A bill is being proposed in the Maine Legislature that would do away with the concealed carry permitting process. One person, whose opinion was published in the Portland Press Herald, gives a list of reasons why this bill shouldn’t happen. His reasons are seriously flawed. Voters should understand that. Here’s a look at some of this person’s claims:
1. “The current system recognizes that concealed guns are dangerous and can be easily used for criminal purposes.” This simply is not true. The current system has been put in place because of ignorance of facts, along with totalitarians who just can’t resist stealing the right of self-defense from others. This statement assumes that we are to believe that when guns are concealed on a person, the person is more apt to commit a criminal offense. What attention is given to any laws by someone wishing to carry out a criminal offense?
2. “Polling consistently shows that more than 80 percent of Mainers support laws that improve gun safety..” Whether that statistic is true or not, doesn’t matter. It has nothing to do with the proposed legislation. It is a matter of one’s opinion, rather than fact, as to whether Maine residents consider concealed carry a matter of gun safety. Mainers may support gun safety, but it is quite doubtful that anything approaching 80% would oppose this proposed bill.
3. “…carrying a gun openly tends to attract the attention of bank guards, convenience store cashiers, police officers on patrol and the rest of us who are trying to keep our distance from people who aren’t emotionally stable.” Seriously? Isn’t this nothing more than the revelation of a person who lives in emotional fear over the day to day? Who walks about in fear, “to keep our distance from people who aren’t emotionally stable?” I think they designed padded rooms specifically for that kind of behavior.
4. “More guns do not make us safer.” In fact they do. Repeatedly it has been shown that an armed citizenry is safer than an unarmed one. Consider violent crime rates in places like Chicago and Washington, D.C. where guns are banned from everyone except the elite chosen few.
5. “They [guns] regularly kill and injure their owners and their owners’ children, spouses and partners.” Guns don’t do anything. They just lay where they are placed. From this person’s perspective, it would seem better to demand a ban on people. People kill people.
6. “We require a license to drive a car, in order to ensure that drivers are responsible. The current concealed-weapon system has the same rationale.” The author here forgets one very important difference between driving a car and having a right to keep and bear arms. Driving is a privilege in which a person must earn it. Keeping and bearing arms is a right guaranteed under the Second Amendment and self-defense is a right given us from God.
7. “…it protects all of us from guns in the wrong hands – or pockets.” No, it does not. To state that somehow requiring a permit to carry a concealed weapon keeps guns out of the hands of criminals, who consequently can hurt a lot of people, is misleading and irresponsible. It must be stated again that criminals have no interest in laws, especially public safety laws, created in error to convince people it will stop crimes. It just isn’t the truth.
The author went out of his way to show that other states have laws similar to the current requirements for concealed carry in Maine, but failed to mention states like Alaska and nearby Vermont. Those two states do not require a permit to carry a handgun concealed. Do these states have a higher rate of crime?
