The reason I say it's biased or slanted is due to the wording in the story.
They don't really explain what exactly they mean by a "crime deterrent". Obviously the mere presence of CCW being legal hasn't been responsible for reducing the overall violent crime rate, nor is it the purpose of individual concealed carry, never has been.Concealed-carry advocates say laws allowing permit-holders to keep guns close at hand serve as a crime deterrent.
Opponents say just the opposite.
So which side is right? While there are strong opinions on both sides on that question, definitive data is lacking to prove either point.
The number of CHL holders is meaningless, because many people will get a CHL and not carry unless they "think they need to." Or like the guy I talked to once, who only carried a gun at work, because he was afraid of robberies, and he lived in a "good neighborhood". The first time he had a DGU it was at home as he was coming home from the supposed "bad neighborhood." Guess his crystal ball was broken that day.Part of the problem in gathering data is that in many states, including Ohio, the CCW licensee list is not a public record, said Jennifer Thorne, executive director of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence.
Ohio doesn’t even keep a tally of how many people have CCW licenses, though there is data on how many licenses are approved or rejected each year.
This is one of the most slanted statements of all, and has nothing to back it up. Reading it someone who is ignorant of the statistics might assume everything is equal, when the truth is the percentage of CHL holders who end up using a gun in a crime is minuscule compared to the number of legal defensive uses.Anecdotally, CCW holders have been on both sides of the law — acting to thwart a shooter and being the shooter, an examination by this newspaper found.
Their pro gun side of the argument was
who then allegedly gave them examples, which the newspaper promptly claimed 8 of them involved police officers, not regular citizens. Not knowing what Jim Irvine gave them, that part might be true, but a good reporter could've easily found plenty of sources on their own of defensive citizen gun use.Jim Irvine, chairman of the pro-gun rights Buckeye Firearms Association, argues that private citizens with guns can and do thwart mass shootings.
Also, most defensive gun uses, whether citizen or LE, don't involve shooting, and sometimes aren't mentioned in the news as a result. If it's not mentioned in the news, it's hard to prove it was a defensive gun use. Many of the DGU's I had in the past were never covered in the news, doesn't mean the presence of a gun didn't have a positive impact. When I assisted an off duty cop once to stop someone from committing a mass shooting, since it never happened, the DDN barely reported it. Even so, the reporting only listed the charges, not why he was charged, not that we might've been responsible for saving several lives. Statistically however it's not relevant to someone doing research because it's not reported completely.
Also, in one encounter I witnessed, where a security guard pretended to be armed but wasn't, one of the suspects even said after he was cuffed by sheriff deputies, if I'd had known you didn't have a gun I'd have killed you!" So even criminals admit that guns in the right hands save lives.
While the writer of the article allegedly checked what the pro gun advocate said, apparently no checks were done on the distortions of the other side. For example,
I was curious about this, so in about twenty seconds of research found this, along with other sources that back up this source below.The Violence Policy Center, which supports stronger gun regulations, says 921 people — including 17 law enforcement officers — have been killed by concealed-carry permit holders, a number disputed by gun rights groups.
The center also says 31 mass shootings have been committed by CCW holders, including the 2010 shooting at a Connecticut beer distributorship that resulted in the deaths of nine people, including the shooter.
https://www.saf.org/wp-content/uploads/ ... PP-251.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
If the VPC has the documents they claim, I haven't found them on the net yet. They do claim to have obtained the document, but I was unable to view it on their website. I don't know that the writer for the DDN was shown the document, or even cared to ask. I did find one news article where a woman claimed he had a CHL, but it didn't say why she believed that. Perhaps he told her he had one. After all, no one would ever lie about that.Another example of jumping to conclusions is the case of Omar
Thornton, who murdered eight co-workers and then killed himself,
after he was caught stealing beer from his employer. VPC claims that,
“Thornton had a current Connecticut pistol permit that allowed him
to carry concealed.”
12
But Connecticut has two different licenses: a
“pistol eligibility certificate” required to purchase a handgun,
13
and
a “State Permit to Carry Pistols and Revolvers.”
14
A Nexis search
found numerous references to Thornton having a “pistol permit”,
but none that referred to him having a permit to carry, except in
articles by gun control advocates.
VPC claims to have received documents concerning Thornton’s
concealed handgun license from the Connecticut Department of
Public Safety. If this is true, a criminal investigation is in order.
Connecticut law prohibits release of information on a carry licensee
except to law enforcement agencies, local authorities, and the
Commissioner of Mental Health and Addiction Services. There is
no provision for release of such information to advocacy groups.
16
Regardless, the bottom line is he or anyone else doesn't need to have a CHL to commit mass murder anyway. No piece of paper would've stopped this. This article appears to be either very lazy journalism at least, and intentional bias at worst.
