Do armed citizens deter crime? There are some highly respected criminologists who think so. John Lott's book More Guns, Less Crime shows that states with permissive concealed carry laws have lower incidents of assault, rape, and murder. Gary Kleck, a self-described Liberal Democrat, has done tireless and award-winning research on the subject, suggesting that Americans defend themselves with guns as often as 3,000,000 times per year.
But what about cops? They really like law-abiding citizens carrying guns, the rank and file in particular. Last March a survey of 15,000 law enforcement officers found that over 91 percent support the right of law-abiding citizens to carry a concealed firearm, and almost 55 percent believe armed citizens reduce crime. Over 86 percent think the presence of a legally-armed citizen would reduce or prevent casualties in mass-shooting scenarios. Far from supporting stricter gun control, police officers know that such laws only serve criminals at the expense of decent people.
Now Detroit's Chief of Police has joined the discussion, and what he has to say comes as no surprise to those of us who stand with the decent against the thugs.
Last week Chief James Craig held a press conference during which he praised those who carry guns as "good Americans". Craig, who served on the Los Angeles Police Department for 28 years, didn't always feel this way, but said his stint as Chief of Police in Portland, Maine, changed his mind.
"Coming from California..., where it takes an act of Congress to get a concealed weapon permit, I got to Maine, where they give out lots of [permits]," he said. "I changed my orientation real quick. Maine is one of the safest places in America."
He's right. The homicide rate in Maine is 1.9 per 100,000 residents — that's similar to Scotland's. All three of the northern New England states have extremely low rates of homicide, despite very high gun ownership and liberal gun-carry laws. In fact, a look around the US shows that where legal gun ownership is highest crime is consistently lowest.
And so it goes across the pond. A study published in Harvard's Journal of Public Law & Policy, "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?", found that even in countries that have effectively disarmed their entire civilian populations crime and violence only goes one way: up.
For example, "the Soviet Union possessed extremely stringent gun controls that were effectuated by a police state apparatus providing stringent enforcement. So successful was that regime that few Russian civilians now have firearms and very few murders involve them. Yet, manifest success in keeping its people disarmed did not prevent the Soviet Union from having far and away the highest murder rate in the developed world."
This is consistent across Europe: the countries with the highest rates of legal civilian gun ownership have the lowest crime rates. Interestingly, "The same pattern appears when comparisons of violence to gun ownership are made within nations. Indeed, 'data on fire‐arms ownership by constabulary area in England,' like data from the United States, show 'a negative correlation,' that is, 'where firearms are most dense violent crime rates are lowest, and where guns are least dense violent crime rates are highest.'"
Further, "despite constant and substantially increasing gun ownership, the United States saw progressive and dramatic reductions in criminal violence in the 1990s. On the other hand, the same time period in the United Kingdom saw a constant and dramatic increase in violent crime to which England's response was ever‐more drastic gun control including, eventually, banning and confiscating all handguns and many types of long guns. Nevertheless, criminal violence rampantly increased so that by 2000 England surpassed the United States to become one of the developed world's most violence‐ridden nations."
Chief Craig was under no obligation to make his views known, and typically chiefs of police prefer to stay silent rather than make pro-gun statements that can be damaging politically. "There's a number of [concealed pistol license] holders running around the city of Detroit. I think it acts as a deterrent. Good Americans with CPLs translates into crime reduction," he said.
Thank you, Chief Craig. You're right again.
