Gongwer: Delay in Enacting CCW Bill Allows Crime To Flourish, Report Says

Gongwer News Service
September 22, 2003

Hundreds of Ohioans who have been victims of violent criminal actions would not have suffered those attacks had the General Assembly enacted a law allowing people to carry concealed weapons, according to a report released Monday by backers of House-passed legislation that calls for an Ohio concealed-carry law.

The report, written for Ohioans For Concealed Carry (OFCC) by a University of Georgia professor, indicates that 400 such attacks since June would have been prevented if the law was in place.

Separately Monday, another organization presented experts who refuted the data used to reach the conclusions in the report. Those researchers, speaking on behalf of the Ohio State Chapter of the American Constitution Society, said information used in the report is misleading and unreliable.

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Regardless, OFCC President Jeff Garvas said the study makes it clear that people will be safer if a law is enacted. "The conclusion is common sense," he said. "Hundreds of criminal victimizations and deaths in Ohio are easily preventable by the defensive and deterrent effects of concealed carry legislation."

The document suggests that every month the bill sits in the legislature without final action, three murders, 18 rapes and 29 robberies occur. "In academic research literature, concealed carry laws are the only gun laws that frequently show reductions in crime," Report author David Mustard says.

Conversely, researchers from Ohio State University and the University of Illinois at Chicago panned the information produced by Mr. Mustard and John Lott, another researcher on the subject. Last term, Mr. Lott told legislative committees that violent crimes decline in states where such gun laws have become law.

But Michael Maltz, a UIC professor emeritus and Saul Cornell, a 2nd Amendment scholar at OSU that Mr. Lott's research is flawed. Mr. Maltz said data regarding crime statistics is incomplete. "You cannot draw any conclusions" from it, he said. He noted that Ohio already has lower gun violence rates than other states. "If we do nothing, we are ahead of the curve nationally." Mr. Lott was scheduled to discuss the issue at forum Monday on the Ohio University campus in Athens.

The concealed weapons issue has been before Ohio lawmakers for several years. This session's vehicle bill (HB 12) has been passed by the House and Senate. Leaders have yet to name conferees.

Commentary:
"Leaders" have not failed to name conferees. House Speaker Larry Householder named conferees the same day the bill passed in the Senate - June 18. Senate President Doug White is, according to media sources, "refusing" to name conferees.

As to Michael Maltz' comments:

Are we to accept then, that 40,000+ violent crimes and 400+ murders each year is acceptable level in our state?

Michael Maltz' own findings suggest concealed carry laws work to reduce crime. According to a recent editorial by John Lott, research, by Maltz (with David Olson at Loyola University) found that "when law-abiding citizens carried concealed handguns, criminals were much less likely to carry guns. In fact, they found gun murders fell by 20 percent. With fewer criminals carrying guns, police work is less dangerous. By contrast, while law-abiding permit-holders have come to the aid of police, they have never killed a police officer."

There are a host of academics whose research proves concealed carry laws reduce crime - some pre-date the Mustard-Lott work in 1997, and many have come since. Gark Kleck found this was the case way back in the 1980's. Joyce Lee Malcolm, Bruce L. Benson and Brent D. Mast, Carlisle E. Moody, Florenz Plassmann and T. Nicolaus Tideman, are among the more recent additions to the list of academics who have found that CCW reduces crime.

The anti-self-defense extremists have oft tried to find researchers to prove otherwise, but up until recently*, NO researcher was willing to claim the laws INCREASE crime. The most they could find were researchers who said the results were inconclusive.

*Who is John J. Donohue III? and Donohue lies to Dispatch readers.

For seven papers that provide evidence that concealed handguns laws reduce violent crime see:

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE/journal/contents/v44nS2.html
.