For almost a decade, state after state has taken note that there are 2.5 million lives protected annually in America by guns. There has beena tidal wave of progressive reform of concealed weapon licensing law. After a minor fenderbender, a beefy laborer ran a slender older man off the road and began punching him repeatedly in the face. The older man used his legally licensed pistol to shoot and kill his attacker. Since 1987 Florida, in the vanguard of reform, has issued a third of a million licenses and revoked a few dozen, almost none associated with injury.
Licensees have a far lower rate of crime than the general populace.
The licensing procedures in Florida, like those proposed for California in AB638, are so effective that we believe that a person is more likely to be feloniously shot by a police officer than by a concealed weapon licensee. Florida's homicide rate was 36 percent above the national average before reform and fell after reform, remaining below the national average to this day. Whether good citizens in the 22 states that allowed good citizens to readily carry guns for protection carried their guns in their cars, on the street, in churches, in bars, or courthouses, homicide, assault, and overall violent crimes were each 40 percent lower, armed robbery was 50 percent lower, rape was 30 percent lower, and property crimes were 10 percent lower. He practices medicine in Danville.