 felony convictions out of those 2400 arrests over 5 years in a population of about a quarter million. That boils down to a rate of about 17 felonies / 100,000 population per year for the concealed carry population.
The U.S. violent crime rate for the general population was 403.6 / 100,000 in 2010 (source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports). Note that this is just violent crime, which is a subset of felonies, and yet still the general population of the U.S. is more than 23 times more likely to commit a violent crime than the NC CCW permit holders are to commit a felony.
I'll take my chances with the concealed carry population, thank you very much. I wonder what Michael Luo would prefer?
Frankly, I could in general care less about the misdemeanors Luo lumps into his numbers in a transparent attempt to make the numbers look worse for concealed carry holders. Heck, you can probably get one of those for littering. I'll have to ask my friend who was ticketed for throwing boiled peanut hulls out the car window while riding around in rural GA, surely one of the most absurd citations ever. I expect this sort of event would have ended up in Luo's numbers.
Luo and the Times clearly have an agenda here, and it isn't a fair and transparent analysis of the data surrounding crime by CCW holders. If he were interested in such a thing, he could have easily included a comparison such as the one I generated above with just a few minutes of research.
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