-Caveat Lector- From http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a77bd7a2537.htm }}>Begin FreeRepublic.com "A Conservative News Forum" [Last | Latest Posts | Latest Articles | Self Search | Add Bookmark | Post | Abuse | Help! ] Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works. Firearms--Fantasy and Fact. Debunking the myths surrounding the new CCW law News/Current Events Front Page News Keywords: MICHIGAN CCW Source: Michigan Coalition of Responsible Gun Owners Published: January 31 Author: several Posted on 01/30/2001 23:23:38 PST by Dan from Michigan New Page 1 Firearms--Fantasy and Fact. Debunking the myths surrounding the new CCW law Submitted on: January 30, 2001 The governor's signing of Michigan's concealed weapons reform bill, HB 4530, on Jan. 2, 2001 has spawned a most incredible collection of media lies, fantasies, and distortions regarding firearms and crime. In order to pro vide thinking and rational people with facts to be used as rebuttal, this piece lists some of the more flagrant fantasies, followed by the relevant facts. Please feel free to use any or all of these data without attributi on as to source. It is more important to present these facts to people who are able to comprehend them. Fantasy: Michigan's new concealed weapons licensing law liberalizes the carrying of concealed pistols. Fact: Instead of liberalizing existing law, the new law provides much tighter requirements on applicants than does the current law. The new law "de-elitizes" current law and provides very strong restrictions on recipients of concealed weapons licenses, and is the most stringent law of any of the 32 "shall-issue" states. Current (pre-2001) law contains virtually no restrictions on who can receive a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Detailed studies of licensees in Kent County and Washtenaw County, as well as numerous reported experience s of applicants throughout the state, have shown that the most important criterion for receiving a license is to have friends on the concealed weapon licensing board. Permits are issued preferentially to ex-police, judges , politicians, rock stars, and the very wealthy, and few are granted to competent law-abiding citizens. The new law mandates state-wide uniformity in issuing concealed weapons licenses, and requires the following, where in each instance the old law required nothing: · Anyone who has been convicted of a misdemeanor in the past 3 years is ineligible. · Anyone under the age of 21 is ineligible. · Anyone with a diagnosed mental health illness is ineligible. · Every applicant must complete an 8-hour training course. · Licensees cannot carry in any of the following locations: schools and school property, public and private; day care centers, public and private; college dormitories and classrooms; bars and restaurants that serve alcoho l; property of churches, synagogues, and mosques; sports arenas and stadiums; casinos; hospitals; auditoriums seating more than 2500. · Licensees with blood alcohol greater than 0.02 percent are forbidden to carry. Current law allows some 3.5 million non-Michigan concealed weapon licensees and some 25,000 Michigan licensees to carry in *all* of the above locations. If the new law is repealed by initiative, this situation will contin ue. Fantasy: There will be "blood in the streets" from crimes committed by concealed weapons licensees if shall-issue becomes law. (Senator Alma Wheeler Smith, 18th District [Washtenaw County], personal correspondence.) Fact: It hasn't happened, anywhere. Concealed weapons licensees are incredibly law-abiding citizens. It hasn't happened in Florida, which was the first state with shall-issue laws: Since adopting CCW (1987), Florida's homicide rate has fallen 21% while the U.S. rate has risen 12%. From start-up 10/1/87 - 2/28/94 (over 6 years) Florida issued 204,108 permits; only 17 (0.008%) were revoked because per mittees later committed crimes (not necessarily violent) in which guns were present (not necessarily used). It hasn't happened in Kentucky: "None of our concerns have been borne out," said Hazard police Chief Rod Maggard, president of the Kentucky Chiefs of Police Association, which opposed the concealed-carry bill for fear it would invite citizens to take th e law into their own hands. A [Louisville, KY] Courier-Journal comparison of state police figures on the crime rate of permit holders with the crime rate of the state population at large shows that murder charges were pla ced against permit holders at a rate of 3.8 per 100,000 compared with 6.1 per 100,000 for the population at large during the three most recent years available. It hasn't happened in Texas: "I'm detecting that I'm eating a lot of crow on this issue...I think that says something that we've gotten to this point in the year and in the third largest city in America there has not been a single charge against anyone that had anything to do with a concealed handgun." John Holmes (Harris County [Houston, TX] District Attorney) December 9, 1996 "...It has impressed me how remarkably responsible the permit holders have been." Colonel James Wilson (Director Texas Department of Public Safety) June 11, 1996 According to a report by the National Center for Policy Analysis, the slightly more than 200,000 Texans who have become licensed to carry a concealed firearm are much more law-abiding than the average person. Comparing ar rest rates for example: · Texans who exercise their right to carry firearms are 5.7 times less likely to be arrested for a violent offense. · They are 14 times less likely to be arrested for a non-violent offense. · They are 1.4 times less likely to be arrested for murder. Texas had a serious crime rate in the early 1990s that was 38 percent higher than the national average. · Since then, serious crime in Texas has dropped 50 percent faster than for the nation as a whole. · Murder rates have dropped 52 percent, compared to 33 percent nationally. · Rapes have fallen by 22 percent compared to 16 percent nationally. It hasn't even happened in Macomb County, Michigan: In testimony given on May 11, 1998, before the Michigan House Committee on Oversight and Ethics, Carl Marlinga, Macomb County prosecutor, said: "A review of the revocations of concealed weapons permits in calendar year 1997 is also instructive. A total of 4,174 permits were issued. In the same year, 10 permits were revoked. None of the revocations were based on t he use of a weapon in the commission of a crime. The reasons for the revocations were inaccurate information on the application in four cases: drunk driving while a weapon was in the vehicle in three cases, and arrests fo r domestic violence (not connected to the use of a gun) in three cases." Carl Marlinga testified again before the Michigan House Conservation and Outdoor Recreation Committee on April 22, 1999. He reported the following (not verbatim): The latest data for Macomb county: in the 5 years since they started a sort of "shall-issue" procedure, overall crime has dropped 42 percent while it dropped 14 percent state-wide. In Macomb, index crimes (assaultive) dro pped 31 percent, violent crimes 26 percent. In the past 2 years, 71 permits have been revoked, 3 for assault with a deadly weapon. It hasn't happened in Arizona, Oklahoma, Virginia, Nevada, North Carolina or South Carolina: In testimony on April 22, 1999 before the House Conservation and Outdoor Recreation Committee, Dr. John Lott (More Guns Less Crime) testified to the following facts (not verbatim): In the 29 states (excluding Vermont and Idaho, which have no restrictions), the rate of loss of permits because of crimes committed ranges from 0.001 to 0.01 percent. In Florida, 551,000 permits issued, 109 revoked for fi rearms related matters, and more than 80 percent of these were for carrying in restricted areas. In Texas, 3 years since "shall-issue" in 1996, 192,000 permits, 100 felony convictions of permittees, the majority of these for carrying in restricted areas; of the 100, 15 were for deadly conduct arrests involving a firearm but there have been no convictions yet of these 15. In Arizona, from the fall of 1994 to end of 1998, 53,000 permits, 50 revoked for non-administrative reasons. In Oklahoma, for 3 years, 25,000 permits, 20 revoked and of these 4 were because the permittee died. In Virginia, no violent crimes by any CCW licensee. In Nevada, no irresponsible gun use by permittees. In Kentucky, no crimes with a firearm by any licensee. In Tennessee, no accidental shootings by licensees. In North Carolina, no permits have been revoked. In South Carolina, 1 person has had a lic ense revoked since 1989, on a felony charge which was later dropped. Fantasy: Crime will surely increase when there are so many more guns on the street. Fact: Crime decreases after passage of concealed weapons laws. Right to carry states have lower violent crime rates. On average, they have 26% less total violent crime, 20% less homicide, 2% less rape, 39% less robbery, a nd 22% less aggravated assault, compared to the rest of the U.S. Eight of the 10 states with the lowest violent crime rates are right to carry states. (Data: FBI) Terrorist-type shootings, such as in schools, also drop dramatically when shall-issue laws are passed. In a letter to the Los Angeles Times in April 1999, John Lott (author of More Guns Less Crime) said, "When states pass ed them [shall-issue CCW laws] during the 19 years we studied, the number of multiple-victim public shootings declined by 84%. Deaths from these shootings plummeted on average by 90%, injuries by 82%. "I recently analyzed the FBI’s crime data for all 3,054 counties in the United States from 1977 to 1994. After concealed handgun laws have been in effect for 5 years, murders declined by at least 15%, rapes by 9% and robb eries by 11%. Permit holders were found to be extremely law-abiding, and data on accidental deaths and suicides indicate there were no increases." Fantasy: "Road rage" will result in shootouts between people with concealed weapons licenses, and innocent bystanders will be hurt. Fact: John Lott, quoted above, said that of 3.5 million people with active CCWs, only one case of "road rage" has occurred, in Jan. 1996, and it was ruled self-defense. Fantasy: People with pistols will put police officers at risk. Fact: John Lott, quoted above, said that no permittee has *ever* killed a law enforcement officer, and many have saved lives of LEOs by coming to their assistance. Fantasy: "14 children die per day from firearms." (Ann Arbor News) Fact: The number of firearms deaths of children under 15 in the United States in 1998 was 612; this leads to a death rate of 1.68 per day, not 14 per day. If we exclude the 154 suicides in this age group during 1998, the actual number of firearm-related deaths of children in 1998 is 458, or 1.25 per day. (National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 48, No. 11, July 24, 2000, p. 67 and 72.) Fantasy: Firearms deaths of children are soaring as the number of firearms in the United States continues to increase. Fact: The total number of firearms deaths in 1998 was 5.3 percent lower than in 1997, and the number of firearms deaths among those aged 19 and under experienced an overall decline of 35 percent between 1994 and 1998. (Na tional Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 48, No. 11, July 24, 2000, p. 67 and 72.) Fantasy: The "gun show loophole" allows criminals to purchase firearms. Fact: The laws at gun shows are exactly the same as they are everywhere else. If a person is “engaged in the business” (as the law puts it) of selling firearms, then he must fill out a government registration form on ever y buyer, and get FBI permission (through the National Instant Check System) for every sale—regardless of whether the sale takes place at his gun store, at an office in his home, or at a gun show. Fantasy: A gun in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a family member than to kill a criminal. (Arthur Kellermann and Donald Reay, June 12, 1986 issue of New England Journal of Medicine [v. 314, n. 24, p. 1557-60]) ( Parroted 13 years later by Representative Liz Brater during House Committee hearings in Lansing in April 1999) Fact: Of the alleged 43 times, 37 are suicides, so the "43 times" is immediately reduced to 6.. Further, the authors count only those cases where the intruder was killed but exclude other defensive uses of firearms. An an alysis by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz (Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, v. 86 n.1 [Fall 1995]) of successful defensive uses of firearms against criminal attack concluded that the criminal is killed in only one case in approximately every one thousand attacks. Thus Kellermann et al are ignoring 999 successful defensive uses of firearms where the assailant is not killed. If we use Kellermann's data adjusted for reality, a firearm kept in a home is at least 167 times more likely to deter criminal attack than to harm a person in the home. Fantasy: Firearms are among the leading causes of accidental death in children. Fact: Accidental firearms death rank way down on the list of causes of accidental deaths of children, some two percent of the total deaths. In 1998, 110 children under 15 died from firearms accidents, an all-time low. Dur ing the same period, 2600 children died in motor vehicle accidents, 850 by drowning, 570 from burns, 200 from suffocation, and 160 from falls.(National Safety Council) David K. Felbeck January 29, 2001 NOTE: This text available on the Reference page. Click on "Reference" on the left margin of your screen for this and other informative works. 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