Even Though There Are More Good Guys in Arizona, The Bad Guys Are Winning

March 4, 2024

mikethegunguy Blogs , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Everyone is aware of the NRA’s argument that the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. They’ve been saying it for years, but they began screaming it out from the rooftops after Sandy Hook. And even though we seem to keep hearing about good guys who shoot other good guys, like the murder of Chad Oulson in a Florida movie theater by the ex-cop Curtis Reeves, such incidents are dismissed by the pro-gun crowd as aberrations or mistakes that should have no bearing on whether every good guy in America should be walking around with a gun.

Jan Brewer

Jan Brewer

But a group of ER and Trauma physicians have just released a report on the effect of a 2010 law in Arizona which basically made it a lot easier for all those good guys in the Grand Canyon State to walk around with a gun. Prior to 2010, gun ownership in Arizona did not involve state or local approval, and guns could be privately transferred without a background check. But carrying a concealed weapon in Arizona did require a police-issued permit, and part of the process also involved required proficiency training in how to use the gun.

The new law, SB-1108, was signed by Governor Brewer and went into effect in 2010. The law abolished the permit requirement for carrying a concealed weapon and also abolished the necessity to even prove that you knew anything about how to operate the gun. And since Arizonans are free to sell or transfer handguns privately without a background check, this means that virtually anyone regardless of their legal or proficiency background can join up with the good guys and carry a gun.

Talk about fulfilling the fondest wishes of the NRA. Finally people like John Lott, Gary Kleck and all the other NRA sycophants who have been telling us for twenty years that more guns equals less crime have an opportunity to prove that what they have been saying is really true. But there’s only one little problem. The research that was just published shows that the good guys with those guns haven’t been doing a very good job of protecting us from crime.

The researchers looked at gun injuries and deaths in Tucson over the four-year period between 2008 and 2012, in order to compare gun violence for the same time-period before and after SB-1108 was passed. And what they found was that “gun-related injuries and deaths increased in southern Arizona, mostly owing to an increase in gun-related homicides.” This information agrees with numerous studies over the years that correlate gun violence with the presence of guns, but those studies rely on data about gun ownership in general, not whether there exists a concordance between gun violence and guns that are being toted around concealed.

Now it turns out that the overall homicide rate went down in Tucson between 2010 and 2012, which seems to support the NRA’s position about the value of good guys having more guns. But there’s only one little problem: all the other categories of violent crime in Tucson went up and they didn’t go up by just a little bit. According to the FBI, the robbery rate went up 13%, aggravated assault increased 11%, and the overall violent crime rate in those two years also increased by 13%. Statewide, violent crime went up only 4%, but it sure didn’t go down.

So where are all those good guys with guns who can now walk around cities like Tucson and protect its citizens from any bad guy carrying a gun? Arizona is the first state that has removed virtually all legal and training requirements for people who want to protect themselves and others with a gun. So far it doesn’t look like the good guys are up to the task.

 

The Florida Movie Shooting: Why Back Down if You Have A Gun?

January 16, 2025

mikethegunguy Blogs, Guns , , , , , , 5 Comments

This past Monday, a retired, 71 year-old Tampa policeman named Curtis Reeves, shot and killed another, younger man in a movie theater evidently because his victim would not stop texting during the Coming Attractions and in the argument which then ensued, hurled an “unknown object” at the cop which may have been deadly weapon known as a bag of popcorn. The victim, Chad Oulson, was sitting in the row in front of Reeves and was not making any effort to climb over the seat but a well-aimed bag of popcorn can, as is well known, be a dangerous thing.

theater

According to the FBI, there were 260 justifiable homicides committed by civilians in 2011, of which guns were used 75% of the time. There were also 12,664 murders in 2011, of which roughly 8,800 were committed with guns. Of the 12,664 felony homicides, about half started as arguments and then things got out of control. Assuming that the ratio of murders to gun use stayed constant, between 3,000 and 4,000 gun murders occurred in 2011 that were no different from what happened in a Florida movie theater; a little yelling back and forth followed by a few fuck you’s, and then out comes the gun.

In this recent case, the shooter first complained to the theater management but nothing was done. But the point is he knew there were other options which suddenly turned into non-options as the argument got out of hand. The question that needs to be asked is what would Reeves had done if he hadn’t been armed with a gun? His victim was younger, bigger and stronger. Without a gun Reeves would have had no choice but to avoid a confrontation by walking away from the scene.

The next time that Wayne LaPierre or John Lott go on television to tell us how unsafe we are in gun-free zones, someone should ask them what they would have done had they been inside the theater where this tragic event took place. Would they have walked over during the argument and intervened? Would they have waited until Reeves pulled his weapon and then tried to shoot him down just in case the shooting of Oulson was the beginning of a rampage that had to be brought to an end? I’m not asking these questions to be silly. I’m asking them because this is what really happens when someone believes they can protect everyone around them because they are carrying a gun.

The problem with thinking of guns as defensive weapons is that the argument cuts both ways. The guy who walks around carrying a gun may think he’s protecting himself and others against crime, but he also knows that if he gets into an argument he doesn’t have to back down. I find it interesting that proponents of defensive gun use cite all kinds of public surveys in which people are asked whether the fact that they were carrying a gun kept a crime from taking place. But I haven’t seen any surveys where they interview guys in prison who pulled out a gun and shot someone because it was the “only” way they could settle an argument on favorable terms.

Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe when it comes out that the bag of popcorn could have caused serious or fatal damage to Reeves that he’ll be lionized by the NRA as another ‘good guy with a gun.’ And maybe the people all over America who sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to George Zimmerman can now send their hard-earned money to Curtis Reeves because he really didn’t so anything wrong.

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