An Associated Press article, sympathetic to gun-control advocates, defends the Democratic-controlled Senate rejecting a reciprocity amendment allowing people to carry hidden guns in 48 states if they have a concealed weapon permit (CCW) for any other state.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) was quoted as saying, “It’s extremely dangerous policy.” She then explained that her state demands fingerprinting, federal background checks, a training course, and verification by a local sheriff before issuing a permit to carry a concealed gun. Sounds reasonable enough, right? Wrong. Feinstein also fails to mention that the system in her state is totally arbitrary, based largely on the discretion of the local authorities and the politics of the city or county. You also need to provide “good cause” for obtaining the permit. If they don’t think your cause is “good” enough, then you will be denied the permit.

I wonder if Senator Feinstein considers herself “dangerous” since she has in her possession an extremely rare unrestricted concealed weapons permit. In an article entitled Gun Control Hypocrites: Senators Schumer and Feinstein Pack Heat, we learn that Feinstein carries a .357 magnum for her own personal protection. Like in the past, the aristocracy claims rights for itself that it denies to others.

The AP article gave a couple of examples of people who were issued CCW permits, but then allegedly committed a crime, but never gave any examples of citizens with a CCW defending themselves or others from criminals. Examples can certainly be found, such as this one from Florida entitled Robbery victim shoots suspect in Sarasota (victim had CCW), an article out of Utah called Concealed weapons permit holder stops would-be robbers, and in Texas, Police: Man who shot carjacker had permit.

The Violence Policy Center, a gun control group, was also cited by the AP article in reference to a study they conducted finding that concealed handgun permit holders killed ‘at least’ seven police officers and 44 private citizens during a peculiar time period chosen by the group. The AP article also does not provide any counter studies to the extremely poor VPC “study.”

The VPC’s study was during a cherry-picked period during May 2007 until April 2009. A somewhat strange and arbitrary period chosen by the group. Why not July through January or any other combination of dates? In the article Lies, damn lies, and VPC statistics, John Pierce provides some thoughts concerning this study:

Flaw #1: How did they identify permit holders?

The report makes it clear that they have no idea whether or not they are accurately identifying these parties as permit holders. In the study, they admit as much, “Because of the secretive nature of concealed handgun permit laws, the VPC relied primarily on news accounts.”

Wait … what? The very premise upon which the “study” is based is the fact that these shooters are permit holders. And this key, threshold issue was determined by relying upon news reports? I cannot remember the last time that I read a news report involving a firearm that did not contain a serious mistake of fact [like the AP article] that was glaringly evident to anyone with even a modicum of firearms knowledge.

But wait … surely this lack of verifiable facts can be remedied. After all, the presence or absence of a carry permit would be entered into evidence in the trial and thus available to the VPC for verification.

Except … this leads us to flaw #2.

Flaw #2: Charged with a crime does not equal conviction

Many of the alleged permit holders noted in this report are described as having been charged with a crime but no further information is provided as to the disposition of the charge. This is an important and glaring attempt to cloud the issue.

In many states and jurisdictions, a citizen who properly and legally defends themselves from an attack may well expect to be initially charged with a crime. The charges may later be dropped or may be no-true-billed at the grand jury level. A charge does NOT equal a conviction and yet the VPC, an organization that promotes itself as a public policy think-tank on legal and constitutional issues, treats them as synonymous.

Flaw #3: Does my permit allow me to carry a strangling cord?

Another blatant attempt to pad the data was brought to my attention by Mr. Deeds.  It comes in the form of several data points involving non-handgun related killings by “permit holders” (see Flaw #1).

Carry permits allow a person to carry a handgun for personal protection. In cases where rifles or other weapons are used to commit a crime, the fact that the person may or may not have been a permit holder is a moot point and not germane to the issue at hand.

Flaw #4: Who is more dangerous?

The VPC concludes their report by stating that these examples illustrate clearly that concealed carry laws are not good public policy because permit holders are dangerous. Furthermore, there is a clear implication that they are more dangerous than the general public.

Let’s take a closer look at the statistics to refute this wild inaccuracy. According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, across the general public in the United States, there are an average of .042802 murders per 1,000 citizens per year.

Now … even if we concede all 51 deaths detailed in the VPC report as wrongful deaths, averaging them across the over 6 MILLION permit holders in the United States and taking into account the two year timeframe, we get an average of .00425 per 1,000 per year.

In other words, even if they are 100% correct in their wildly flawed report, they have simply proven that permit holders commit murders at a rate that is 1/10th of the general public.

The VPC report also makes much of the fact that 7 of the victims in these news reports were police officers. They go out of their way to imply that as concealed carry has swept across the nation, law enforcement deaths have risen alarmingly. The only problem with this? It, like so much else that comes from the VPC, is blatantly untrue.

In a report released last week, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund released data that soundly refutes this claim. Chairman of the Memorial Fund, Craig Floyd said it best, “There are three-times more officers on our streets than in the 1970s, and we have half the number of fatalities.“

In an article published in the Journal of Law and Economics called The Impact of Gun Laws on Police Deaths by David Mustard:

After controlling for an array of factors, including trends before and after the law went into effect, I show that states that enact concealed carry laws are less likely to have a felonious police death and more likely to have lower rates of felonious police deaths after the law is passed.

The research of Lott and Mustard have been reevaluated by Carlisle E. Moody in an article entitled Testing for the Effects of Concealed Weapons Laws: Specification Errors and Robustness, and summarized:

In 1997, John Lott and David Mustard published an important paper in which they found that right-to-carry concealed weapons laws reduce violent crime. Although Lott and Mustard appear to do all possible variations of the analysis, a closer reading reveals that the study might suffer from several possibly important errors. I reestimate the model and check for incorrect functional form, omitted variables, and possible second?order bias in the t-ratios. Lott and Mustard’s basic conclusions are generally robust with respect to these potential econometric problems. Overall, right-to-carry concealed weapons laws tend to reduce violent crime. The effect on property crime is more uncertain. I find evidence that these laws also reduce burglary.

From Confirming “More Guns, Less Crime” by Florenz Plassmann & John Whitley, and published in the Stanford Law Review:

Analyzing county-level data for the entire United States from 1977 to 2000, we find annual reductions in murder rates between 1.5% and 2.3% for each additional year that a right-to-carry law is in effect. For the first five years that such a law is in effect, the total benefit from reduced crimes usually ranges between about $2 and $3 billion per year.

The name of the VPC is quite ironic if you think about it, because like it or not, the policies they advocate actually increase violence. Study after study has supported the fact that armed citizens reduce violent crime in their areas, are less prone to violence compared to the general (non-carrying) public, and are a valuable asset to the safety of a community where police cannot be everywhere at once.

Unfortunately, the studies and examples I gave here were not incorporated into the Associated Press piece. Facts that conflict with the liberal media’s agenda mean very little to them.

“Why would we want to walk the streets wondering, ‘Who has a gun in their pockets?’” asked Democratic Senatorial Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.). Only a very confused person, or a person with tyrannical tendencies would fear an armed citizenry. But there is still the hypocrisy of politicians who carry concealed weapons themselves, or have armed bodyguards, and often for their family members as well. Such is the thinking of the elite.