Things Heard: e167v2
Tuesday, April 5th, 2011 at
8:25 am
Good morning.
- We’ll start with a little of the old in-and-out (is that a “A Clockwork Orange” quote)?
- On a lighter note, I know people for whom that flowchart would be helpful (as they add worry and dither between decision and action).
- The GOP budget gambit.
- More here.
- Graphing autocracy.
- The desire to purge.
- Nine dead. I think Mr Taranto nailed the description for that pastor … putting him in the place of the women who eggs on the fight between her suitors.
- Rock and the map.
- I don’t subscribe to the NYTimes, how did that play out then?
- Three scandals, the third of course is the asymmetry in coverage.
- A campaign begun … I think a 10-20% tax on campaign spending might be interesting, no?
- Concealed carry? After looking at this I googled for some statistics on crime and CC. I found what appeared to be a neutral academic study which found no effect on crime, which seems to me a strong reason to support it, if there is no effect why prohibit?
- News from the Fed.
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Statistics regarding concealed carry can be fiddled with on both sides of the issue. One metric, though, that is difficult to cherry pick is that of whether or not a crime that was committed, could have been *prevented* were there no concealed carry provision. The reason it is difficult to cherry pick is that those who choose to disregard the law will do so. On the East Coast (New Jersey?), a man shot and killed someone who was trying to steal his car. In Tucson, a man shot and killed multiple people at Rep. Gabby Giffords’ Town Hall meeting. The former had a concealed carry permit, the latter did not. Despite initial alarm, the fact that the person in the first incident had a concealed carry permit did not contribute to his use of the weapon. Had he not had a CCW he most certainly could have chosen to still carry a weapon. The latter incident serves as a confirmation, of sorts, of the premise made from the first incident – namely – that those intent on using a weapon will not be hindered by the lack of *or* the availability of a CCW.
Note that some may argue that if the person did not have a CCW, and was relatively law-abiding, then he would not have been carrying and would not have gone off “in a fit of rage” and shot the person attempting to steal his car. At this point, however, I think that statistics will start to fail us, as the complex features of the human psyche start to intersect into the equation (e.g., choices, personality, free will, context, what-ifs). Yet, while I think that the fit of rage argument is the best one to use against the issuance of CCW permits, as you indicate, data over the last 20+ years apparently shows this argument to be without merit.