Chicago has tons of excuses for their murder problem. Having the most murders in the country is fine because with a littler mathemagic, they can make the murder rate appear lower. Clearly, the 35 murders in Anchorage makes it a much more dangerous city than the 650+ in Chicago during the same time.
Because, somehow having more than an order of magnitude more murderers in a tenth of the amount of space makes a city safer. Right.
The simple fact of the matter is that Chicago’s methods have been failing for decades. Fortunately for the dying city, there is a beacon of hope, and it exists in the form of a slowly but steadily growing body of Concealed Carry License (CCL) holders.
As you might imagine, Chicago does not lead the nation in concealed carry participation. The state of Illinois only first started issuing CCLs in 2014. Since then, the state carrying population has grown to 265,000. It is unclear how many of them are Chicago residents.
In that same span of time, there have been 38 cases of CCL holders discharging a firearm. Exactly none of those cases have been found to be criminal discharges. There isn’t a lot of clear evidence on many of the stories — mostly because the media actively avoids reporting on good people doing good things with guns. What we do know is that more than two-dozen crimes were foiled, and at least as many lives were potentially saved.
In the face of Chicago’s massive pile of murders, this might seem like a drop in the bucket, and to be fair, it’s a small start. But, when you look at the rest of the data, a clear solution emerges.
Reflecting on the Bigger Story
In the entire state of Illinois, exactly 0 CCL holders have been convicted of any crime since the program began. That includes nonviolent infractions. This comprises about two percent of the adult population for the state. A total of five CCL holders have been charged with a crime, but there were no convictions for any of them.
That actually puts CCL holders in Illinois ahead of the rest of the country. The national crime rate for concealed carriers is 0.63 per 100,000. That’s a ridiculously low number. It’s also worth noting that this is all crime. Violent crime is small enough to be considered negligible. And, Illinois permit holders are beating that ratio. That’s impressive.
Despite these ridiculously favorable statistics, liberals in Chicago are trying to vilify concealed carry. The Chicago Tribune went after the group with the headline, “Almost nothing is known about dozens of concealed carry shootings in Illinois.” They omit that the reason information is lacking is because they deliberately hide it.
Even worse, the liberals in the area are pushing a narrative that CCL holders are committing massive amounts of murder. A private group published a study that concluded CCL holders were responsible for 1,239 deaths over 11 years. When we break this down, it’s going to get your blood boiling.
Now, this number is national, not local to Illinois. The first problem with the report is that it includes all forms of death. It is not limited to firearm death. This means the number includes every CCL holder who has committed suicide (regardless of method). That accounts for about 47 percent of their claim.
The second problem is that the bulk of these deaths have nothing to do with firearms at all. It includes motor vehicle deaths where CCL holders were found at fault. It even includes a wrongful death from a concealed permitted doctor. Also, there are known cases of double reporting, so this ridiculous number is artificially inflated, even by these unfair standards.
In reality, roughly 352,000 CCL holders in America have committed fewer than 50 murders — with or without firearms. When you run the numbers, that amounts to an annual murder rate of 0.000012. For those keeping score, that’s the lowest measured murder rate of any group on Earth.
The conclusion is clear. If Chicago wants to end their murder problem, they need to embrace the concept of concealed carry. Obviously, you can’t just distribute licenses like candy and expect to see a real change.
Instead, the city needs to work on a cultural change. If the CCL mentality is endorsed, more people will be indoctrinated into this group that has proven themselves to be the safest and most responsible people on the planet.
~ American Gun News
Great article. The one bit of constructive criticism I would offer… The article is written in such a way as to appear to be on the defensive. The author is trying to justify away the murders caused by CCL holders as opposed to attacking the murder rate of non-CCL holders. The article should be one where the author goes on the offensive bypassing any murders by CCL holders and fitting the statistics in to show how non existant crime is with CCL holders compared to the national average and the average of what’s happening in Chicago. Just a thought!
I would not mind making copies and using your report to give the Liberals that protests against gun ownership, but you should have had references throughout the report of where you obtained your information. I say liberals because I know of no conservatives that do not agree with the second amendment. Liberals as you well know, would state that the report is hearsay, fiction, and garbage. I myself a conservative believe everything in the report is fact. The Illinois State police, federal government and other agencies have the reports that would confirm the report.
I had my first incident of harassment by an anti last week, just north of Indianapolis. The cable guy came to fix my TV signal and took exception to my .45 and went out to “take signal measurements”. It took a few minutes to realise he’d skipped out on me.
I called the cable company to have him put on report and get someone else to come. Then the cops showed up; the little rectal orifice had called the cops on me! We talked about it and laughed at him, but I called the cable and requested he be fired. If he can’t deal with customers, he needs to be in a different line of work. What if he’d said he didn’t want to work for blacks or mexicans?
Nationally there are 352,000 CCL holders of which 253,000 live in Illinois? Here in Tennessee, more than one out of every nine citizens have a HCP (aka CCL).. That’s more than 500,000 permittees. There are likely millions of HCP/CCL holders in America. Good article, but these numbers don’t add up.
The fraction quoted (50 infractions constitute 0.000012 of the population) implies about 4.1 million HCP/CCL hoders nationally. (didn’t finish the thought on the first post).