Not Breaking News: Right to Carry Increases Crime

Filed in National by on January 28, 2018

It has been a slippery fact to pin down statistically, but the scientific jury is in. Right-to-carry laws lead to more violent crime – not less.

It is a combination of every confrontation ending with murder, and the legal gun owners who like showing off their guns so much that they get stolen.

While impulsive violence is an issue, Donohue said, perhaps the bigger problem is that “when you start carrying guns, you make them much more likely to be stolen,” which means that right-to-carry laws offer a steady supply of guns to people who are already inclined to commit crimes.
“American gun owners, preoccupied with self-defense, are inadvertently arming the very criminals they fear,” explained Brian Freskos at The Trace, kicking off his November investigative report on the way stolen guns have become a major component of the gun crime problem.

More than 237,000 guns were stolen from legal gun owners in 2016 alone, though Freskos believes that is a drastic underestimate, as many gun owners never report thefts to the police. One reason gun theft is so common is because right-to-carry laws and NRA propaganda encourage gun owners to have their firearms accessible at all times: in their cars, in their homes or on their person. If people kept guns locked up (as responsible firearms owners did for generations), this problem largely wouldn’t exist. But when guns are on coffee tables, in glove compartments or carried in holsters, they become easy targets for thieves. Reliable estimates suggest as many as 3.5 million stolen guns have entered the black market over the past decade.

Read on…

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Jason330 is a deep cover double agent working for the GOP. Don't tell anybody.

Comments (7)

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  1. Alby says:

    Tomorrow: Eating increases obesity.

  2. puck says:

    We need a Democratic Frank Luntz to develop messaging on guns.

    WRONG: Gun control/restrictions
    RIGHT: gun safety laws

    WRONG: Second Amendment supporter
    RIGHT: Soft on gun crime

  3. Alby says:

    Good ideas, but I’d suggest “soft on responsible gun ownership” or some equivalent instead of “crime.” To GOPers, gun crime=ownership of guns while black, e.g. Philandro Castile.

  4. puck says:

    I think we can flip that definition on them. For example, Dems should mock and scorn opponents of an assault weapons ban as soft on mass shootings.

    Same thing for urban street crime. Repubs are always clubbing Dems with urban violence numbers. But if Repubs oppose restrictions on guns in the cities, run against them as soft on crime. Then Dems can use urban shooting statistics against Repubs.

  5. Alby says:

    That also means flipping the NRA narrative about gun crimes always being bargained away by prosecutors. Law enforcement has done a poor job of making its case, which is pro-gun control, complicated by the fact that Republicans give law enforcement enthusiastic support, except for when one of their own is in the docket e.g. Trump.

  6. bamboozer says:

    Puck, all for mockery, an art form near and dear to my heart. But for it to work the subject has to be vaguely awake to some extent thus rendering most of the Republican base immune.

  7. mouse says:

    Exactly, certainly liberals/democrats should be able to come up with some rhetoric to counter the Orwellian bs that the regressive paranoid selfish pro murder gun nuts swallow like candy