Keep them guessing

March 5, 9:11 PMDenver Gun Rights ExaminerDan Bidstrup

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A large part of the reason most folks decide to carry a gun is personal protection.  After that, they want to protect their family.  Beyond that, they would really have to evaluate the situation before they would intervene.  Did you know that by carrying a gun you help strangers everyday?  Economists call it the substitution effect.  When the possible number of people carrying a gun goes up, the criminals can't know who is carrying and who isn't.  They sense that their job risk has gone up and they shift from confrontational crimes like robbery, murder, and rape to safer ones like car theft and burglary.  They substitute one crime for another to increase their safety.  Another form of substitution is going to a place where they know gun laws are tighter, and they are more confident that they won't run into a gun.  Surveys of criminals behind bars indicate that they fear a civilian with a gun more than they fear a policeman with a gun.

If you apply for a concealed carry permit and get it, even if you don't own a gun or intend to carry it, you help your neighbor.  The aggregate statistics for Colorado will show an increase in the possible number of people who could be carrying a gun and the criminals know this.  Rest assured that they are aware of the spike in gun sales and permit applications since last November in every county of our state.  In a 1996 study, David Kopel and Laurence Reed, writing for the Hoover Institution on the Stanford University campus said:

 "We also examined violent-crime data in California, where permit policies vary widely by county. Counties that issue permits liberally had lower violent-crime rates than counties with restrictive policies; restrictive counties had lower rates than counties with prohibitive policies. A graduate student at Southwest Texas State University compared states that adopted concealed-carry laws with demographically similar states that did not. This study found strong support for the hypothesis that concealed-carry laws reduce the homicide rate, and weak (but still positive) support for a reduction in robbery and serious assault." 

The clincher for me is to look at murder rates and rape rates per capita in the 50 states.  49th out of 50, nearly last, for murder is Vermont (beaten out of last place by South Dakota, go figure).  It is also very last out of the 50 states for rape.  Vermont is also the only state in the union that doesn't issue concealed carry permits because anybody can carry any gun any time they want to, concealed.  That makes Vermonters very polite and peaceable people.