Conceal Carry Saves Lives
Photo courtesy of pixabay.com
After every horrible shooting, anti-gun groups call for tougher gun control laws. Ironically, many of the mass shootings have occurred in states where guns are banned. In fact, every American public shooting that as resulted in multiple victims since 1950 has occurred in jurisdictions where guns are banned. There has been only one exception to this pattern.
This would lead one to conclude that tighter gun controls isn’t the solution. What the anti-gun groups haven’t taken into account is that banning guns that have legal concealed carry permits is not going to stop these shooters who have illegal weapons or guns that don’t even belong to them.
Banning legal guns will also create a safety issue. Concealed carry gun owners have a history of protecting themselves and saving the lives of others. Pennsylvania Representatives were accosted by an armed robber. One of the reps was a retired prison guard licensed to conceal carry. He fired at the robber averting what might well have become a fatal shooting.
In a Texas bar where guns are banned a man shot and killed two armed robbers stopping a robbery of the bar and its patrons. The Good Samaritan disappeared immediately fearing arrest for taking his gun into the bar.
A Pennsylvania purple heart recipient combat veteran saved his aunt from her estranged husband who showed up and started shooting.
A psychiatrist shot an armed patient who had killed a caseworker and was threatening to take out the entire clinic staff.
An attack on a crowded Colorado cinema was stopped by a citizen with a concealed carry weapon.
In an assault at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs in 2007, a woman who had received permission to conceal carry inside the church stopped a gunman from entering the church. He had already killed two people in the parking lot.
Shootings at schools were stopped before police arrived in Pearl, Mississippi and Edinboro, Pennsylvania.
Attacks in downtown Memphis and a mall in Salt Lake City were stopped by concealed carry gun owners.
In states with a ban against non-police carrying guns, the belief is that anyone might go on a shooting spree, misusing their handgun and that others could get caught in the crossfire. There’s another mistaken belief out there: That’s that tussling with an armed assailant is more dangerous than quiet submission.
Statistics show repeatedly that those with concealed carry weapons are consistently law abiding citizens. The fact that they could easily lose their permits for any type of firearms-related violation is taken very seriously.
To date there is no example of an accidental shooting of an innocent bystander in any situations where permit holders have intervened to stop an assailant.
It may well be that the sheer truth that one of a mass shooters targets might be armed has acted as a deterrent to spree killings.
With every sensational mass killing episode, gun control advocates always rush to push for more gun control regulations. They are convinced this will prevent future tragedies.
If Americans looked to other countries they’d see that this idea hasn’t worked. In spite of aggressive gun control in Europe, the incidence of multiple-victim public shootings has not waned.
Germany has one of the world’s strictest gun control policies. To get a permit requires extensive psychological screening and a year’s wait to get a gun. Yet Germany has experienced three of the worst five multiple-victim school shootings in the past decade.
Those guns used in the German shootings were obtained illegally. Stricter gun control would not have stopped those killings.
Stories where concealed carry permit holders have saved lives come from all over America. A father saved his seventeen-year-old daughter’s life because he was armed. When two armed robbers confronted her as she went to retrieve something from her car in the driveway, the girl’s parents picked up their guns and confronted the robbers. Their quick thinking and responsible handling of their weapons saved their daughter’s and very likely their own lives.
