Six years after new rules made it much easier to get a license to carry concealed weapons, the number of Michiganders legally packing heat has increased more than six-fold.
But dire predictions about increased violence and bloodshed have largely gone unfulfilled, according to law enforcement officials and, to the extent they can be measured, crime statistics.
The incidence of violent crime in Michigan in the six years since the law went into effect has been, on average, below the rate of the previous six years. The overall incidence of death from firearms, including suicide and accidents, also has declined.
I love stories like this. The anti-gun crowd reasons that with more guns there will be more violence and killing; to them, the firearm inspires illegal behavior.
Stories like this show instead that arming law abiding people does not increase crime; the inanimate object does not whisper to them in the night to go an a killing spree.
Given that, I'm at a loss to explain the anti-gun mindset except as an emotional response to inanimate objects. Which, frankly, seems irrational.
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