Editorial: Carrying concealed goes to extremes
November 10, 2011 at 2:50 am in River Falls Journal
Like teenagers who just started to notice the attractions of the opposite sex, a lot of Wisconsinites have gone crazy over guns lately. Continue Reading
Can the RF Journal be any more brain dead? Do you really think this new conceal carry law will turn Wisconsin into the wild west? The majority of the states have had conceal carry laws for years. Our Minnesota neighbors have also had conceal carry for years. Do you feel unsafe there? Do they have any more gun violence then anywhere else? They don’t. Your whole story is much ado about nothing. Why don’t you guys start actually doing real journalism that deals in reality and facts?
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As is the case with most writers who know nothing about guns, this article totally misses. The title itself is misleading. To whom is concealed carry “extreme”? Concealed carry is now legal in every state except Illinois. So 49 of 50 states approving is considered “extreme”? This line is what is most puzzling. “We hope we are wrong, but it seems inevitable that more gun-carrying citizens will mean more gunshot injuries.” If you took five minutes to do some research before writing this, you would have found that the exact opposite effect is true. Cities like Chicago and Washington DC have very strict gun control laws(you know, laws that will keep our people safe & without guns). Those two cities have some of the highest gun violence rates in the nation. Why? Because people who are reckless with guns don’t care about gun laws. Concealed Carry simply allows someone to protect themselves. All of this “Wild West” nonsense hasn’t come to fruition in 48 other states. Why would it happen here?
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“Many of us have heard pro-carry stories such as the one about the young woman who stopped at night to use a wayside restroom and was approached by a man she was sure intended to assault her. As the story goes, she pulled her gun and stopped him dead in his tracks. We’d agree that woman was lucky on many accounts, including that the man didn’t sneak up from behind and that she conveniently had her gun ready.”
Ah yes, the unspoken liberal conceit that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.
“But for every story like that, we could provide 10 about people accidently shot by themselves, a friend or family member just because a gun happened to be handy.”
No, you could not. Between 2000 and 2008 there were an average of 25,000 deaths from the adverse effects of medical care and 6,355 from accidental gunshots. Statistically you’re safer at the shooting range than the doctor’s office. For every one accidental firearm death there are approximately 5 deaths from fire, 6 deaths from drowning, 10 deaths from suffocation, 34 deaths from falls, 44 deaths from poisoning and 74 deaths from motor vehicle accidents. Perhaps it’s time for a strongly worded editorial pondering the importance of ladder safety.
“We hope we are wrong, but it seems inevitable that more gun-carrying citizens will mean more gunshot injuries. We also fear those injured won’t be criminals but will be family members, friends and even licensed carriers themselves.”
You are wrong; well-intentioned but misguided people believe restricting law abiding citizen’s access to firearms will reduce crime, violence and accidental deaths when in reality the exact opposite is true. The research is too extensive to properly document here, as one example see [http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf] but in Britain and other countries the areas with the fewest guns had the highest rates of crime and violence.
Law abiding citizens in the US who carry concealed handguns deter crime while protecting themselves, their families, and the public in general. Violent crimes decrease dramatically when “shall issue” laws are passed and the effect is more pronounced in high crime, dense population areas.
The majority of gun related deaths are suicides that would take place with or without firearms. Suicide rates in the US are at or below comparable first world countries with far stricter firearms laws like Canada, Germany, and Sweden.
“As old as we are, we can’t recall a single incident of a person in our area being shot, wounded or killed in a public place. There have been killings and gun injuries in homes and apartments, but there has been nothing to stop a homeowner from keeping a weapon.”
Yes, thankfully we live in a low crime part of the country. Unlike the law abiding citizens gun laws are aimed at violent criminals have long histories of crime, drug or alcohol abuse and psychopathology. Thanks to the Castle Doctrine passed this year homeowners no longer have a legal obligation to retreat from potentially violent criminals forcibly entering their homes and apartments. It has become downright unsafe to be a violent offender in this state.
“Our big question is: What is it that these new gun-toting citizens fear?”
The big answer is: absolutely nothing. Media liberals like to pretend gun culture is a culture of violence like some Hollywood movie when in fact it is the culture of safety and responsibility. By deterring the number of crimes committed armed Wisconsin residents help law enforcement by decreasing their workload and enabling them to apprehend a greater number of criminals which further decreases crime.
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