Wrongheaded in Philly, Goes With Bruce's Story!!!

[LifeNRA]

Wrongheaded in Philly

By John R. Lott Jr.

Thursday, April 7, 2005

While murder rates have been falling or flat for years in the rest of the country, including Pittsburgh, Philadelphia's rate has been rising. Last year's murder rate was the highest since 1993, and Philadelphia replaced Chicago, the perennial leader, as the top 10 largest city with the highest murder rate. With 85 murders in this year's first 82 days, Philadelphia's murder rate is well ahead of even last year's level.

Unfortunately, Mayor John Street's solution may affect the rest of the state. He mentions nothing about fixing the city's declining arrest rates for murder. Instead he blames the law-abiding citizens who have permits to carry concealed handguns. And he recently announced that the city will deliberately begin delaying issuing new concealed-handgun permits. Gov. Ed Rendell's proposed crime task force promises to examine the issue further.

None of Philadelphia's reporters seem to have asked Mayor Street or Gov. Rendell the obvious question: If permit holders are the problem, how many of these 85 murders were caused by a person with a permitted concealed handgun? When I asked, the city police and mayor's office were unable or unwilling to answer that question. But my guess is zero. To put it simply, in those extraordinarily rare cases when permit holders get in trouble, there is news coverage -- and there is not one single news story on such a case this year.

Indeed, with 28,000 concealed-handgun permit holders in Philadelphia and more than 600,000 in the state, there wasn't such a murder last year or the year before or the year before that in the entire state. There are only two such cases since the state law started in 1989.

Instead, in Philadelphia there are a number of cases such as this: Last December a robber shot at a deliveryman despite being given all his money and only then did the deliveryman use his permitted concealed handgun to wound the robber.

There are dramatic cases statewide. A couple of years ago, a serial rapist in Pittsburgh was wounded by his sixth intended victim, who had a permitted concealed handgun.

Of course, in addition to self-defense, others who would never even think of carrying a gun also benefit because criminals don't know in advance who can protect themselves.

Pennsylvania's experience isn't unusual. Thirty-six other states have similar right-to-carry laws and nine others allow people to carry under more restrictive rules. In all these cases, the type of persons who are willing to take the time to apply for a permit and go through a criminal background check is extremely law-abiding. They lose their permits for any type of gun-related offenses at hundredths or thousandths of 1 percent.

Ohio, our most recent neighbor to adopt a right-to-carry law, adopted it almost a year ago. The Akron Beacon Journal reported that "some in law enforcement worried that routine traffic stops and road rage incidents would turn violent. That hasn't happened."

Similarly, after Michigan had its law in effect for a year, the Detroit News reported in 2002: "Such self-defense has not yet resulted in any kind of wave of new gun violence among those with fresh CCW permits, several law enforcement officials throughout Metro Detroit agreed.''

And consider the two largest states with right-to-carry laws, Florida and Texas. During the 15 years after Florida's concealed-carry law took effect in October 1987, about 800,000 licenses were issued. Only 143 of these (two-hundredths of 1 percent) were revoked due to firearms-related violations. But even this statistic overstates the risks, as almost all of these cases apparently resulted from people simply accidentally carrying a gun into a restricted area, such as an airport.

The experience in Texas was similar. From 1996 through 1999, the first four years that Texas' concealed-handgun law was in effect, 215,000 people were licensed. Data from the Texas Department of Public Safety showed that permit holders were convicted of a crime only 6 percent as often as other adult Texans.

As to Philadelphia's police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson's claim that Pennsylvania has "the most lenient gun laws in the entire country," this is simply incorrect. On right-to-carry laws, in contrast to Pennsylvania's rules there are several states that don't even require a permit to carry a concealed handgun. Pennsylvania's law was modeled on Indiana's and is virtually identical to it. Pennsylvania also is one of 17 states that require background checks on even private transfers of guns.

If the problem is the state's gun laws, it also raises the obvious question of why Pittsburgh's murder rate has been falling this year while Philadelphia's has remained high.

As state Rep. Dwight Evans, a Philadelphia Democrat, noted, "If Mayor Street thinks he's going to suddenly make street violence disappear by denying law-abiding citizens their right to self-defense, he's sadly mistaken."

If Mayor Street and Gov. Rendell are unwilling to protect Philadelphians by fixing the city's problems with law enforcement and lax judges, at least let law-abiding citizens protect themselves.

John R. Lott Jr., a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "More Guns, Less Crime" and "The Bias Against Guns."

[stevebeilgard]

Re: Wrongheaded in Philly, Goes With Bruce\'s Story!!!

don't see what's new here. just ignore the facts about how guns save lives, and focus on the evil guns. the liberal news media eats it up, and everyone blames guns.

write a guest editorial in the paper, and get the true facts out. if you need help, contact the nra