Today, a few blocks from my home, a group of armed men and women is laying seige to the leafy expanses of Fort Hunt Park, a mile or so north of Mount Vernon, in the Alexandria portion of Fairfax County, Virginia. Apparently they are Second Amendment advocates. They are allowed to do so because the law now allows people to carry loaded weapons into Federal parks. I am totally opposed to this and to most other public exercises of the Second Amendment, most of which seem intended as a very dangerous form of public speech and at least as often, an attempt to intimidate the rest of us. I am particularly troubled by the idea of people bringing guns to National parks because I am unaware of any particular outbreak of violence at our parks, which ought to be places of tranquility and beauty. So, below the fold, I have two questions I would like you to answer for me....
First, to the extent that gun advocates offer a practical rationale for their exhibitionism (other than their constitutional claims, which is another story), I have heard them claim that if citizens carry guns on a more regular basis, the chance of violent crime taking place will be dimisnished. This argument surfaced shortly after the Virginia Tech shootings a few years ago, where gun advocates said that if students had been allowed to carry weapons on campus, they could have stopped the gunman from shooting others. I don't buy this -- the argument assumes that (1) someone with a gun will actually be present and (2) he/she will be able to use it in a calm, cool and effective manner that will not produce the modern equivalent of the gunfight at the OK Corral. Private citizens are not deputized and have no training in using guns to stop armed crime, so I have little reason to believe that arming more of the citizenry will actually produce less crime. So here's my first question: Is there any evidence that in those states that have liberalized their open carry and concealed carry statutes, any reduction in crime has occurred? Specifically, are there statistics or reliable narrative reports to indicate that armed citizens have actually stopped a crime from taking place?
Second, and on the other side of the equation, is there any statistical or reliable narrative evidence to support the view that where states have liberalized their open carry or concealed carry laws, the incidence of gun violence -- and in particular, the danger to unarmed citizens -- has increased?
To the extent that anyone with a gun shows up at a crime scene, I suspect that it only increases the likelihood of a dangerous situation getting worse. I can argue until I'm blue in the face about what the Second Amendment means, but I am curious about whether there are any reliable statistics that either side can point to on this issue