Civilian Concealed Carry: A cheap and effective way of reducing crime

     Permits to carry concealed weapons, specifically a concealed firearm, are allowed in some form or another in most states, and have been the issue of much debate with myriad analysis of their effectiveness on crime rates and safety. It is unarguable that public safety must in all regards be protected and maintained when issuing Concealed Carry Weapon Permits (CCW) to make sure that those persons who may pose a threat to public safety do not obtain a CCW permit. With that said, every state has controls and laws in place that regulate who can carry a concealed weapon. CCW permits allow a civilian to legally “...carry a pistol, revolver, or other firearm capable of being concealed upon the person...” after fulfilling the requirements set place by the government which include training, fingerprinting, background checks, and a list of character references, and are issued “after a finding that the applicant is of good moral character, that good cause exists for such a license, and the applicant is not prohibited from possessing firearms” (California Penal code 12050, cited in California Office of Attorney General, 2007). Much research has been conducted on the efficacy of CCW permits and the deterrence of crime and it has been found to have a deterring effect on crimes involving victims.

     The issuance of more CCW permits would be a simple, effective, and inexpensive means for the government to reduce crime rates. A comprehensive study by J.R. Lott Jr and D. Mustard in 1997 “...examined crime rates over 16 years across 3054 US counties. It accounted for changes in arrests and convictions, detailed county demographics, drug prices, and general variables such as unemployment, income, and poverty. Strong evidence links the number of concealed handguns to lower violent crime rates and fewer deaths” (Lott, J.R., 1998). Lott and Mustard's research showed that “[t]he declines [in crime] begin directly after the concealed handgun laws pass, and the crime rates end up well below what they were prior to passage of the law” (Lott, J.R., 1998). These results are completely logical, in that criminals are going to be less likely to attack a victim who is armed because it will be more likely to be a confrontation in which the criminal will be injured or killed. If more states moved to “shall issue” laws, in which CCW permits are provided to citizens after meeting specific requirements such as training, background checks, and similar conditions to ensure that only law abiding citizens who are of good moral character obtain these permits, there could be a drastic reduction in crime. The issuance of CCW permits would have minimal cost to the State as most cities and counties already impose a fee that helps to offset the costs of training and background checks involved in the process, and the fee could be standardized and increased in order to minimize any tax dollars spent on the issuance of the permits. Lastly, because the issuance of a higher number of CCW permits would deter more crimes, it would essentially have the crime deterring effect of the state having employed vast numbers of police officers without any of the involved costs.

Photo courtesy of the internet, unknown source, modified from original size

     Many of the arguments against concealed carry are illogical, are not backed by research, and include logical fallacies. One of the major concerns that every day citizens seem to have with the issuance of a higher number of CCW permits is the illogical idea that “the streets are going to turn into a wild west style shootout!” As stated in my previous blog, the vast majority of gun owners are law abiding citizens who would not use their weapons in an illegal way because of their fear of the legal repercussions they would face. Those seeking to obtain a CCW permit are made to go through a training class in which they are taught when they can and cannot use their weapons and how to safely use and carry their weapon. With the strict laws surrounding CCW permits including the background checks and character references, only those found to be of good moral character would be allowed to carry a concealed firearm. Many proponents of harsher gun control laws and harder to obtain CCW permits cite tragedies such as the 1999 Columbine High School shooting and the Virginia Tech shootings. Referencing these atrocities as arguments against concealed carry laws are completely illogical because the perpetrators in those shootings were not concealed carry permit owners and therefore were carrying their concealed weapons illegally. If anything, these can prove to be examples of why concealed carry permits should be more abundant, not harder to obtain. There are a number of people who would logically argue that if more people were allowed to carry concealed weapons, especially in schools, tragedies such as these could have been avoided or at the least minimized. It is logical that if a number of students or especially faculty had been legally carrying a concealed weapon, the terrorists who committed the mass shootings of their unarmed victims could have been deterred or even subdued with less casualties. The argument of allowing the carry of concealed firearms in school is obviously an extreme, but the logic follows, if more people were carrying concealed weapons, criminals would be less likely to attack a victim out of a concern for their own safety.

References:

California Office of the Attorney General, California Department of Justice. (2007). California firearms laws 2007 Retrieved from <http://ag.ca.gov/firearms/forms/pdf/Cfl2007.pdf>.

Haider-Markel, D. P., & Joslyn, M. R. (2001). Gun Policy, Opinion, Tragedy, and Blame Attribution: The Conditional Influence of Issue Frames. Journal of Politics, 63(2), 520. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Lott, J. R. (1998). Do Shall-Issue Laws Save Lives?. American Journal of Public Health, 88(6), 980-982. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Gun control: the ineffective, expensive means of protecting America from itself

     Gun control is an extremely complicated and controversial subject that has people on both sides of the debate fueled for a fight based often on emotion with little critical thinking involved. When we take out the emotion and do some hard research on the subject it is ultimately discovered that gun control is logical on the surface but ultimately is an extremely expensive and effective way to have absolutely no significant effect on crime rates. A comprehensive study by John C. Moorhouse and Brent Wanner looks at thirteen of the most of the popular studies on the efficacy of gun control laws in the United States and then conducts an extremely comprehensive study of their own that looks at the efficacy of gun control laws testing and compensating for the myriad variables and outside factors that can otherwise effect the outcome of their study. Their study found that there was no evidence linking stricter gun control laws and lower crime rates nor was there any evidence that lax gun control laws lead to higher crime rates (Moorhouse & Wanner, 2006).

     Since strict gun control laws are ineffective at reducing crime, they are actually causing more harm than they are good. Looking at the issue from a purely economic standpoint, there are untold millions of dollars of taxpayers money that have been wasted in the implementation of strict gun control laws. All of the gun control laws that have been passed were written, debated, rewritten, and implemented all using taxpayer money through the legislative process; dollars and hours that could have been spent elsewhere and on more pertinent issues such as education so that less children turn to crime in the first place. Countless taxpayers dollars also have to be spent on the enforcement and regulation of these laws. According to the California State Budget for the Department of Justice, just over three million dollars per year is spent on the “Firearms Safety and Enforcement Special Fund” (FSESF) with a proposed increase for the 2010-11 fiscal year to $3.5 million from the previous fiscal year's $3.2 million (California Department of Finance, 2011). That $3.5 million dollars is only the amount that is allotted specifically to the FSESF and does not include amounts utilized from the general fund or other areas of the budget for the running of background checks and the utilization of government employees to enforce these superfluous strict gun laws. In a time of economic crisis, it would seem logical that programs that have been proven to be ineffective by multiple studies would be able to be cut from the budget, potentially alleviating millions of budget dollars to be utilized in another areas, but instead there has been a proposed increase in the funding for the FSESF of $300,000.

     While many gun control laws are ineffective, the underlying concept is not in itself bad. The primary idea of gun control is to keep guns out of the hands of criminals or other people who should not possess them. According to the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) their goal “...is to prevent terrorism, reduce violent crime, and protect the public. With respect to firearms, ATF works to take armed, violent offenders off the streets and to ensure criminals and other prohibited persons do not possess firearms.” (ATF 2005). In essence, gun control is designed to protect all of the citizens of the United States from those people who should not have firearms in an effort to lower crime rates. Controls such as waiting periods for background checks are exactly what they say they are, controls in order to keep guns out of the hands of felons, the mentally unstable, those restrained by protective orders, and other such people. The problem comes from one underlying fact of life: laws and protections can only go so far because by definition criminals do not follow laws. Why should law abiding citizens be punished by strict laws that have little to no effect on crime rates? Guns will always be available on the black market, which is the quickest, cheapest, and probably the easiest way to acquire a gun in the United States. If criminals want guns, they are going to get them, whether it be on the street or getting them legally. Background checks can only go so far, as a common police saying goes, “just because a person hasn't been convicted of anything doesn't necessarily make them law abiding, it just means they haven't been caught yet.”

     From 1998 to 2009 there were just over 109 million approved firearms transactions that were processed through the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) (FBI, 2009). According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of the United States in February of 2011 is approximately 310 million people. Based on these statistics there was one firearm purchased for every three Americans in the past eleven years. Those numbers do not reflect the unknown number of firearms that have been legally purchased and transferred in the last hundred years. According to the BJS, in 2009 27% of the approximate 2.5 million violent crimes and robberies that occurred in the United States used firearms, meaning that there were approximately 688,000 violent crimes and robberies that were committed with firearms. Making the greatly underestimated assumption that the 109 million firearms purchased in the last eleven years are the only firearms in the United States, then only .6% of all guns in the United States were used in violent crimes and robberies in 2009. NOTE: this figure would not include any firearms purchased on the black market or legally purchased prior to 1998. While the fact that approximately 27% of all crimes are committed with firearms, it seems unfair to impose strict regulations upon the 99.4% of gun owners simply to control the theoretical .6% of gun owners who likely did not purchase their firearms legally in the first place.

References:

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Office of Enforcement Programs and Services, Firearms Programs Division. (2005). Federal firearms regulations reference guide (ATF P 5300.4). Retrieved from <http://www.atf.gov/publications/download/p/atf-p-5300-4.pdf>.

Bureau of Justice Statistics, (2011). Background checks for firearm transfers, 2008 - statistical tables Retrieved from <http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/html/bcft/2008/bcft08st.cfm>.

California Department of Finance, (2011). Department of justice (0820). Retrieved from <http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/GovernorsBudget/0010/0820.pdf>.

Federal Bureau of Investigations, Criminal Justice Information Services Division (2009). National Instant Criminal Background Check System: Operations 2009. Retrieved from <http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/reports/2009-operations-report>.

Moorhouse, J. C., & Wanner, B. (2006). DOES GUN CONTROL REDUCE CRIME OR DOES CRIME INCREASE GUN CONTROL?. CATO Journal, 26(1), 103-124. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.