ONCE OPPOSED, TOP COP NOW SUPPORTS ARMED CITIZENRY AS STUDY SHOWS MURDER RATES LOWER WHERE CONCEALED WEAPONS ALLOWED

Detroit’s chief of police now believes that citizens who have concealed weapons permits help deter crime

It would be even better if he were to drop his opposition to the ownership of so called assault weapons.

DETROIT POLICE CHIEF: ARMED CITIZENS DETER CRIME
By Sandy Fitzgerald

Newsmax
January 4, 2014

Detroit Police Chief James Craig has an idea for fighting crime — arm more citizens.

"When we look at the good community members who have concealed weapons permits, the likelihood they’ll shoot is based on a lack of confidence in this police department,” said the chief at a press conference this week, The Detroit News reports.

The chief said he believes the financially crippled city's residents are feeling safer and violent crime dropped seven percent in 2013. But Craig said that he's changed his mind over the years over whether citizens should be armed.

He said that when he was on the Los Angeles police force for 28 years, California law made it difficult to get a concealed weapon permit. However, when he became police chief in Portland, Me., in 2009 he changed his mind.

"I got to Maine, where they give out lots of CCWs (carrying concealed weapon permits), and I had a stack of CCW permits I was denying; that was my orientation," Craig said. "I changed my orientation real quick. Maine is one of the safest places in America. Clearly, suspects knew that good Americans were armed.”

Craig said on a radio show in mid-December that there are a number of people in Detroit with concealed pistol licenses (CPL), and he thinks it's a deterrent to crime.

"Good Americans with CPLs translates into crime reduction," said Craig. "I learned that real quick in the state of Maine.”

Craig's stance is unusual for a police chief, but Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police Director Robert Stevenson said that there are many police officers who have no problem when law-abiding citizens have guns, but they usually try to stay out of those discussions.

Craig's opinion, though, does not stretch to assault weapons, which he has said should be banned. He's also called for tight restrictions for online ammunition sales, to regulate high-capacity magazines, and for background checks for gun sales.

There were 15 justifiable homicides in Detroit in 2013, down from 25 in 2012, the Detroit News reports. In most of those cases, citizens were defending themselves by killing criminals.
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STUDY: MURDER RATES LOWER WHERE CONCEALED WEAPONS ALLOWED
By Cathy Burke

Newsmax
January 2, 2013

A recent study showing a reverse correlation between concealed weapons and murder rates has renewed the contentious national debate about the effect of gun controls on violent crime.

Reason magazine reported last week on economist Mark Gius' study of gun controls, published in the journal Applied Economics Letters showing states with restrictions on concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states.

The study looked at the effects on murder rates of both state-level assault weapons bans and concealed weapons restrictions from 1980 to 2009.

Assault weapons bans, it found, didn't significantly affect murder rates at the state level.

The findings come as A 2007 study has been also getting a new look from those who dispute gun control efforts aimed at stemming gun violence, Boston magazine reported last summer.

In research first published in Harvard’s Journal of Public Law and Policy, criminologists Don Kates and Gary Mauser looked at the correlation between gun laws and death rates.

“International evidence and comparisons have long been offered as proof of the mantra that more guns mean more deaths and that fewer guns, therefore, mean fewer deaths," the pair wrote in their introduction. "Unfortunately, such discussions [have] all too often been afflicted by misconceptions and factual error and focus on comparisons that are unrepresentative."

The pair found "correlations that nations with stringent gun controls tend to have much higher murder rates than nations that allow guns.”

Many Americans appear to believe just that, Reason noted, citing a Dec. 12, 2013, poll showing 63 percent of Americans were unconvinced tighter restrictions on buying and owning guns will be effective.