Arizona has become the third state to eliminate the need to have a permit to carry a concealed gun. Now, you can pack a gun without a permit in Arizona, Alaska, and Vermont.
Gov. Jan Brewer signed a law which will take effect 90 days after the current legislative session ends — sometime in August. She stated “I believe this legislation not only protects the Second Amendment rights of Arizona citizens, but restores those rights as well.”
Under the prior law, carrying a hidden firearm without a permit was a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and up to a $2,500 fine.
Two states — Illinois and Wisconsin — prohibit all concealed weapons.
For the full story, click here.
Wayne:
the study Mespo cited looked at the number of innocent people killed per intruder killed. I would say a valid study but certainly biased against private ownership. What I disagree with is including suicide and homicide in that study. You can always gas yourself or take a bat to your wife or husband. So then we are down to 1 to 1.3 or about parity at least according to that study.
It depends on what your position is whether you look at deaths or at protection. I think you need to look at both. As far as your shotgun chambering a round, how do you know it wasn’t a raccoon vs an intruder of the 2 legged variety? You don’t so those really cant be included.
Everyone has their own biases with this type of stuff. Personally I think gun ownership should be legal and if you are stupid enough to kill yourself or a family member then pay the consequence. The state cannot protect stupid people from themselves but it sure as hell is trying (FDA to limit salt content in prepared foods). But I do agree with those who are against carrying weapons into establishments that sell alcohol. It isn’t a good idea.
CEJ-
“If you are carrying a gun to in order to provide protection for your wife she would would be safer if you didn’t; but if you insist she had better get a gun of her own.”
I have asked her. She does not want to.
mespo727272-
“Certainly the years of economic growth and our aging population have nothing to do with falling violent crime statistics. Why not place all the credit on a right-winger’s wet dream about steel virility and ignore everything we know about other causes? Post hoc ergo propter hoc mean anything to you folks? Nah, didn’t think so.”
Incredible. How many times do I have to say this? I DON’T THINK GUNS ARE THE REASON FOR THE DROP IN CRIME. I’ve only cited the drop in crime as evidence against the idea of more guns=more violence.
And again, you are too busy wailing away at your fantasy gun owner to consider reality. I’m not a right-winger. I’m one of those guys who is disappointed over Obama because he’s not liberal enough.
“Forgive me for accepting that over your anecdotal evidence. There are websites that document UFO’s and Bigfoot, too.”
The websites I’m referring to simply collect news stories from mainstream websites — newspapers, local TV stations, etc. I’d give you the URL but I think you’ve established that you don’t want to do anything to challenge your bizarre belief that people don’t defend themselves with guns (or at least not in numbers sufficient to impress you).
“I know the claimed flaws posited by that Florida State professor and the NRA crowd. The study is not perfect; it’s just the best we have.”
Ah, the “claimed flaws”. You mean that if you take the suicides out of the study, the ratio drops from 42 to 1 to under 2.5 to 1? Or that the only expression of self-defense counted is a dead criminal? But those are only “claimed” and not actual flaws I guess.
By the way, that FSU professor is a life long Democrat and member of both Amnesty International and the ACLU. But don’t let that get in the way of dismissing his argumentation without addressing it. He’s probably a right wing, drunken, deer-shooting member of Amnesty International and the ACLU.
“You guys are all too busy getting the ringing out of your ears after you track down some dangerous woodland creature,”
Never hunted in my life.
“and despite an alcohol induced stupor, blast it to kingdom come in some ritualistic homage to a bygone era when activities like this were necessary for survival. Yahoo, cowboy!”
In addition to not hunting, I don’t drink. Nice try though.
As an aside, we are all advocates of our own positions, but I am increasingly disturbed by people that parrot talking points without the ability to think critically.
Scary shit.
The study is not even comparing the right data. The goal of protection is not met by fataling killing another, the goal is met by protecting oneself and one’s family.
The average US household size is 2.59. So arguably every fatal shooting of an intruder may have protected 2.59 lives. That’s just looking at the fatalities. But protecting yourself does not REQUIRE killing someone. How many home intrusions were thwarted by the presence of a firearm? How many would-be intruders heard a shotgun pump and jumped through the window. We don’t have any of this data.
A real study would look at how many innocents were protected and NOT how many bad guys were killed. That tells us nothing.
That “study” proves nothing because and if its the “best you have” then you have nothing.
Australia: Readers of the USA Today newspaper discovered in 2002 that, “Since Australia’s 1996 laws banning most guns and making it a crime to use a gun defensively, armed robberies rose by 51%, unarmed robberies by 37%, assaults by 24% and kidnappings by 43%. While murders fell by 3%, manslaughter rose by 16%.”
Canada: After enacting stringent gun control laws in 1991 and 1995, Canada has not made its citizens any safer. “The contrast between the criminal violence rates in the United States and in Canada is dramatic,” says Canadian criminologist Gary Mauser in 2003. “Over the past decade, the rate of violent crime in Canada has increased while in the United States the violent crime rate has plummeted.”
* England: According to the BBC News, handgun crime in the United Kingdom rose by 40% in the two years after it passed its draconian gun ban in 1997.
* Japan: One newspaper headline says it all: Police say “Crime rising in Japan, while arrests at record low.”
* England: According to the BBC News, handgun crime in the United Kingdom rose by 40% in the two years after it passed its draconian gun ban in 1997.
* Japan: One newspaper headline says it all: Police say “Crime rising in Japan, while arrests at record low.”
3. Fact: British citizens are now more likely to become a victim of crime than are people in the United States:
* In 1998, a study conducted jointly by statisticians from the U.S. Department of Justice and the University of Cambridge in England found that most crime is now worse in England than in the United States.
* “You are more likely to be mugged in England than in the United States,” stated the Reuters news agency in summarizing the study. “The rate of robbery is now 1.4 times higher in England and Wales than in the United States, and the British burglary rate is nearly double America’s.” The murder rate in the United States is reportedly higher than in England, but according to the DOJ study, “the difference between the [murder rates in the] two countries has narrowed over the past 16 years.”
* The United Nations confirmed these results in 2000 when it reported that the crime rate in England is higher than the crime rates of 16 other industrialized nations, including the United States.
4. British authorities routinely underreport crime statistics. Comparing statistics between different nations can be quite difficult since foreign officials frequently use different standards in compiling crime statistics.
The British media has remained quite critical of authorities there for “fiddling” with crime data. Consider some of the headlines in their papers: “Crime figures a sham, say police,” and “Police figures under-record offences by 20 percent.”
“Police are accused of fiddling crime data,”
British police have also criticized the system because of the “widespread manipulation” of crime data:
“Officers said that pressure to convince the public that police were winning the fight against crime had resulted in a long list of ruses to ‘massage’ statistics.”
Sgt. Mike Bennett says officers have become increasingly frustrated with the practice of manipulating statistics. “The crime figures are meaningless,” he said. “Police everywhere know exactly what is going on.”
According to The Electronic Telegraph, “Officers said the recorded level of crime bore no resemblance to the actual amount of crime being committed.”
Underreporting crime data: “One former Scotland Yard officer told The Telegraph of a series of tricks that rendered crime figures ‘a complete sham.’ A classic example, he said, was where a series of homes in a block flats were burgled and were regularly recorded as one crime. Another involved pickpocketing, which was not recorded as a crime unless the victim had actually seen the item being stolen.”
Underreporting murder data: British crime reporting tactics keep murder rates artificially low. “Suppose that three men kill a woman during an argument outside a bar. They are arrested for murder, but because of problems with identification (the main witness is dead), charges are eventually dropped. In American crime statistics, the event counts as a three-person homicide, but in British statistics it counts as nothing at all. ‘With such differences in reporting criteria, comparisons of U.S. homicide rates with British homicide rates is a sham,’ [a 2000 report from the Inspectorate of Constabulary] concludes.”
Many nations with stricter gun control laws have violence rates that are equal to, or greater than, that of the United States.
The United States has experienced far fewer TOTAL MURDERS than Europe does over the last 70 years. In trying to claim that gun-free Europe is more peaceful than America, gun control advocates routinely ignore the overwhelming number of murders that have been committed in Europe.
Over the last 70 years, Europe has averaged about 400,000 murders per year, when one includes the murders committed by governments against mostly unarmed people. That murder rate is about 16 times higher than the murder rate in the U.S.
Why hasn’t the United States experienced this kind of government oppression? Many reasons could be cited, but the Founding Fathers indicated that an armed populace was the best way of preventing official brutality. Consider the words of James Madison in Federalist 46:
Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger . . . a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands.
(all the above text from the Gun Owners of America Website)
http://gunowners.org/sk0703.htm
Wayne:
the numbers add up to 42.9. What is the flaw unless the study itself is biased? It might have changed somewhat over the last 24 years but highway accidents are fairly consistent year to year.
suicide might not be fair to include because they would find another way to whack themselves.
I am all ears/eyes.
Wayne:
I know the claimed flaws posited by that Florida State professor and the NRA crowd. The study is not perfect; it’s just the best we have.
Mespo: Can you identify the flaw in that study? I’ll give you a chance to find it yourself (just to see if you can think analytically).
If not, I’ll be back later to point it out for you.
“Name those statistics. It is a fact that Americans defend themselves with firearms every day. The lowest estimates put the number in the hundreds of thousands per year. There are websites that document regular people doing this.”
**********************
Ok, the most notable study (and there are others) was written by Doctors Arthur Kellermann and Don Reay, and is titled, “Protection or peril? An analysis of firearms related deaths in the home.” (New Engl J Med 1986. 314: 1557-60.)
The oft cited Kellermann paper found a homeowner’s gun was 43 times more likely to kill a family member, friend, or acquaintence, than it was used to kill someone in self-defense. Kellermann stated, “for every case of self-protection homicide involving a firearm kept in the home, there were 1.3 accidental deaths, 4.6 criminal homicides, and 37 suicides involving firearms.
Forgive me for accepting that over your anecdotal evidence. There are websites that document UFO’s and Bigfoot, too.
Jason:
“You’re right. Why pick one tiny locality when you can use 41 states who have seen their violent crime plummet even though their citizens are arming and carrying at unprecedented rates?”
**************
Certainly the years of economic growth and our aging population have nothing to do with falling violent crime statistics. Why not place all the credit on a right-winger’s wet dream about steel virility and ignore everything we know about other causes? Post hoc ergo propter hoc mean anything to you folks? Nah, didn’t think so.
You guys are all too busy getting the ringing out of your ears after you track down some dangerous woodland creature, and despite an alcohol induced stupor, blast it to kingdom come in some ritualistic homage to a bygone era when activities like this were necessary for survival. Yahoo, cowboy!
Jason,
If you are carrying a gun to in order to provide protection for your wife she would would be safer if you didn’t; but if you insist she had better get a gun of her own.
You gun folks are really paranoid and that is that.
rcampbell-
“Then why posit such an unproveable statement since we both know there are dozens of simultaneous contributing factors.”
I didn’t posit an unproveable statement. I said precisely the opposite. Crime has plummeted at the same time that firearms ownership and carry has gone up. The point is not to prove a link between the two, because I don’t see sufficient evidence to do so, but to show that crime has NOT exploded as expected by anti-gun people.
“In your mind, how many senseless gun deaths of children, hunters and spouses does it take to make it a disaster? Several hundred or a few thousand per year not enough for you? For me it’s ONE. Jdog is willing to have intersection and home shoot outs regardless of collateral damage.”
So while I’m trying to make decisions based on the best available data, you are doing so based on the reality that you wish was true. It is a fact that crime has not gone up due to more guns in society. It is a fact that at the very least, hundreds of thousands of people per year defend themselves with a gun. You are hoping for zero deaths in a society with 300 million people.
“What is it about gun owners that makes life so cheap and meaningless?”
I carry to protect myself and my wife (and soon to be child). Obviously I value them more than you do. And perhaps more than you value your own life.
“How much childhood bullying or parental abuse does it take to create this need to get even or the paranoia for these gun worshipers?”
How many idiotic stereotypes must anti-gun people cling to due to their inability to think rationally about this topic? I wasn’t abused, wasn’t bullied, and have only been carrying for a little over a year of my 41. I spent most of last week in NYC and had a great time with no fear of attack. I often can’t carry here in Ohio, and I do not sweat or shake.
Mespo727272-
“To suggest, it won’t raise the chances of violence at liquor serving restaurants and bars is, well, shooting your mouth off.”
You have many states and many years of data at your disposal. It should be easy to show that allowing legal carry in restaurants that serve alcohol and bars has been a measurable problem. You won’t though, because it hasn’t happened.
“Well the experience of bucolic, homogeneous (82% caucasion, 9.9% African American, 6.6 Hispanic) Kennesaw, Georgia, with its current population of 21,000 and whose law is subject to a myriad of exceptions and exclusions is certainly a valid predictor of the effects on a nation of 300 million diverse folks.”
You’re right. Why pick one tiny locality when you can use 41 states who have seen their violent crime plummet even though their citizens are arming and carrying at unprecedented rates?
CEJ-
“IMHO men who need to walk around with their gun AKA strap on penis extender, are just like little children, who need to play dress up to decrease their fear and anxiety – they are too terrified of the world outside their window, they can no longer leave their homes without their gun.”
Again, attacking a stereotype instead of rationally arguing. You people really need to get out and meet some people who carry, it might open your eyes.
“Poor dupes, they have lost all confidence and probably feel so much more vulnerable, naked really whenever they can’t carry.”
How do you know this? Seriously, evidence please. No one I know that carries is remotely like this.
jdog-
“Finally, though you may not assemble the weapons or work for those who do, clearly you are enabling thousands of citizens caught in the marketing of fear to arm themselves for a unlikely situation that, if it ever materializes, will find them neither physically nor emotionally prepared to deal with. They will however likely shoot themselves or a loved one, if the laws of statistics hold true.”
Name those statistics. It is a fact that Americans defend themselves with firearms every day. The lowest estimates put the number in the hundreds of thousands per year. There are websites that document regular people doing this.
“It’s blood money pure and simple for all involved in the gun trade, since what other purpose does a handgun have except to kill people?”
I do not wish to kill anyone, I wish to stop them from killing me. If I could have a Star Trek phaser set for stun that worked every time, I’d be happy to carry it. Unfortunately, no such technology exists (no, stun guns and Tasers aren’t close). I wish to protect my life and that of my loved ones. Best case scenario, we avoid conflict in the first place. Next best is that the mere brandishing of the firearm ends the event (and this is often the case). After that, killing may be necessary, but it is clearly justified.
Mespo,
you are right on about handguns. They are good for only one thing. To kill humans. And as you mentioned, our society is infatuated with handguns and the alleged need to “protect my family”. I have never owned a gun and I have no intention to own one.
Blouise,
that was a great story about your grandfather. He was a smart man.
My grandfather, born in a sod house on the great prairie in the late 1800’s, rough and tumble logger, and a hunter for food via rifle and bow/arrow, came home early one morning at the beginning of hunting season in 1952. My grandmother, expecting him to be gone for several days, was surprised at his early return.
“Anna,” he said, “there are too many amateurs out there. I was almost shot twice. No more venison for us.”
He broke down his rifles and then went out to the barn and dismantled the deer hanging equipment.
My grandmother looked at me and smiled, “The world changes, child. We must adapt.”
He never went hunting again and I never saw another gun in his possession.
He and my grandmother continued to be avid fishermen till the day they died.
Guns were for hunting meat to eat and when that was no longer a safe endeavor, guns were not needed.
John:
Well the experience of bucolic, homogeneous (82% caucasion, 9.9% African American, 6.6 Hispanic) Kennesaw, Georgia, with its current population of 21,000 and whose law is subject to a myriad of exceptions and exclusions is certainly a valid predictor of the effects on a nation of 300 million diverse folks.
In March 1982, 25 years ago, the small town of Kennesaw – responding to a handgun ban in Morton Grove, Ill. – unanimously passed an ordinance requiring each head of household to own and maintain a gun. Since then, despite dire predictions of “Wild West” showdowns and increased violence and accidents, not a single resident has been involved in a fatal shooting – as a victim, attacker or defender.
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55288
jdog:
Thank you for the grudging concession of the manifest fact that alcohol is a causative factor in violence thus proving what I said in the first place, and thus finally distancing yourself from your rather unlettered assertion that such was not the case. And while you and the Mrs. may well be responsible imbibers and carriers, it is not the responsible folks that make our nation the most violent one among all the industrialized nations (See, The National Research Council Committee on Law and Justice, 1992 Study). It’s not even those sad-sack cretins who can only respond to an insult with firepower; it’s folks like you who enable the crazies out of misguided principle, or, as in your case, in furtherance of personal wealth through the fear-driven cottage industry known as “firearms training.”
Finally, though you may not assemble the weapons or work for those who do, clearly you are enabling thousands of citizens caught in the marketing of fear to arm themselves for a unlikely situation that, if it ever materializes, will find them neither physically nor emotionally prepared to deal with. They will however likely shoot themselves or a loved one, if the laws of statistics hold true.
It’s blood money pure and simple for all involved in the gun trade, since what other purpose does a handgun have except to kill people? Couching it in some lofty principle won’t get the stains off. Enjoy your dinner — rare, I suppose.
ARLINGTON, Va. – Carrying loaded pistols and unloaded rifles, dozens of gun-rights activists got as close as they could Monday to the nation’s capital while still bearing arms and delivered what they said was a simple message: Don’t tread on me.
Hundreds of like-minded but unarmed counterparts carried out a separate rally in the nation’s capital.
The gun-carrying protesters in Virginia rallied on national park land, which is legal thanks to a new law signed by President Barack Obama that allows guns in national parks. Organizers said it’s the first armed rally in a national park since the law passed.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100419/ap_on_re_us/us_second_amendment_rallies
Did I mention body confidence – did you see P!nk’s live performance of “Glitter in the Air” at the Grammys?