With yesterday's shooting in a Brooklyn subway station coming fast on the heels of last week's shooting in Sacramento, California, gun control is once again the subject of President Joe Biden, and for good reason — it changes the subject of the train wreck he's created in America.
But what seems to be ignored is defensive gun use — the primary rationale behind the Second Amendment.
There's no question but that gun violence is a serious issue. The CDC reported that 45,222 people died from gun-related injuries in the United States in 2020, the most recent year for which data is available.
Of that number, the majority (24,292), were suicides, accounting for 54%. Another 43% (19,384) were murders and 3% were listed as "other." They include unintentional shootings (535), shootings involving law enforcement (611) and those under undetermined circumstances (400).
These are sobering statistics, and don't include the injuries from gunshot wounds. In 2010, for example, the CDC reported that more than 105,000 people were either injured or killed in the United States as the result of a firearm-related incident
Following yesterday's shooting, Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called for "No more mass shootings. No more disrupting lives. No more creating heartbreak for people just trying to live their lives as normal New Yorkers. It has to end, and it has to end now."
She added: 'We're sick and tired of reading headlines about crime whether it's mass shootings, the loss of a teenage girl or a 13-year-old. It has to stop. I'm committing the full resources of our state to fight the surge of crime."
But the CDC didn't just address offensive gun deaths or injuries. As a result of its 2013 $10 million study, it found that defensive gun use was, by far, a more important component of the gun possession equation.
It found that "almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year."
It's impossible to come up with a precise figure, because not all instances of defensive gun use are reported. In fact, not all result in a gun's discharge. Simply showing the weapon may be enough to prevent a crime.
But even assuming the smaller of the two figures (500,000), that's nearly five defensive gun use events for every single instance of offensive gun use.
The Heritage Foundation provides a clever interactive map, indicating the dates and places of reported instances of defensive gun use.
As a result of yesterday's attack, 10 passengers were shot — five receiving serious injuries — and at least another 18 were injured by other means.
That's at least 28 people who were on the scene, innocently going about their business when the shooting started. What if just one of those 28 passengers possessed a concealed carry permit, was adequately trained in defensive gun use, and was carrying a weapon at the time of the incident?
The results may have been dramatically different — and not good for the perpetrator.
But there's a reason that that would have been highly unlikely. New York, like California, the locale of last week's shooting, is a "may issue" concealed carry state.
That means that once an applicant has jumped through all the hoops, submitted all the proper documentation such as a clean background check and proof of training, the state "may issue" the permit. It's usually dependent upon something subjective, such as whether the state believes the applicant "needs" a permit.
Most states, such as Florida and Michigan, are "shall issue" states, meaning that once the applicant has passed the background check and submitted proof of training, the state "shall issue" the permit — no ifs, ands, or buts.
Whether "may issue" concealed carry laws violate the Second Amendment's fundamental right to "keep and bear arms" (emphasis added) is before the Supreme Court. It heard oral arguments on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen in November, and a decision is expected in the summer.
If the court rules for the appellants, that may put an end to all "may issue" state permit laws, and could conceivably result in a sharp decline in senseless shootings.
The only unfortunate result of the decision would be that we'd have to listen to anti-gun Democrats like Biden and Hochul howl about the injustice of it all. But that could be fun too.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to BizPac Review and Liberty Unyielding. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter who can often be found honing his skills at the range. Read Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
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