Bellevue v. Brady Bunch on Monday in Washington, D.C.

The Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation is hosting a forum next Monday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. and a highlight of the event – which is held in cooperation with Students for Concealed Carry on Campus – will be a debate between Colin Goddard with the Brady Campaign and economist John Lott, author of More Guns = Less Crime.

SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb will be there, along with attorney Alan Gura, who successfully argued both of this century’s landmark Second Amendment cases before the Supreme Court, District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago, the latter being a SAF case. Joining them will be SCCC President Dan Crocker.

The debate between Lott and Goddard probably could not come at a worse time for the Brady Bunch, primarily because of last weekend’s two-part series in the Detroit Free Press – discussed by this column – that looked at the state of concealed carry in Michigan ten years after that state’s legislature reformed and improved the state’s concealed carry statute. Those stories included some devastating information for the gun prohibition lobby, including indications that so-called “research” by gun banners, primarily the Violence Policy Center, is rather questionable.

“But violent crimes have been rare among carrying a concealed weapon license holders. Only 2% of license holders have been sanctioned for any kind of misbehavior, State Police records show.—Detroit Free Press

Also clearly refuted were alarmist predictions of a decade ago that adoption of a new concealed carry law would result in public mayhem. As in other states where the Brady camp or its local affiliates (as Washington CeaseFire could be described) have opposed rational firearms laws while pushing an extremist gun ban agenda, the forecast of explosive violence never materialized.

The event will also feature an academic panel that includes Prof. Nelson Lund and Prof. Joyce Lee Malcolm, both with George Mason University, and Prof. Bob Cottrol with George Washington University. A third panel will discuss legislation supporting concealed carry on campus, and will include Texas State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, Wisconsin Rep. Evan Wynn and Idaho Rep. Erik Simpson.

"The case is clear," said Dennis Henigan, interim president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "The premise that (so-called 'shall issue' CCW laws) would make you safer is false. Those laws have been an abject failure."

Hardly, counters John Lott, an economist and author of "More Guns, Less Crime."

The number of permit holders committing crimes is tiny, he said. And the evidence that jurisdictions like Michigan with permissive laws experience a lower incidence of violent crime is "pretty overwhelming," he said.—Detroit Free Press

So, what about concealed carry on campus? Founded less than 24 hours after the Virginia Tech massacre, SCCC quickly had chapters springing up at college and university campuses across the country. Rather than submit to armed lunatics, SCCC’s philosophy is to fight back and stop killers like Sueng Hui-Cho in their tracks if possible. The best reaction that gun prohibitionists can muster is to demand more gun control with increasingly invasive requirements. Perish the thought that some legally-armed professor or student might literally surprise the life out of a campus gunman by shooting him.

Of course, according to the Free Press stories, it is possible the gun ban camp sees justifiably-shot criminals as “victims” of legally-armed citizens.

One could just as easily argue that if criminals didn’t attack people who turned out to be armed, they wouldn’t get shot.

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