With all of the background checks to buy a gun nowadays, the common street thug is not going to walk into a store and buy a gun. Criminals get guns one of two ways - either they have their friend buy it for them (which is a crime [funny how the law doesn't deter anyone]) or they steal them.
As far as I'm concerned, if you have a gun and do nothing to keep it from being taken from you, you deserve what happens to you. With that being said, I say let everyone carry, concealed or otherwise, and you protect that firearm and your life at all costs.
Laws can be passed to outlaw ALL firearms in our major cities. But at some point, the law abiding people of the city will either buy a gun for protection (which would be illegal) or leave the city altogether. If that happens, who would be left? The criminals! Businesses can't do business in a high crime environment. Robberies and employee safety become a huge concern and a major liability to the company. If a person were to be killed, robbed, etc. on company property, you can bet that the company would be sued. There would be no reason for a company to stay in the area, so they pack up and leave, which is exactly what happened with the company that I currently work for.
15 years or so ago, Martin Yale Industries was based in Chicago. Crime and taxes got so bad that the owner of the company packed up EVERYTHING and moved to Wabash, Indiana, a sleepy little town 2 hours north of Indianapolis. Criminal actions against the company and its employees all but ceased, and Chicago lost a $15M/year company - no more taxes!
A perfect example of how "disarming" does not work happened in LA during the riots in the early 90's. Korean store owners were defending their stores with accurate gun fire, which was one hell of a deterrent. They had been holding their ground for quite awhile. CNN was broadcasting from a couple of the stores. Interesting video. The LA police were also watching TV that day and they went to the stores, arrested everyone there, confiscated all of the firearms, and released everyone on bail. When the Korean store owners went back to there stores, they found the burning hulks of their businesses. Thank you LA!
Portland, OR, 1992 – A frustrated downtown store owner finally bought a gun after being robbed 3 times within a 2 month period. She made such a stink about it that the local TV station went to her store for an interview. She made it quite clear that she was not going to put up with being robbed again and she had gone out and bought the biggest handgun she could find – nickel plated .44 mag! This women was only about 100 pounds. She even pulled the gun out from a toaster oven and showed everyone that she had it. I don’t know what happen to her after her interview. I didn’t here anything after that.
Portland, OR, 1992 – A young lady was taking a shower at her boyfriends house one late afternoon. She was there alone and could hear strange noises coming from the living room. She got out of the shower, put a towel around her, walked down the hallway to the living room. As she entered the living room, the front door was busted down and a man was coming after her. She turned around, ran back to the bedroom, closed the door and retrieved the boyfriends handgun. Just as she did, the bedroom door was kicked in. The bad guy, seeing the gun, turned around and ran for the front door. She chased him all the way to the front door where she fired several rounds striking the man in the back. He died about 100 yards from the front door of the house. She was taken to the Portland police station, interviewed and then released, with the boyfriends gun in-hand. No charges were filed. When she started shooting, the guy was already off of the property.
Dayton, OH, 2001 – A bar owner, tiered of being robbed all the time, started to keep a shotgun behind the bar for protection. One afternoon, just after the lunch rush, 3 men entered the bar in an attempt to rob the place (again). One man pointed a gun at the bar owner but the owner grabbed his gun and a fire fight started. The 3 men began to back their way out of the bar, all the while the bar owner was firing and advancing toward them. The fire fight continued in the street outside where one bad guy was killed and another was wounded, the third got away. Not charges were filed against the bar owner. However, the wounded man was charged with murder for the death of his criminal buddy. The third man was never caught as far as I know. Maybe he was scared straight.
There are HUNDREDS of stories like these that don’t get told. Knowing that laws are nothing more than government wishes, if there isn’t a sufficient police force to enforce them, then the laws are useless. So outlawing firearms within cities in an attempt to squelch crime is only going to create a dictatorial environment. As has been mentioned, the police are “law enforcement”, not “crime prevention”. Crime prevention starts with the intended victim, not the government. The police are not obligated to protect you. If they were, they could be sued by victims because the police didn’t stop the crime from happening. Sounds pretty silly to me too. No matter. Go ahead and outlaw all firearms and watch what happens. You think that crime is bad now…
