Dr. John Lott presenting his case for concealed carry on campus at 6:00 PM on the 6th floor of 322 E. Front Street, at the University of Idaho Law School in Boise.
UPDATE: Dr. Lott gave a very well-done presentation about the ineffectiveness of restrictive gun control laws, not just at the campus level, but at the city and nation level. He presented a variety of ways of examining what happened to murder rates in Chicago and D.C. when their handgun freeze laws went into effect, and similarly in Jamaica, Republic of Ireland, and Great Britain. (Hint: murder rates rose, sometimes dramatically, as in Jamaica, but in no case has he found that murder rates fell.) Even more interestingly, both murder and all violent crime rates fell in Chicago and D.C. after their handgun ban laws were repealed, and often by quite astonishing amounts.
If you have been following Washington Times' reporter Emily Miller's efforts to buy a handgun in D.C., you know that for practical purposes, legally buying a handgun there is still extremely difficult. One aspect of the Heller decision that Dr. Lott was careful to point out was that while it struck down D.C.'s handgun ban, the part of the decision that probably had more effect was that it also struck down D.C.'s ban on having loaded firearms in one's home. D.C. had actually charged people with violating this law for shooting criminals forcing entry, because clearly, the victims already had their guns loaded when the criminal attack started. This change probably had more effect on the decline in violent crime rates--especially the decline in armed robberies with guns, which fell much more dramatically than the decline in armed robberies without guns.
It was not a large crowd that showed up, although I was pleased that two members of the Idaho legislature were present: Rep. Shirley Ringo (D-Moscow) and Senator Monty Pearce (R-New Plymouth) were present. Ringo, who voted against the carry on campus bill last time, was expected to comment on Dr. Lott's presentation, but she left before he finished. The legislature is in session, and she may well have had some important meeting to attend, so I would not put too much significance to her failing to stick around.
All in all, it was a chance to meet faculty from Boise State who also were lobbying the legislature for a reform of the current overly broad ban, so I guess that was worthwhile.
One aspect of the Heller decision that Dr. Lott was careful to point out was that while it struck down D.C.'s handgun ban, the part of the decision that probably had more effect was that it also struck down D.C.'s ban on having loaded firearms in one's home.
ReplyDeleteEven worse is that they had to be disassembled. Although I'll note I got the impression that D.C. juries were frequently sympathetic to "clean shoot" self-defense cases in the home;, in the dozen or so years I was in the metro area I read about several acquittals.