UK think tank thinking… If we all carried a gun

I do not advocate everyone carry a self defense weapon. Some may be more comfortable carrying than others, some have time to train, others do not. One thing is for certain, states and cities that allow citizens to carry self defense weapons do have less crime for the simple fact that criminals prefer target rich environments and victims who have fewer options to protect themselves and their family.

Richard Munday over at the Times Online (UK) has a comment piece that discusses the Mumbai attack that killed or wounded 500, along with historical examples from Britain and the United States concerning the right to carry.

Munday’s piece, entitled Think tank: If each of us carried a gun… we could combat terrorism, is a very good read.

The firearms massacres that have periodically caused shock and horror around the world have been dwarfed by the Mumbai shootings, in which a handful of gunmen left some 500 people killed or wounded.

For anybody who still believed in it, the Mumbai shootings exposed the myth of “gun control”. India had some of the strictest firearms laws in the world, going back to the Indian Arms Act of 1878, by which Britain had sought to prevent a recurrence of the Indian Mutiny. …

In the past two decades the enactment of “right to carry” legislation in the majority of states, and the issue of permits for the carrying of concealed firearms to citizens of good repute, has brought a radical change. Opponents of the right to bear arms predicted that right to carry would cause blood to flow in the streets, but the reverse has been true: violent crime in America has plummeted.

There are exceptions: Virginia Tech, the site of the 2007 massacre of 32 people, was one local “gun-free zone” that forbade the bearing of arms even to those with a licence to carry.

Read the entire article.

Why do some choose to train and carry a self defense weapon? Many answer by reminding us that we can’t carry a cop with us at all times, but even when police are present they may be hamstrung to help you; just like the officers at the train station in Mumbai.