Guns Save Lives

The fact that firearms have been responsible for
saving multitudes of innocent lives is, unfortunately, one of the world’s
best-kept secrets. Indisputable studies have concluded that there are 2.5
million defensive uses of firearms every year. Most defensive gun uses do not
even involve the discharging of a weapon. Simply displaying the firearm is
often enough to ward off an attacker, with less than 3% of these instances
ending in the wounding or killing of an assailant. By looking at the number of
senseless deaths that guns prevent, it is obvious that the greater good is
being served by having armed citizens.

In 1987, however, Florida
enacted a uniform concealed-carry law which mandates that county authorities
issue a permit to anyone who satisfies certain objective criteria. The law
requires that a permit be issued to any applicant who is a resident, at least
twenty-one years of age, has no criminal record, no record of alcohol or drug
abuse, no history of mental illness, and provides evidence of having
satisfactorily completed a firearms safety course offered by the NRA or other
competent instructor. The applicant must provide a set of fingerprints, after
which the authorities make a background check. The permit must be issued or
denied within ninety days, is valid throughout the state, and must be renewed
every three years, which provides authorities a regular means of reevaluating
whether the permit holder still qualifies.

Passage of this legislation was vehemently opposed
by HCI and the media. The law, they said, would lead to citizens shooting each
other over everyday disputes involving fender benders, impolite behavior, and
other slights to their dignity. Terms like " Florida ,
the Gunshine State " and "Dodge City
East" were coined to suggest that the state, and those seeking passage of
the law, were encouraging individuals to act as judge, jury, and executioner in
a "Death Wish" society.

No HCI campaign more clearly demonstrates the
elitist beliefs underlying the campaign to eradicate gun ownership. Given the
qualifications required of permit holders, HCI and the media can only believe
that common, law-abiding citizens are seething cauldrons of homicidal rage,
ready to kill to avenge any slight to their dignity, eager to seek out and
summarily execute the lawless. Only lack of immediate access to a gun restrains
them and prevents the blood from flowing in the streets. They are so mentally
and morally deficient that they would mistake a permit to carry a weapon in
self-defense as a state-sanctioned license to kill at will.

Did the dire predictions come true? Despite the
fact that Miami and Dade
County have severe problems with the
drug trade, the homicide rate fell in Florida
following enactment of this law, as it did in Oregon following enactment of similar
legislation there. There are, in addition, several documented cases of new
permit holders successfully using their weapons to defend themselves.
Information from the Florida Department of State shows that, from the beginning
of the program in 1987 through June 1993, 160,823 permits have been issued, and
only 530, or about 0.33 percent of the applicants, have been denied a permit
for failure to satisfy the criteria, indicating that the law is benefitting
those whom it was intended to benefit -- the law-abiding. Only 16 permits, less
than 1/100th of 1 percent, have been revoked due to the post-issuance
commission of a crime involving a firearm.

The Florida
legislation has been used as a model for legislation adopted by Oregon , Idaho , Montana , and Mississippi .
There are, in addition, seven other states ( Maine ,
North and South Dakota , Utah ,
Washington , West Virginia ,
and, with the exception of cities with a population in excess of 1 million, Pennsylvania ) which
provide that concealed-carry permits must be issued to law-abiding citizens who
satisfy various objective criteria. Finally, no permit is required at all in Vermont . Altogether,
then, there are thirteen states in which law-abiding citizens who wish to carry
arms to defend themselves may do so. While no one appears to have compiled the
statistics from all of these jurisdictions, there is certainly an ample data
base for those seeking the truth about the trustworthiness of law-abiding
citizens who carry firearms.