A
Decade of Packing Heat
ast month
Florida—and the nation—celebrated an
important anniversary. Ten years ago, that state
passed the country’s first right-to-carry
law. In 1987, Floridians who met reasonable
requirements were allowed to carry concealed
firearms in public. At the time, the gun grabbers
went nuts. They warned of bloody
violence—folks shooting each other over
fender benders and neighborhood basketball games.
Ten years later, the data is clear: of the
half-million folks authorized to carry a
concealed gun in Florida, point zero one eight
six percent used their guns for crimes. Some
bloodbath. But Florida wasn’t the only state
to allow citizens to actually exercise their
rights under the Second Amendment. Twenty-three
states, including our own, followed
Florida’s lead and allowed concealed-carry
permits. The results in Texas mirrored those in
Florida: of the over 110,000 Texans with the
right to carry, only 57 have been involved in
criminal incidents. Have concealed-carry laws cut
the crime rate? It’s hard to say. Many
states—including Florida—have
seen their crime rates decline after adopting
right-to-carry. Certainly, Nevada’s high
crime rate has not been checked by our
right-to-carry statute—yet. But getting into
the semantics of the laws’ effect on crime
misses the larger point: sane, non-criminal
adults should be allowed to carry a concealed
firearm. The Justice Department reports that 87
percent of violent crime occurs outside the home.
Right-to-carry laws enable hundreds of thousands
of Americans to protect themselves on the street.
And it’s not too much of a stretch to assume
that more and more criminals are thinking twice
before mugging pedestrians with noticeable bulges
in their jackets. From NPRI, you think about
that! u
