Nebraska Politicians Need Our Help to Learn About Constitutional Carry.

We know a lot about people. We also know a little bit about gun owners and politicians. We run into trouble when some of what we think we know is wrong. You’d think that making some gun owners take a firearms safety class would make everyone safer. We imagine that demanding we have a state license before we can carry a firearm in public would make all of us safer too. We’d be wrong and now know we know it. When we think about it, we discover that wisdom is about more than the truth we think we know.

Here is where the trouble starts. We put together an amazing number of facts and then think we know how other people will behave. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. We imagine that telling people to take a firearms safety class before they carry a firearm in public would make everyone safer. It turns out that disarming the good guys cost more lives than were saved by inconveniencing the criminals. We disarmed the victims of crime rather than the perpetrators.

Our experience can give us wisdom or leave us with mistaken prejudices.

Having honest people carry a concealed firearm in public is a good thing. It is a fact that most armed individuals tend to avoid conflict rather than crate it. It is a fact that armed individuals use a firearm to stop the life-threatening situations they can’t avoid. About one out of 11 adults have used a firearm for self-defense. Across the US, about 45 hundred of us will defend ourselves with a firearm today. About one-out-of-a-dozen adults in public are carrying concealed. Yes, honest men and women go armed and protect themselves and their family. We don’t see it because concealed is concealed.

We imagine that demanding a permit to carry in public makes us safer because it disarms the belligerent spouse. We forget that the carry law also makes it harder for the victim of domestic abuse to go armed. We imagine that gun laws disarm criminals. In fact criminals break the law and don’t bother to apply for a permit. The sad fact is that our gun laws disarm more victims than criminals. Too often we create our “truth” by remembering the facts that fit our prejudices.

We know that fewer people apply for their carry permits when we make it more expensive and time consuming. That is a clear case where our common sense is correct.

We know that crime and violence are real. Forget the “truth” we know from TV and movies. From the latest FBI data, we know that almost six thousand citizens of Nebraska are victims of violent crime each year. That number might be optimistic because we’ve seen violence increase since that data came out. More of the victims of violent crime can defend themselves if a carry permit is optional.

I ran the numbers. I looked at the crime rate and the number of Nebraskans who have their permit today. An additional 560 Nebraska citizens would defend themselves with a firearm each year if a carry permit were optional. That doesn’t mean that 560 more people shoot and kill the bad guy. That almost never happens. The great news is that bad guys decide that attacking an armed woman was a mistake. He runs away, and we want more of that. To put it into perspective, 560 more cases of armed defense is over twice the number of lives lost on Nebraska roads each year. That is a lot of lives we can save.

We might imagine that armed people could get in a deadly fight over a parking place, but that is neither true nor a fact. We found out that individuals feel the moral weight of being armed. They want to do the right thing. They try to avoid conflict. A surprising fact is that people who legally carry a firearm in public are the most law abiding and non-violent group of people we can find on the planet. Let me say that again another way; individuals who legally carry a firearm in public are more likely to obey the law than even the police. Maybe that fact fits with what you expected, and maybe it surprised you too.

One little known fact is that Nebraska citizens can already carry in public without a license.. by carrying that loaded firearm openly in a holster. Many of us would rather go about disarmed than carry a firearm for everyone to see it on our hip. We have to be careful because some Nebraska cities outlawed open carry. The sad news is that leaving our gun at homes means we have to face a criminal with our bare hands. That means more good guys, and good gals, get hurt.

We also discovered that individuals take more firearms training classes when the carry permit is optional. That sounds surprising, but only at first. It turns out that we budget a few hundred dollars for our safety. We spend more of that money on training classes when the state isn’t taking our money to pay for a permit. Our neighbors are a lot like us. We want to know how to defend ourselves responsibly.. so we go to class and learn.

The problem we face is that some politicians think their wisdom is real. They confuse their “truth” with the facts. They need our help to learn about gun owners and carrying a firearm in public. We have to educate them about Constitutional Carry.

You can contact your legislator here. They need our help to learn the facts and the truth.

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I didn’t have time to write a short article, so I wrote a long one. I gave you the best 800 words I could find. Please share them with a friend. RM

Sources-

2021 firearms survey “https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3887145

One out of a dozen go armed “https://slowfacts.wordpress.com/2021/11/26/now-we-know-there-are-armed-good-guys-on-our-streets/

Criminals ignore gun stores and gun shows “https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2015/08/30/study-chicago-criminals-avoid-gun-shows-internet-sales-buy-guns-on-street/

Armed citizens are non-violent “https://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2018/04/legally-armed-people-have-murder-rate.html

Armed citizens are safer than the police “https://slowfacts.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/civilians-are-safer-than-police/

Violent crime by state, table 5 ” “https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/violent-crime