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Krebs Sees Concealed Carry Permits Slow from 2016 Peak

Secretary of State Shantel Krebs says applications for concealed weapons permits have declined from their 2016 peak. According to the Secretary’s bang-up website, after last year’s record-setting pace of 2,500 applications per month, this year she’s received 1,630 per month. The total number of active concealed pistol permits as of September 30 remains at a record 97,529. That means one angry shooter drawing a weapon in a room of 100 randomly selected South Dakotans could expect to face eleven carriers of concealed pistols.

We should watch Secretary Krebs’s numbers closely to see if the Las Vegas and Texas shootings in the past several weeks prompt a resurgence in concealed pistol permits as we lose our national nerve and decide it’s every shooter for himself. But remember: unarmed citizens stopping shooters outnumber non-cop good guys with guns stopping bad guys with guns, and more guns correlate overall with more violence:

…the net effect of allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns was an increase in violent crime, which essentially rose to about a 15 percent increase after 10 years of existence of the right-to-carry law.

…the single biggest effect seemed to be an increase in aggravated assaults. Now, that can be either altercations caused by the permit holder or because their guns are stolen and therefore made available to criminals. And also because increased right to carry does complicate the task for police and therefore sort of serves as a impediment to good policing. And the one thing we know is good policing is probably the single most important thing in curtailing crime.

…the FBI did a very intensive study of 160 mass shootings over the period from 2000 to 2013. And what they found was that over that period, in the 160 cases, there was only one incidence of a private citizen who was not security personnel or a police officer who effectively intervened in the mass shooting, and that individual was an active duty Marine. On the other hand, 22 unarmed citizens intervened to stop those mass shootings, typically when the individual was reloading. And so it gives you a sense of the relative effectiveness of relying on someone with a gun to intervene in an active shooting scenario [Stanford University law professor John Donohue, interviewed by Robert Siegel, “Does Increased Gun Ownership Help Decrease Crime?” NPR: All Things Considered, 2017.11.07].

All those extra concealed pistols sure aren’t helping South Dakota reduce meth arrests, which are up 32% this year.

Keep South Dakota safe: save your guns for the pheasants.

6 Comments

  1. mike from iowa 2017-11-09 07:15

    Gun sales declined precipitously when Drumpf and Putin were declared Czar and Czarina last November.

  2. jerry 2017-11-09 08:19

    Russian bots will increase the sales for the NRA and create more problems for South Dakota voters. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/11/putin-twitter-texas-shooting/#

    Marty Jackley has done nothing to protect South Dakota citizens from the continued attacks in social media outlets with not even an acknowledgment of them. If he cannot do his job as attorney general, how the hell could he be governor? Time to change the lead horse in Pierre with someone from a different herd.

  3. OldSarg 2017-11-09 19:19

    As the fear of the Hillary left and their failure to turn our home into a police state subsides and the majority are now armed the numbers naturally dropped. c’est la vie

  4. jerry 2017-11-09 19:25

    Dude, Hillary lost and had no control over your precious penis envy guns. Take your whine and have some cheese with it.

  5. leslie 2017-11-10 18:23

    dude, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, you have no legal remedy if you are hurt by a gun. In passing that law in 2005, Congress granted gun dealers and manufacturers legal immunity in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and every U.S. territory. No other industry receives this privilege: Firearms are the only consumer products that receive federal immunity from tort liability.

    an assault weapon marketed to civilians for its military-grade performance, was designed to shoot many people in a brief amount of time

    https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2017/11/the-nature-of-the-ar-15/545414/

  6. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-11-12 17:39

    Excuse me? Clinton pushed the police state? Did you not notice Trump telling police to rough us up and resuming the militarization of the police? Or Sessions authorizing seizure of cash and property from innocent people? People freaking out over government overreach should stop pointing their guns at their strawman-bogeymen and look at what is actually happening.

    All those guns didn’t stop the Russians from buying Facebook ads to run their nationwide election propaganda campaign. True patriots spend less time at the gun shop and firing range and more time in history and civics class.

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