Good news for Ohio

[unixronin]

Word has it the Ohio legislature just passed, by a large margin, the state's first CCW bill.  The governor is expected to veto it, and the legislature is confident they have enough votes to override his veto.

The governor's objection?  He wanted journalists to have access to the name and address of every CCW permit holder in the state, in the full knowledge that they intended to publish the list.  How stupid can you get?

Fortunately, it seems the legislature is going to protect Ohioans from their governor's lack of common sense.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I've seen these ... as far as I've seen, they're the sole dissenting voices. Lott's study is also not the only study to find such a result. I haven't read the entire Ayres-Donahue paper, I'll freely concede; I'm neither a lawyer nor a statistician, and not qualified to judge the strength of their objections.

Studies aside, what can be said is that the rivers of blood in the streets prophecied by organizations like HCI and the Violence policy Center have consistently failed to materialize.

(On the other, I'm reminded of a bumper-sticker I saw once, reading "D.A.R.E to keep the CIA off drugs"...)

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

You and I may have to agree to disagree on this. My personal feeling is that if we have to pack concealed weapons to be safe on the streets, we have problems that are not going to be solved by carrying weapons.

I have a sneaking hunch that in the real world the effects of CCW laws are discernible only to highly-trained statisticians, and even they disagree. Neither rivers of blood, as you said, nor perceptibly-safer streets. Probably the most obvious effects are on the careers of politicians, op-ed writers, and professional activists.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I guess we will. My personal feeling is that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons after a background check and, in many states, mandatory training, at worst appears to do no harm.

As for the latter, it's certainly inarguable that numerous politicians have ridden gun-control into elected office (and, frankly, that many of them are blatant hypocrites about it when it comes around to what they are allowed to do).