Strikes me, the Post has latched onto the latest "research" specifically intended to fuel anti-gun hysteria.
The Post's story delves into a recent study by Stanford law professor John Donohue:
The totality of the evidence based on educated judgments about the best statistical models suggests that right-to-carry laws are associated with substantially higher rates" of aggravated assault, robbery, rape and murder, Donohue said in an interview with the Stanford Report. The evidence suggests that right-to-carry laws are associated with an 8 percent increase in the incidence of aggravated assault, according to Donohue. He says this number is likely a floor, and that some statistical methods show an increase of 33 percent in aggravated assaults involving a firearm after the passage of right-to-carry laws.So, Donohue's study wants you to believe more concealed carry is associated with higher rates of aggravated assault, robbery, rape and murder, But based on the Post's account, it doesn't tell us how many aggravated assaults, robberies, rapes and murders are committed by lawful carriers.
Very seldom is a gun crime committed by someone who has passed a background check to become a lawful carrier (I can't recall a single mass shooting where the perp had a carry permit).
Donohue's research may only show law abiding folk are "gunning up" to meet an escalating threat from adherents of today's thug culture. Or to counter the kind of violent crimes once associated with gang controlled pockets of Central America or Mexico, but now becoming more common here, imported by criminal illegal immigrants.
Best I can tell, there's no evidence here, or anywhere, that more guns, when lawfully possessed and legally carried, equate to more crime. But more guns in the right hands do help balance the scales, putting an effective means of self defense within reach when a law abiding carrier becomes the intended target of a violent crime.
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