Arguments against "concealed-carry" and "shall-issue" gun-licensing laws are easily countered.
"Opponents of concealed-carry laws occasionally argue . . . that the police are uniquely qualified . . . and uniquely positioned to determine . . . precisely which applicants may be safely entrusted to carry arms," observes attorney Jeffrey Snyder in a policy report published by the Cato Institute. "It would be dangerous or imprudent, the argument runs, to override their judgment in such matters by replacing it with a rigid objective standard that permits practically any law-abiding citizen to carry arms."
This argument is "completely belied by at least 60 years of experience with discretionary licensing laws," says Snyder. "The power that is conferred on the government under discretionary licensing systems," he explains, "is so broad and uncircumscribed that there is nothing to prevent the police from acting arbitrarily." More important, this argument "eliminates the presumption that individuals have the right to defend themselves and makes the citizen a supplicant for that privilege by placing the burden on the applicant to demonstrate to the satisfaction of a police officer his worthiness or need to carry."
If one argument fails, try another! "Opponents of shall-issue licensing laws sometimes argue that guns are far more dangerous to those who possess them or use them for self-defense than they are to criminals," Snyder notes. "The arguments are that, by having a gun, one creates the risk that one will shoot oneself or another by accident, that one will have available a ready means to quit life in an impulsive moment of dark despair or to intentionally murder a loved one or a friend during a heated exchange, and that the like-lihood of those events exceeds the likelihood that one will employ the weapon to save life." Snyder insists "there is no good evidence to support [such] claims."
Other anti-gun claims also lack substantiation. "The most powerful rhetorical argument that is generally made by those who oppose shall-issue licensing laws," Snyder observes, "is that permitting law-abiding citizens to carry handguns outside their homes will transform the streets of America into 'Dodge City.'" But the data do not support the alarm-ist contention that "more guns on city streets can only lead to more violence and deaths."
Jeffrey Snyder insists that "we need no longer speculate about what the effects of [concealed-carry] laws might be. We now have at least 10 years of actual evidence from 25 different states with diverse rural and metropolitan populations," he explains. "The results are in, and they show unequivocally that (a) the number of persons currently in possession of permits to carry firearms ranges from 1 to 5 percent of the state's population; (b) criminals do not apply for permits; (c) permit holders do not take to settling their traffic disputes or arguments with guns . . . (d) shall-issue licensing states have almost no problems with violent criminality or inappropriate brandishing of firearms by permit holders; and (e) some permit holders have used their guns to defend themselves and others."
