Concealed carry laws study.

[Tim Griffiths <griffith@wis.weizmann.ac.il>]

Not directly crypto-related, but more interesting than any of the
current pissing contests:

I came across a very interesting (though not too surprising) study,
entitled "Multiple victim public shootings, bombings, and
right-to-carry concealed handgun laws: contrasting private and
public law enforcement". The full text is available at

http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=161637

The conclusion is that RtC laws reduce the number of multiple
victim public shootings. Big surprise. Interestingly, the authors
see a much smaller reduction in the number of single-victim shootings.
Several other interesting results.
One timely quote in a footnote:

"While the recent rash of public school shootings...took place after the
period of our study, these incidents raise questions about the
unintentional consequences of laws. The five public school shootings
took
place after a 1995 federal law banned guns (inculding permitted
concealed
handguns) within a thousand feet of a school. The possibility exists
that
attempts to outlaw guns from schools, no matter how well meaning, may
have
produced perverse effects. It is interesting to note that during the
1977
to 1995 period, 15 shootings took place in schools without
right-to-carry
laws and only one took place in a state with this type of law. There
were
19 deaths and 97 injuries in states without the law, while there was one
death and two injuries in states with the law".

Although I'd guess at RtC laws = more liberal gun laws in general = more
guns = greater familiarity and more responsible attitudes towards gun =
less shootings.
I live in Israel, where citizens used to be *encouraged* to carry guns,
and many still do. The guy who sold me medical insurance, including
gunshot wounds, wore a .45. To quote an Israeli criminologist also cited
in the study:

"Three terrorist who attempted to machine-gun the throng [a crowd in
Jerusalem] managed to to kill only one victim before being shot down by
handgun-carrying Israelis. Presented to the press the next day, the
surviving terrorist complained that his group had not realized that
Israeli civilians were armed. The terrorists had planned to machine-gun
a succession of crowd spots, thinking that they would be able to escape
before the police or army could arrive to deal with them".

In the US, the terrorist might even sue the g'mint...

The situation led to two things: Terrorists use bombs rather than
machine
guns, and handguns were no longer encouraged as the domestic shooting
rate grew unacceptable.

Tim

--
Tim Griffiths                   griffith@wis.weizmann.ac.il
Center for Submicron Research   http://tim01.ex.ac.uk
Weizmann Institute of Science   (972)-8-934-2736
Rehovot 76100 Israel

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