Last week our friend Ladd Everitt published an op-ed in The New York Post where he called on Bill DeBlasio to change a New York City gun-control law, the Sullivan law, that has been in effect since 1912. Basically, what this law does is to make it very difficult for a New York City resident to walk around with a gun. Additionally, it also prohibits transporting a handgun for which a city resident has a license outside of the city itself. For that matter, a resident of any other county in New York State outside of the five counties within the Big Apple, can’t bring a licensed handgun into the city.

              The law is being challenged by some pro-gun group which believes that if someone happens to own a home both within the city as well as another home somewhere else in the state, that it’s a violation of 2^nd-Amendment ‘rights’ to require said individual to have gun licenses issued by both jurisdictions in order to move from one location to another with said gun. After all, the same driver’s license can be used both in Da City and the rest of the state. How come we can’t enjoy the same ‘equal protection under laws’ when it comes to transporting our guns?

              For reasons that we will only learn if and when the SCOTUS publishes an opinion on this case next year, the great fear being bandied about in Gun-control Nation is that the High Court will use this case to strike down various state and local concealed-carry laws (CCW) and pave the way for one, national CCW that will let every armed American wander around anywhere he wants to go toting his gun.

              I happen to believe that the gun violence prevention (GVP) movement’s opposition to national CCW is correct. I also happen to believe, however, that the GVP opposition to CCW is based on arguments which have little or no validity at all. So before you get all hot and bothered that Mike the Gun Guy™ is once again showing his true colors as an NRA flack, read on.

              The opposition to CCW is based on the wholly-unsupported claim that CCW increases the possibility that gun violence rates will go up. Now you can always find an example of someone shooting someone else with a legal concealed weapon – the murder of  Trayvon Martin being perhaps the most notorious case in point. But one example is simply one example, okay?

              Our friends at the Violence Policy Center (VPC) issue an annual report on the number of times that folks with CCW kill someone by using a gun. In fact, of the 722 documented cases analyzed by the VPC between 2007 and 2017, it turns out that 45% were either non-criminal suicides or unintentional shootings.  In other words, over this eleven-year span, fatal injuries committed by CCW-holders averaged less than 40 per year. This country finds itself awash in intentional gun assaults which rack up more than 14,000 homicides a year, and the 40 or so people killed by CCW-holders constitutes a threat to public health?

              The reason I am opposed to national concealed-carry is the same reason I am opposed to all local or state-level CCW, namely, that I have yet to see a single jurisdiction granting CCW that actually imposes any kind of test to determine whether the CCW-recipient actually knows how to use a gun. Sorry, but sitting in a stuffy room, listening to some old guy drone on for a couple of hours about the ‘three rules of handgun safety’ and then firing a few shots at a fixed target doesn’t constitute any kind of ‘training’ at all. And for all the difficulty imposed by New York City to get a CCW license, there’s no training requirement whatsoever. Read: none.

              My problem with CCW is that it’s just another marketing scam to make guns as normal and useful as a droid. But guns aren’t just some household or business convenience. Guns are designed to kill. Get it?