I'm constantly amazed by supposedly intelligent people who ignorantly connect legal concealed weapons with gun crime. What percentage of gun crimes are committed by people who are carrying legally? In Florida, a concealed weapon permit holder is 300 times less likely to commit a gun crime than a non-holder. Preventing legal concealed carry only disarms the good guys and leaves the bad guys and the lunatics free to run wild.
College campuses are different from other public places where concealed weapons are allowed. Thousands of young adults are living in close quarters, facing heavy academic and social pressure - including experimenting with drugs and alcohol - in their first years away from home.W. Gerald Massengill, the chairman of the independent panel that investigated the Virginia Tech shootings, said those concerns outweigh the argument that gun-carrying students could have reduced the number of fatalities inflicted by someone like Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho.
"I'm a strong supporter of the Second Amendment," said Massengill, a former head of the Virginia state police. "But our society has changed, and there are some environments where common sense tells us that it's just not a good idea to have guns available."
Except guns are available to anyone willing to break the law! The only people on campus who don't have guns are law-abiding adult citizens. Calling them "young adults" is offensive because the obvious implication is that college students should be denied the rights that the rest of us enjoy despite their adulthood. The justification for that insult is that many college students abuse drugs and alcohol... but such abuse would typically disqualify any adult from lawfully carrying a concealed weapon. The majority of college students who aren't drunken druggies should be free to exercise their Constitutional right to carry a weapon and their natural right to protect themselves from the predators and crazies who surround them.
This isn't rocket science, and I'm basically to the point that I no longer believe in the good intentions of the opponents of concealed-carry. At some point the evidence and logic are so compelling and irrefutable that no intellectually honest and informed individual near the median intelligence can persist in their opposition.
(HT: Michael Silence.)
Update:
Bill Quick thinks Hillary will endorse an individual right to keep and bear arms in the context of the DC handgun ban case the Supreme Court has just agreed to hear. If that happens, the gun prohibition movement will be officially dead.
What you might not have considered is whether the existence of widely held legal weapons makes it easier or harder for a criminal to obtain a weapon (illegally).
For example, in Britain where legally held guns are somewhat rare, it's pretty hard to know where to get hold of a weapon, and gun crime is rare, less than 0.5% of all reported crime. I imagine that percentage in Florida is somewhat higher.
I don't for a minute suggest that it is the permit-holders who are responsible for that; but I do think that the general climate of gun-ownership contributes.
Not trying to convince you, but i would hope to restore your faith in those who oppose gun ownership.
Unfortunately for me, my firearm isn't very concealable. That's why I yearn for the day when my state will adopt the "gun control" policies of Israel.
I'm not sure that open carry is a good policy unless you want to be the first target when I crime goes down.
Well, if there was a room full of people packing heat openly, that should be enough to deter the armed bad guys from getting out of line. To criminals, it would be like our nuclear doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, but on a smaller scale.
Of course, you're most likely right. The M.A.D. deterrent only works against rational actors, but criminals are usually too stupid to realize the futility of their actions. I can still dream, I suppose.
r80: Yeah, if enough people carried open then I'd do it.