Four years after allowing universal ‘concealed carry’ law, Maine rated the safest state in the natio

[Maj. Bill Martin]

I appreciate the book recommendation. I'll add it to my wish list.

In searching for the title, this came up, though:

Well, dueling studies.  What a surprise.  Unless we have the time and opportunity to dig deeply into the data and methodology, we lay people generally cannot fairly evaluate the reliability of any of them.  But sometimes, we can look to other factors to determine how reliable they are, or whether they are tainted by bias.  In that regard, this paragraph from the artcile you cited jumped out at me:

“More guns, less crime” has always been a shaky proposition. Defensive gun uses against criminals are rare. Because aggressors are opportunistic, and retain the element of surprise, even trained professionals, including police officers, may have limited ability to repel an armed assault. At the same time, so-called good guys with guns regularly supply criminals with weapons. “The most frequent occurrence each year involving crime and a good guy with a gun is not self‐defense but rather the theft of the good guy’s gun, which occurs hundreds of thousands of times each year,” the new study points out. “Lost, forgotten, and misplaced guns are another dangerous byproduct of RTC laws.”

And right there in the bolded language is a large load of disingenuous horsecrap that would lead me to discard the whole thing.

The first bolded sentence is referring to the theft of guns from law abiding citizens, which obviously does sometimes occur.  And that is sometimes how criminals get guns, no question.  Fair point -- according to FBI numbers, approximately 300,000 guns are stolen every year, so the "hundreds of thousands" figure does have some basis.

But for the study to link that first sentence with the second one is dishonest as hell.  Because I follow this stuff pretty closely, I know that gun thefts overwhelmingly occur from homes.  I honestly can't remember the  last time I heard anything about criminals robbing armed people on the street, taking their guns from them, and then using them in subsequent crimes.  Even most of the available data refers specifically to thefts from homes.  But given that this study claims to be talking about the impact of Right to Carry, which by definition occurs outside the home, thefts from homes are irrelevant to the risks posed by RTC.  So, to incorporate home theft data and then use it as a negative consequence of RTC laws is simply bogus as hell.  It's a rhetorical sleight of hand deliberately conflating two different data sets, and reveals a significant bias on the part of that study's author that should preclude any reliance on their objectivity or methodology.

@txradioguy @OfTheCross

[verga]

Well, dueling studies.  What a surprise.  Unless we have the time and opportunity to dig deeply into the data and methodology, we lay people generally cannot fairly evaluate the reliability of any of them.  But sometimes, we can look to other factors to determine how reliable they are, or whether they are tainted by bias.  In that regard, this paragraph from the artcile you cited jumped out at me:

“More guns, less crime” has always been a shaky proposition. Defensive gun uses against criminals are rare. Because aggressors are opportunistic, and retain the element of surprise, even trained professionals, including police officers, may have limited ability to repel an armed assault. At the same time, so-called good guys with guns regularly supply criminals with weapons. “The most frequent occurrence each year involving crime and a good guy with a gun is not self‐defense but rather the theft of the good guy’s gun, which occurs hundreds of thousands of times each year,” the new study points out. “Lost, forgotten, and misplaced guns are another dangerous byproduct of RTC laws.”

And right there in the bolded language is a large load of disingenuous horsecrap that would lead me to discard the whole thing.

The first bolded sentence is referring to the theft of guns from law abiding citizens, which obviously does sometimes occur.  And that is sometimes how criminals get guns, no question.  Fair point -- according to FBI numbers, approximately 300,000 guns are stolen every year, so the "hundreds of thousands" figure does have some basis.

But for the study to link that first sentence with the second one is dishonest as hell.  Because I follow this stuff pretty closely, I know that gun thefts overwhelmingly occur from homes.  I honestly can't remember the  last time I heard anything about criminals robbing armed people on the street, taking their guns from them, and then using them in subsequent crimes.  Even most of the available data refers specifically to thefts from homes.  But given that this study claims to be talking about the impact of Right to Carry, which by definition occurs outside the home, thefts from homes are irrelevant to the risks posed by RTC.  So, to incorporate home theft data and then use it as a negative consequence of RTC laws is simply bogus as hell.  It's a rhetorical sleight of hand deliberately conflating two different data sets, and reveals a significant bias on the part of that study's author that should preclude any reliance on their objectivity or methodology.

@txradioguy @OfTheCross

They also disregard the number of times that merely displaying a firearm rings the confrontation to a safe end.

[Fishrrman]

TXradio objected:
"Don’t make this a racial thing please."

Where in my post (to which you responded) did I use the word, "racial"?

But YES, this IS important, because concealed carry or NO concealed carry in Maine, IS NOT "the reason" why the crime rate there is so low and the state is a safe place to live.

It has much more to do with demographics.

The entire premise of the original article of this thread is off-the-track.
How about some intellectual honesty, please...