It's been a year since Minnesota enacted a more permissive "conceal-carry" gun permitting law. As supporters noted at a state capitol rally yesterday, "The Sky Didn't Fall." In fact, the best argument that opponents of the law could muster was pretty weak: "17,000 New Guns Is Nothing to Celebrate."

Some wore T-shirts and buttons proclaiming they were "Minnesotans Against Being Shot." Wanna make a wild guess what political party they belong to?

The old restrictive law, left license issuance largely to the discretion of local authorities. Now, any adult who completes a training course and passes a criminal and mental health background check can legally own a firearm in Minnesota. All qualified individuals should be entitled to armed self-defense, if they choose.

State policy analysts had predicted some 50,000 new permits would be issued statewide in the first year after the law's passage, but only about 20,000 were. State estimates of 90,000 new permits in the first three years are now considered too high, as well.

The U.S. trend is away from overly restrictive state conceal-carry laws. It will be revealing to track how many new permits are issued, and correlate those with increases or decreases in reported gun-related crimes. Data from states with new, less-restrictive measures should (and will) be compared to that in states which have kept more restrictive regulations in place.

Will the media squarely face this challenge?

So far the indications are that more guns do NOT correlate with more crime. Unless conclusive ties can be demonstrated between increases in gun-related crimes and liberalized gun permit laws, there is no reason whatsoever to attack the latter.

I believe restrictive laws will never keep guns from criminals, but can make it harder for law-abiding people to protect themselves. If that qualifies me as a "gun nut," OK.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at April 29, 2004 11:09 AM

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