Open carry, concealed carry, and constitutional carry
In Alaska, they had open carry until 1994. Then, they went concealed. And now they’re constitutional carry. And what happened? Well, Clayton points out:
Murder rates in the U.S. fell, with both guns and non-guns. Murder rates in Alaska also fell, with both guns and non-guns. Even more intriguing — the gun murder rate in Alaska fell faster than the non-gun murder rate — not at all what you would expect from a bunch of manly men (we know about you Last Frontier sorts) carrying guns with no restrictions!
April 6th, 2014 at 9:48 pm
That open carry had no pre-emption, towns could have their own ordinances. In Anchorage and most large cities/towns it was basically “no carry” as I recall growing up.
April 6th, 2014 at 11:11 pm
Going through the study I noticed it addresses a common criticism raised by using homicide rates to track gun rights/concealed carry law changes. The hypothesis is that part of the drop in homicide is simply due to better EMS service and trauma treatment, not correlative to changes in laws.
Since every shooting that would have been a homicide except for better medical intervention becomes an ‘aggravated assault with a firearm”; if the hypothesis were true we would expect to see agg assault rates rise as homicide rates fall. That isn’t the case in this study, they appear to fall in parallel, and smoothly.
The other common criticism is that death or injury are a factor of shot placement and might account for changes in homicide rates. That one I think is a stretch, unless the critic can point to significant changes in firearm accuracy or shooter training within the period covered. The very randomness of people dying or not from gunshots over recorded history argues against that being a variable which changes significantly over the time of any study covering decades.
April 8th, 2014 at 12:53 pm
“…not at all what you would expect…”
Actually that’s exactly what I would expect, and it’s exactly what the authors of the second amendment would have expected.
This also demonstrates that those who’ve enacted or enforced gun restrictions have actually been getting people killed. They have yet to be brought to justice.