Dear Editor:

Now that the concealed carry legislation is being awarded a massive amount of coverage and all of the gun-rights advocates are coming out in favor of this crime against humanity, it is time to rip off their Second Amendment security blanket and educate them with unbiased, correctly interpreted statistics and with basic logic.

Nothing illustrates the errors in reasoning that concealed carry supporters have better than the name of legislation: The Family and Personal Protection Act. The huge myth that this title attempts to spread is that carrying concealed weapons leads to the protection of anyone when it in fact does the opposite. In total, 48 states have passed concealed carry laws all in the name of protection. And what sort of protection have these laws brought? According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, 34 of the 35 states with the highest crime rates have concealed carry laws on their books. If either Tennessee or South Carolina, which both have legalized concealed carry, were their own country, they would have the highest murder rate in the world. Wisconsin, the only state besides Illinois not to pass such laws, has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.’

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Furthermore, advocates for turning this country into some sort of gun utopia fail to recognize the possible consequences for passing laws such as the Family and Personal Protection Act.’ What happens when two people get in a fight at a bar and one legally has a gun on him? What about the police officer who has to worry that the person he just pulled over, or the drunk he is chasing down the street is carrying a deadly weapon? And what most people do not recognize is that most concealed carry laws also include the Castle Doctrine, which allows people to defend their property with deadly force. Under this mindset, a person could theoretically shoot someone who is stealing a lawn chair from them. Do petty thieves actually deserve to die? I guess 48 states think it is alright as long as it is the citizens doing the killing … let’s not become the 49th.

To see FBI crime reports, visit http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/offenses/violent_crime/index.html.

To view FBI state crime rates http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/data/table_05.html.

For worldwide crime rates, visit http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita.

Ty Holden

sophomore studying philosophy, classics and political science