Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

The VPC (Violence Policy Center) has an ongoing tally of the number of people murdered by concealed carry permit holders. We all justify our cause in our minds, but lets give some facts and arguments as to why there article is not convincing. I.e. what facts are applicable if I were explaining to someone who was uninformed.

First and foremost, let me stress: Lord bless those who have suffered these hardships and losses. I don't mean to undermine the severity of those mentioned on the VPC site, but I do wish to confront the VPC arguments.

VPC currently has 175 people dead from CHP holders. If you read below their tally, they mention

VPC wrote:The current tally of killings committed by concealed handgun permit holders identified through news accounts from May 2007 to the present...Any concealed handgun permit holders who are eventually acquitted of their alleged crimes are not included in the tallies maintained on the site although the facts surrounding the shooting are detailed.

Now they have 108 pages of cases (one case per page). Only several include multiple shootings. Several were known to be acquitted. They are also including suicides in the tally. Most importantly, which I believe greatly flaws their evidence, is that they rely on news accounts! For those that know anything about shooting, it is quite often that the media bamboozles gun terminology, gun facts, etc. But, wait... Most states do not make CHP/CCW holders names public. So, they cannot look up this information. Instead it appears that VPC relies on the media to determine who has/had a permit to carry. For the same reason, the media would have trouble discovering such.

See Pierce's argument which portrays CHP/CCW permit holders (assuming all of VPC's cases as legit) as committing murder at less than 1/10 the general American citizen.

So, can we build some more evidence to say that
CHP/CCW permit holders are far less likely to commit murder than the average American?

This has been done before. The problem is that the states don't track it or at least not in this specificity. As you noted they purposefully skew the numbers by including people acquitted, waiting for trial, suicides, etc. The news stories report the sensationalism, but rarely follow up on this stuff. So while it might be a justified homicide, they don't report that because when it happens they report the gun shooting. Rarely are the exact charges and such available at the time of printing. Often no one is ever charged.

Using the numbers here, which are old: http://blogostuff.blogspot.com/2004/12/ ... carry.html

There are at least 3 million permit holders or 1 in 100 Americans approx. The numbers of permit holders are actually higher than that. Since they are recording over 3 years of "data," that works out to be:

175 "killings" / 3 = 58.3 killings/year

Since there are at least 3 million permit holders the "VPC murder rate" for permit holders is: 58.3 / 3 million = 0.001943%

or a more standard way of looking at it is homicides per 100k people: 58.3 / 3 million * 100,000 = 1.943
According to this, the homicide rate for the US is (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_t ... s#Homicide): 5.4

Thus, even giving every benefit to the VPC and even biasing the numbers in their favor, a CC permit holder is 2.78x less likely to commit a homicide than a regular citizen. (5.4 / 1.943) I should note that when calculating the homicide rate they use the whole population base (approx. 300M), while CC holders must be 21 to even apply. While there is a lot of gang violence under 21, I think there are a lot more non-gang members under 21. This should increase the corrected homicide rate for the average population so that a CC permit holder is actually less likely than 2.78x to commit a homicide.

Throw out the VPC slanted numbers, find a corrected homicide rate that doesn't include your infant going an a killing spree and CC permit holders should easily be an order of magnitude less likely to commit a homicide than the general population.

There is one flaw to all of this though, antis don't care about facts or truth or philosophy or the founders or our form of government or rights unless they can pervert it to make guns look bad. You can't argue with "I don't like them" or "someone could do something wrong sometime."

People are often the weakest link in any system but ignoring that we still have not found a way to design a fail proof system of any kind.

These people are another group of lie to fit the sutuation types that should be ignored and not given audience to their nonsense. Along with SEIU, NAACP, The Brady Campaign, SPLC and a host of others the country would be better off without their distorted views on guns,race, hate and Gos only knows what else. As noted they don';t care about the truth,, Only how they can pervert it to their best interests while hoping that the sheeples/peoples don't look for the truth in it.

gunderwood wrote:Using the numbers here, which are old: http://blogostuff.blogspot.com/2004/12/ ... carry.html
...
There is one flaw to all of this though, antis don't care about facts or truth or philosophy or the founders or our form of government or rights unless they can pervert it to make guns look bad. You can't argue with "I don't like them" or "someone could do something wrong sometime."

Actually in the link to Pierce's argument, he estimates 6 million permit holders in U.S. Note that FL alone has issued 1.6 million since their concealed carry laws went into effect (although this is one of the most popular permits). This would further strengthen your argument for permit holders being 2*2.78 = 5.56 times less likely.

True about the flaw. People often use their feelings in regards to this issue. Moreover, they never really discuss lives saved, crimes prevented, etc. by permit holders or the average gun owner. If the VPC was concerned about truth, then they would seek these facts, too.

@VBshooter, I agree with ignoring the VPC results (b/c they are bogus), but I like to argue against their claims and expose their faults. John Lott is cognoscente in this area; I love reading his articles about these issues. Moreover, myself being in the biased academic world of professors, I have a great need for facts to help the truth come to light against the anti-gunners I come in contact with (just about) daily.

All in all, I'd rather be at the range. But, when I am not I don't mind exposing the truth.

baz wrote:

gunderwood wrote:Using the numbers here, which are old: http://blogostuff.blogspot.com/2004/12/ ... carry.html
...
There is one flaw to all of this though, antis don't care about facts or truth or philosophy or the founders or our form of government or rights unless they can pervert it to make guns look bad. You can't argue with "I don't like them" or "someone could do something wrong sometime."

Actually in the link to Pierce's argument, he estimates 6 million permit holders in U.S. Note that FL alone has issued 1.6 million since their concealed carry laws went into effect (although this is one of the most popular permits). This would further strengthen your argument for permit holders being 2*2.78 = 5.56 times less likely.

True about the flaw. People often use their feelings in regards to this issue. Moreover, they never really discuss lives saved, crimes prevented, etc. by permit holders or the average gun owner. If the VPC was concerned about truth, then they would seek these facts, too.

5.56 eh?

Seems to me that the difference between a average citizen and a CC holder is an AR15.



/my logic is still better than the antis!

gunderwood wrote:5.56 eh?

Seems to me that the difference between a average citizen and a CC holder is an AR15.

was waiting for that one

I have a much more detailed discussion of the numbers in the third edition of More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, 2010), but people might find this discussion of Florida helpful.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/06/ ... -shooting/

VPC has about reached zombie org status. No one listens to them anymore, no one gives them money. Josh does his no-budget Google "studies" and whines for attention.

VPC and Brady are failed organizations. The new hotness is MAIG.

Diomed wrote:VPC has about reached zombie org status. No one listens to them anymore, no one gives them money. Josh does his no-budget Google "studies" and whines for attention.

VPC and Brady are failed organizations. The new hotness is MAIG.

IMO the biggest reason MAIG is such a big success is bloomberg the twits money and the derived power from that money and his willingness to spend great amounts of it to get his way. Some of these mayors obviously want to position themselves to ride his coattails...think about it...he spent over $100M compared to his opponents $10M in the last mayoral election.

zephyp wrote:IMO the biggest reason MAIG is such a big success is bloomberg the twits money and the derived power from that money and his willingness to spend great amounts of it to get his way. Some of these mayors obviously want to position themselves to ride his coattails...think about it...he spent over $100M compared to his opponents $10M in the last mayoral election.

While Bloomberg's money is an important factor, MAIG's real threat comes from the fact that it represents a new strategy on the part of the gun control movement. Instead of an ivory-tower think tank-style approach, which worked only when they controlled the media, they are switching to a more astroturf style based in enticing elected officals at the local level into becoming public supporters, and then using that "local support" to push gun control at the local and state levels.

Where VPC and the Bradys focused more at the national level, MAIG aims more at the state and local levels - meaning we have to devote more resources to putting out a bunch of small fires versus one big one. And we have to win everywhere every time, they only have to win in each place once.

And here in Virginia, we seem to be winning that battle.

Now, let's continue to win that battle and take Mr. Saslaw out of the VA Senate Majority Leader seat, eh?

And take the whole bunch of his little elves too,The group from the killer hit squad that didn't even have the decency to allow the bills a fair vote while they hung out in the hall and allowed their proxy to handle the situation come to mind. If it had been one of my Senators I would be doing all I could to hand him his ass on election day and send him/her out the door for good. We got a royal screwing due to that committee and need to amend that situation ASAP.

VBshooter wrote:And take the whole bunch of his little elves too,The group from the killer hit squad that didn't even have the decency to allow the bills a fair vote while they hung out in the hall and allowed their proxy to handle the situation come to mind. If it had been one of my Senators I would be doing all I could to hand him his ass on election day and send him/her out the door for good. We got a royal screwing due to that committee and need to amend that situation ASAP.

Once upon a time the great citizens of Virginia would have probably descended in mass upon the capitol building with pitchforks, tar, and feathers...I'm guessing that would have probably worked and the elite elect would have realized the error of their ways...we of course cannot do that today.

Yeah but it'd be freakin great if we did!!!!!!!!!!!! Would definitely get some attention!! Should make sure we bring a hangmans noose for effect...

zephyp wrote:

VBshooter wrote:And take the whole bunch of his little elves too,The group from the killer hit squad that didn't even have the decency to allow the bills a fair vote while they hung out in the hall and allowed their proxy to handle the situation come to mind. If it had been one of my Senators I would be doing all I could to hand him his ass on election day and send him/her out the door for good. We got a royal screwing due to that committee and need to amend that situation ASAP.

Once upon a time the great citizens of Virginia would have probably descended in mass upon the capitol building with pitchforks, tar, and feathers...I'm guessing that would have probably worked and the elite elect would have realized the error of their ways...we of course cannot do that today.

Ya, didn't John Adams have this problem when he was president? Thought it was about supporting the French revolution.

VBshooter wrote:Yeah but it'd be freakin great if we did!!!!!!!!!!!! Would definitely get some attention!! Should make sure we bring a hangmans noose for effect...

I'm not speaking of doing anything for effect. Once upon a time when the people marched on city hall the only effect they were after were results...usually with the offending parties leaving town...today, we the people are considered the offending parties...

OK, I guess we can do without the noose, I got dibs on bringing the feathers !!

Killin' Chickens, Scarin' politicians. Va Gun Forum.

Fixed it for the media...with their revenues so low I don't want them to have to work too hard.

Reverenddel wrote:Killin' Chickens, Scarin' politicians. Va Militia Forum.