It never fails. Laws that restrict law-abiding citizens and that are ignored by criminals are relaxed and the gun banners go wild. As soon as the Georgia legislature started considering “Constitutional Carry,” allowing us law-abiding citizens to carry our guns without getting permission from the government, the horror stories started.
I got a special kick out of a Griffin Daily News editorial last week where the writer claimed, “studies show relaxing gun laws increase crime.” He then went on and on with his opinion. When working on my Masters and Doctorate degrees I was repeatedly told if I used the phrase “studies show” without documenting those studies, I would get an “F.”
I actually looked us some “studies” of making gun laws less strict and making laws follow the US Constitution and the 2nd Amendment more closely. Gary Kleck is a criminologists and Professor Emeritus of Criminology at Florida State University. A quick search of his name came up with at least 10 documented, statistically sound studies on how guns reduce crime. (https://criminology.fsu.edu/faculty-and-staff/gary-kleck
| Gary Kleck | College of Criminology & Criminal JusticeProfessor Kleck’s recent research has found that employing more police officers or increasing police productivity in the form of more arrests per officer has no measurable effect on the public’s level of fear of crime. Other recent research found that support for harsher punishment of criminals is not affected by a person’s exposure to crime as a crime victim, living in a high-crime area …criminology.fsu.edu |
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I also found this surprising comment in the British Journal of Criminology from Marvin Wolfgang, the “most influential criminologists in the English-Speaking World:” I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found. The Kleck study impresses me for the caution exercised and the elaborate nuances they examine methodologically. “I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I can not fault their methodology.”
John R. Lott has a BA, MA and PhD from UCLA in economics. He has been a professor of law and economics at the Yale Law School, UCLA, Texas A&M, Rice University, and others. In his two books, “More Guns, Less Crime and “The Bias Against Guns,” he presented research that showed allowing adults to carry concealed weapons significantly reduces crime.
Some with an antigun agenda have nitpicked these studies, trying to find exceptions that prove it wrong, but the ones I read just offered opinions, not proven research. Of course I have a pro-gun bias.
I have owed guns since getting a BB gun when I had my tonsils out at six years old, and two years later got my first real firearm, a dreaded “semiautomatic rifle” with one of those “high capacity magazines” that held 17 rounds of bullets that had aa range of one mile. That .22 has killed a lot of birds and squirrels but has never been used in a crime.
Criminals ignore laws. Read the Griffin Daily News crime reports that often included “charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.” Relaxing the permit requirement to carry a gun affects law-abiding citizens like me, not felons and other criminals.
Expect more “the sky is falling and we all will be shot” whines in response to this law. Just know they are emotions, not facts.