2nd Amendment Rights

12 Pages 3029 Words

nection between guns and crime with actual tests, research and surveys. Examining crime rates in cities and states with strict and liberal gun laws Lott found that crime rates in cities and states with liberal gun laws are very much lower than states with stricter gun control laws, especially in states that allow citizens to gain a concealed handgun permit to carry a handgun on their person. Gun control advocates believed that the issuing of the permits would create vigilantes and Rambo like figures that would fight using a gun in any altercation that they were involved in. Nothing could have been more wrong, no incidents like the one described has happened in any state that issues concealed weapons permits. In a national survey conducted by Lott, 98 percent of the time that people use guns in defensive situations the legally carrying citizens merely has to brandish their firearms to stave off an attack. (Lott, 1998, p. 3) Thirty-one states in America allow citizens to carry concealed weapons, nearly all, require prior permits and training. In all thirty-one states, the murder and rape rates declined. (Elder, 2000, p.272) In America, the bad guys know that the occupant of a house or a car may have a gun. The National Institute of Justice surveyed two thousand felons in state prisons and asked ex-cons “is one reason burglars avoid houses when people are home is that they fear being shot during the crime.” 74 percent of the felons said yes. The
Survey also asked these felons whether they had abandoned at least one crime because they feared that the intended victim might be armed. Thirty-nine percent said they abandoned at least one crime; eight percent had abandoned such a crime “many” times; 34 percent admitted being “scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim”; and nearly 70 percent knew of a “colleague” that abandoned a crime, had been, scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by a victim packin...