Man who fatally wounded robber recounts tense shootout
DEAN HOFFMEYER/TIMES-DISPATCH
The owner of the Golden Food Market said the support he has received in the community has encouraged him to reopen the store where he was shot and wounded.
The man who fatally wounded a would-be robber in a South Richmond store recounted yesterday a tense shootout and hand-to-hand struggle that ended when the man hit the robber on the head with a gun, knocking him out.
The robber, identified by police as James Grooms III, shot and wounded the owner of the Golden Food Market on July 11, but Grooms was shot by an armed friend of the owner as customers took cover.
At one point, the friend said, he could feel the heat of a muzzle flash as Grooms fired at him from a few feet away. He said he chose not to flee because he might have been shot in the back, and because it "wasn't over."
"I'd be a damn bold-faced liar if I said I wasn't terrified," the man said yesterday. "I had to get it done. He shot my friend. . . . What am I going to do, let him shoot everyone else?"
The man agreed to be interviewed but does not want his name to be printed and asked that he not be identified in any way. His account matches details in a surveillance video and statements made by authorities and witnesses.
Store owner Mustapha Kassou credits his friend with saving his life and the lives of his customers. Only Kassou and Grooms were hurt. Authorities say a preliminary investigation indicates that the shooting of Grooms was legally justified.
Kassou, who was released from the hospital last Sunday, reopened his store in the 2700 block of Jefferson Davis Highway on Thursday after receiving encouragement from the community, friends and City Councilwoman Reva M. Trammell. Stricken with fear -- a friend was also shot and wounded there a month earlier -- he had said Tuesday that he might return to his native Morocco.
"You feel that there is still love in this world," he said, referring to the community support. Kassou said he will not stay open as late as he used to, at least for a while. He also is having bulletproof glass installed on the counter of his store, which is three blocks south of where a shopkeeper was slain June 9.
Kassou yesterday agreed to show a reporter the surveillance video of the July 11 shootout. He emphasized he was not looking for more attention, but believed the footage must be viewed for the episode to be most accurately portrayed.
When the robber walked into the store about 1 p.m. that day, at least 10 people were inside the store, including the man who would fire back, two women, two men and at least three boys. At least one boy looked about 10 or younger.
The video shows Grooms walking into the store wearing sunglasses, a blue baseball cap and black clothes. He told everyone to get down, Kassou said, and then opened fire, striking Kassou twice as he stood behind the counter.
One young boy, standing between Grooms and Kassou, appears to duck just in time to avoid being shot in the head. He and another boy then ran outside.
Kassou dropped behind the counter, wounded. A boy lay behind the counter with what looks like a bag of potato chips, his foot shaking. Other customers also lay on the floor.
When Grooms walked into the store, Kassou's friend hit the floor and drew from his holster a six-shot, .45-caliber Western-style revolver. He said he told Grooms to drop his weapon.
But Grooms had run to the back of the store, where he took cover at the end of an aisle. Grooms walked toward Kassou's friend, apparently trying to get a good shot at him. He was crouched behind barrels containing cold drinks and ice.
The two men exchanged fire, with a bullet bursting cans of sardines. Kassou's friend said he fired several times but believes he didn't use all six of his rounds. Authorities say Grooms was shot once in the torso.
At one point, Kassou's friend said he broke the trigger on his gun when he dropped to the floor, but was able to fire by using the revolver's hammer.
He described Grooms as "hell-bent, dead-set, determined, and he weren't acting like he was scared."
Kassou's friend said that during the shootout, he was keeping count of how many shots Grooms fired, believing the robber's gun contained six rounds.
"He was trying to draw me out, telling me he was out of bullets," he said. "And I told him, 'Well, I'm not.'" Grooms apparently did run out of bullets, witnesses told police.
Kassou's friend said he could hear the click-click as Grooms tried to keep firing. People inside the store told him to finish off the robber, witnesses told police. He said yesterday that he did not do it because he believed he would not have been justified in shooting a man who had run out of bullets.
After Grooms ran out of bullets, he approached Kassou's friend. He said he grabbed Grooms' gun during a struggle, and the video shows him hitting Grooms twice over the head with a gun, knocking off Grooms' hat.
Grooms then lunges toward the door and collapses beside it, unconscious. Kassou's friend can be seen standing over Grooms as he called police on a cell phone at 1:01 p.m.
Police later charged Grooms with attempted robbery and two firearm offenses, but he died at VCU Medical Center on Wednesday, four days after he was shot. Members of his family have declined to comment.
In the video, Kassou's friend appears relatively composed during the shootout and afterward. He said he has had years of firearm training, but he declined to elaborate.
Yesterday, Kassou's friend summed up the harrowing ordeal in an understatement.
"I came by to say hello to a friend of mine," he said, "and everybody had a bad afternoon."
Contact Reed Williams at (804) 649-6332 or .
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WPANAK: You’re a professional at splitting hairs..
Using the 2007 Texas statistics that YOU provided the link to:
I’ll cherry-pick two statistics from the data:
1) 4,255 convictions for BURGLARY OF BUILDING and 1 (yes 1) of those convictions was a CHL holder. That’s 0.0235%
2) Total convictions for Texas in 2007(of those listed on the PDF)
General Population: 61,260 - CHL holders 160..
Yup, a whole ONE HUNDRED A SIXTY CHL holders.. 0.2612% of crimes.
That’s a Texas Department of Public Safety statistic! Not an NRA statistic, this was not paid for by the NRA?
Are you ready to admit that ON AVERAGE CHL holders commit far fewer crimes than the general population?
One more thing:
Texas is very strict about where you can carry, and what happens if you carry in a business location that prohibits carry. The latter is a crime; in most states, if we walk into a place and miss the sign, the worst that’ll happen is we’re told to leave and if we don’t it’s trespassing. Not in Texas, it’s an actual crime.
So you get one entire category of crime that basically applies just to us: “UNL CARRY HANDGUN LIC HOLDER”. We make up a LOT of those but for reasons that puzzle me, not all. I’m looking at the 2006 data at the moment:
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/ConvictionRatesReport2006.pdf
...and we’re 10 out of 22 incidents of that crime. I’m puzzled as to how that’s even possible…we ought to be 100%, unless they’re classifying out-of-state visitors with CCW as “not Texas permitholders”?
Anyways. My main point is that ever year we get hit with 30 to 40ish of that plus “UNL CARRYING WEAPON” and once in a while the “no carry in bar” thing. In 2006 it’s 34 of these various weapons carry busts, which isn’t much except our TOTAL number of crimes for this year is 144.
In most states (mostly including Virginia ‘cept for no concealed carry in bars) those busts aren’t even possible, so that’s a skew of about 1/5th (roughly) in the direction of criminality in Texas that doesn’t correspond to other states.
And yeah, that trend holds well in the other TX years.
wpanak:
First point, stop calling me a swamp. It gets old.
Second, yeah, I can tell you exactly what’s going on with the Texas data. To make sure we’re on the same page, let’s talk about the 2007 listings:
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/ConvictionRatesReport2007.pdf
In almost all categories we (meaning CCW holders) are WAY below average. Yes, there appears to have been one true lunatic CCW holder who shot multiple people…I’ll betcha anything the same dude was the sole permitholder robber (“AGG ROBBERY”) the sole “ASSAULT PUBLIC SERVANT”, “CAPITAL MURDER OF MULTIPLE PERSONS”, “CAPITAL MURDER PERSON WHILE ESCAPING/ATTEMP” and probably the manslaughter. I haven’t looked at the other years yet but I’ll bet there’s fewer than “one” such by a permitholder each year.
OK, so what’s up with those pedophelia cases and to a lesser degree, elder assualts?
Well it’s simple. Demographics. Care to guess the most common age/race of a CCW holder? White male between 40 and 65. There’s tons of reasons for this, mainly cultural/historical. I fit that myself, at age 43.
*Especially* in the South, guess what’s the most common age/race of a pedophile? Yup. White males 40 to 65. I know a *lot* about this, my mom was abused by her dad. In California, yeah, but they were from Missouri. It’s not a COMMON cultural thing in the South but it does happen.
Now. Do you really think that my having a gun carry permit makes me more likely to abuse a child? Of course not. And having a CCW permit is meaningless in terms of committing this crime; an adult doesn’t need a gun to rape a child.
This is a classic case of “correlation doesn’t equal causation”.
The elder abuse is the same deal: stressful situations involving elderly parents peak right at around the same demographics as the permitholders. Yet again, just a demographic anomaly.
Now look at the common violent crimes, with enough numbers behind them to get a solid picture of what’s going on: AGG ASSAULT W/DEADLY WEAPON, AGG ROBBERY, ASSAULT CAUSES BODILY INJURY FAMILY VIOLENCE (we’re way under, and there’s a shockingly high total number), and on and on. Or cut to the chase: in total, we’re .2612% of all crimes.
There’s 289,000 permitholders active in 2007:
Population of TX in 2007 is around 23.5mil:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_population_of_Texas
So permitholders are 1.23% of the population, and .26% of the criminals of every type. Lower the more violent the crime in the vast majority of cases.
So here’s the kicker: are the permitholders making society less safe? Do we make YOU less safe, when you’re out on the street?
Absolutely not.
Can you come up with ANY reason out of all this to increase gun control and ban the kind of action carried out by this guy with the replica 1875 Remington revolver? And lest you think I’m being extreme by phrasing it that way, what this guy did IS banned right now in California, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, New Jersey, Maryland, New York and probably one or two other states I’ve missed. In New York City he’d be looking at eight years in prison…almost as bad in New Jersey and Illinois.
JimMarsh stated:
“But as a class, the CCW permitholders are far more law-abiding than the general population when we’re talking about actual violent crime - murder or any other violence, robbery, theft, burglary, even non-violent drug crimes and almost any other category.”
This begs the question of “higher standard”, as you say your class is far more law-abiding. What say we set the bar at 1/3rd as likely to commit a crime? Given that about 1.2% of Texans held CCW permits in 2008, any crime in the Texas CCW permit holder criminal registry where more than 0.4% of the Texas-wide convictions were CCW permit holders would be crimes where permit holders are not meeting the high standard of being 1/3rd as likely to commit that crime.
Let’s look at the 2007 registry (most recent data):
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/administration/crime_records/chl/convrates.htm
Which crimes do CCW permit holder show conviction rates higher than the general public (eg., entries of 0.4% or greater in the far right column)?
SEX CRIMES:
Aggrevated sexual assault of a child
Improper photographing or video recording for the arousal
Indecent exposure to a child
Indecent exposure
Sexual assault of a child
CHILD/ELDER/DISABLED PERSON ABUSE:
Assault against and elderly or disabled person
Injury to a child/elderly/disabled person with intention to
VIOLENCE
Capital murder of multiple persons
Capital murder of persons while escaping or attempting to escape custody
Criminally negligent homicide
Deadly conduct
Manslaughter
Murder
Terroristic threat of family or household
The Texas conviction rates show that CCW permit holders are particularly likely to commit sex crimes, particularly sex crimes against children. They are also likely to abuse individuals who are physically weaker than themselves. With regard to extremely violent crimes, the 2007 data show that CCW permit holders in Texas were not meeting the higher standard – in several crime classes such as capital murder, criminally negligent homicide, and manslaughter, the CCW permit holders were more likely to commit these crimes than the general population.
I reviewed all the reports that are available online, back through 1996. Although it is true that crimes such as murder are not always tracking at rates seen in 2007, I was particularly struck by the frequency of sex crime convictions, particular child sex abuse, over the past 5 years.
JimMarsh – how do you explain this? Are these sex crimes not violent crimes? Not serious crimes? Or are we setting the bar too high for your class of citizens?
I’d like you to explain why CCW permit holders have higher rates of child sexual abuse convictions. Then I’d like you to explain why this is OK for CCW permit carriers, and how their 2nd amendment rights supersede the rights of the children they abuse.
Perhaps when you have explained that, you’ll be ready to explain your theory of how SCOTUS will allow a CCW plaintiff to bootstrap Wade v. Maryland (which focused on interstate commerce, where the Courts have long upheld equal protection) and Saenz v. Roe (which dealt with federally funded welfare programs, where the feds have a compelling interest to ensure equal protection) to grant special rights to the 1-2% of citizens who hold CCW permits and want to move across state lines unencumbered while carrying concealed weapons. I’d really like to hear how the Court will see CCW as a federal issue, when the states have set CCW standards for decades, the states have reciprocity standards that they negotiate among themselves without federal oversight, and the CCW permit carriers have equal protection to possess handguns across state lines – so long as they do not conceal the handgun in a state where they do not carry that license. I’m very curious to how you would construct that and still leave intact the abilities of each states to set its own standards for business licensing, licenses to practice medicine and other professions, or even charge higher fees for nonresident hunting licenses and state park campground access.
Or do you think states should not be allowed to force a business owner in one state to get a license before doing business in a new state? Or citizens in one state should have no protection if a loophole in another state allows unqualified persons to be licensed as professionals, who can then claim federally guaranteed reciprocity under Wade v. Maryland and practice their professions wherever they want, without seeking licensing in that state?
Perhaps when you have that one answered, you can then tell me how you justify comparing gun control laws to segregation, and justify criticizing law enforcement professionals as racists, when so many of your gun nut friends have made comments on this blog that are as bad or worse than what you say the sheriffs in California are saying.
Answer all that before you claim you are reducing crime, saving lives, saving money, and promoting equality for minorities.
Susan—we don’t have to guess, Florida is keeping records and publishing the summary data. You yourself pointed us to the data. There’s no guesswork going on. Florida passed a “shall issue” law in 1987, and it appears they have been keeping pretty good data.
There’s no data extrapolation going on either—Florida is reporting the number of events, not sampling a few counties and creating estimates of what we would see if we gathered data in all counties. Every license is counted, every revoke and suspension is counted, and the summary tables show the wealth of data available, including yearly reports that could support a reasonable trend analysis.
You are pointing to one table, which is a blend of cumulative licenses applied for and issued, cumulative denials, and cumulative revokes. All the cumulative totals are from when the “shall issue” law was passed in 1987 through June 30, 2009.
I am pointing to 11 tables that show annual data since 1999, not data that have been cumulated, and data that are more detailed (broken down by county, and which allow us to see that suspensions due to DVI have been included in the suspension counts since 2008):
http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/news/reports.html
I’ve trended the year-by-year tables and although there are some issues with the permit counts, particularly annual renewals (bad data, or administrative changes?), the counts on revokes and suspensions are showing a stable rate from 1999 to 2006, and then a sharp increase in revokes and suspensions in the past 2 years—73% higher when compared to 1999-2000 data. This analysis sets aside DVI suspensions which were not counted in 1999-2000.
The rate of increase in permits appears to be slower than the rate of increase in violations that lead permits to be revoked or suspended. Again, the permit count data seem to have problems, so I’m not going to form a ratio of two ratios when I know one ratio is questionable. No good can come from stating a statistic that I know is highly unstable.
However, the incidences of revokes and suspensions do appear to show stable, reliable characteristics, and a recent 71% increase.
I’ll leave you to decide for your beliefs which table / summary is more reliable—One table that cumulates data and has less detail, or 11 tables that have more detail, and where the details as a whole show reasonable trends over time. By reasonable I mean “I can see that would happen, that the number of permits is increasing, and the number of revokes and suspensions are increasing”, not “it is reasonable only because it fits my belief system”. Again, this is not a hot button issue for me. It is data exploration and thinking about the effects of public policy on public health and welfare.
And again, you are deciding what to belief, for your beliefs. You are not deciding for others – they will decide if you are being reasonable, and either believe you or not.
The two analyses can’t both be true, so which do you believe—one table which has some numbers you like, or 11 tables which when summarized over time show a trend you don’t like?
For me, regardless of the analyses, I put more faith in the 11 tables. Assuming one analyst is doing all these analyses, I doubt he or she is putting out annual tables that have flaws, and later creating a cumulative view of the data that is accurate. That’s like saying “1 is a bad number, but 2 and 3 are OK, and when I add the numbers up and 1+2+3 = 5, I can trust 5, even though I know 1 is a bad number.“ If the annual tables are bad, then we can’t trust the cumulative; however, it could be that the annual tables are correct, and when the data were then cumulated that calculation had an error.
All speculation—I could call Florida and find the statistician and ask a few questions. I suspect the error will be identified and corrected soon, as people look at the recent increase in revokes and suspensions and say, “Is that true—can I cite that with confidence?“ So because others will find this blog and those tables and call Florida to confirm the issue, I’ll just bookmark and revisit in a few months.
I’m just sharing my views, based on having done these types of analyses with messy data, and having debugged these types of data and reporting issues. I’m not asking you to believe me.
>>Yet we now have the VPC study that shows, at least in Texas, that gun crimes are occuring more frequently for CCW permit holders than for unarmed citizens. Assuming this generalizes to other states (I believe it does—the odds ratio will vary state-by-state, but I expecct this finding can be replicated where data are available), we could be in a situation where the promise of “shall issue” is not being met.<<
The relatively silly issues you’re dealing with in Texas including packing where you’re not supposed to and accidental exposure. In most other states the latter isn’t a crime, in fact Saturday night here in Tucson we’re doing an open-carry rally at a local buffet that doesn’t serve booze - the lot of us would be criminals for that in Texas. (Hometown Buffet on 22nd in Tucson, leave hardware in holsters please!) So no, Texas stats won’t hold elsewhere. Even if they did, we’re talking about the most harmless class of “crime” imaginable, with less societal risk involved than minor speeding tickets.
Second, don’t for a second assume the VPC data will hold up at all. Of the “murderers with CCW permits” VPC reports, going to the actual case files (instead of relying on news reports) shows at least some aren’t permitholders at all:
Short form: Minnesota is one of the states that does a gun purchase permit separately from carry permit, and when the term “permit” was used at all VPC (and the Brady Campaign) jumped all over that as “carry permit”.
As to the national carry proposals: right now, as an AZ resident with a permit, there is NO way legally I can pack in California next door. California citizens can in theory score CCW (with a success rate varying by county, tied amazingly closely to the minority demographics of each county) and there’s about 35,000 active permits in California. Those Cali permits are all good statewide regardless of residence county of issuance.
That situation is unconstitutional: a state cannot discriminate against residents of other states, subjecting them to differing criminal penalties based on their state of origin. See also the US Supreme Court cases of Ward v. Maryland 79 U. S. 418 (1870) and Saenz v. Roe 526 U.S. 489 (1999). This body of case law kicked in hard the moment the US Supreme Court recognized a basic personal right to self defense in Heller last year - and yeah, Heller also applies outside the home, not just inside it. Unless of course you know a way to separate the basic right to “keep” arms now understood as a personal civil right from the right to “bear” arms. See also footnote nine in Heller citing seven prior court cases that all say the same thing: a state can regulate or ban concealed carry only when open carry is legal, otherwise the right to bear arms is being trampled. All of the carry-restrictive states except Wisconsin also ban open carry and are sideways from Heller, and in the 9th Circuit where Cali and Hawaii are, the 2nd Amendment has already been incorporated against the states in the Nordyke v. Alameda case.
Upshot: all the Federal proposals are going to do is solve years worth of legal squabbles with a single law, saving everybody a bunch of time and money. The moment the Heller decision came down, outright bans on personal defense applied to people with no criminal record were doomed. You are in the same position the segregationists were in a year after Brown v. Board of Education came down in 1954: you might like to continue the BS but long term your position is doomed, thank God.
So do we go through years of courtroom brawls, or do we just get it over with? That’s what congress is debating. We lost a filibuster-proof majority by two votes in the first round, so this year or next, whatever, it’s going to happen.
My view is this: even in the scummiest “projects” in the worst inner cities, there are people who can pass a background check and training and safely pack same as I do now in Arizona. I don’t care what their skin color is.
ANY system of gun permit issuance that’s “rule of man not rule of law” based on subjective standards is going to introduce bias: racial, gender, religious, sexual orientation, ALL of it. As a basic principle it’s diseased even if you can somehow eliminate cash corruption.
I’ll talk about the national reciprocity bill in a sec.
>>1) The vast majority of the general public, and the CCW permit holders, are law-abiding citizens and do not commit crimes in general, or gun crimes in particular.<<
But as a class, the CCW permitholders are far more law-abiding than the general population when we’re talking about actual violent crime - murder or any other violence, robbery, theft, burglary, even non-violent drug crimes and almost any other category.
>>2) However, when it comes to the broad class of gun crimes (which can include carrying a concealed weapon improperly, even when issued a valid CCW permit, or carrying while DUI, or when busted for another crime), the CCW permit holders are arrested for those crimes at a rate 81% than the general population.<<
Well there’s certain laws that ONLY somebody packing a gun can violate. In Texas, Florida and a few others, open-carry such as our hero with the Remmie clone did is illegal. Accidental exposure of your gun (falls out of holster, shirt rides up, etc.) is illegal. We “commit” those crimes at a moderately high rate, yeah. Of course, there’s zero actual harm involved.
The other one we run into a lot involves restraunts that serve alcohol. In many states including Tennessee and my state of Arizona, you can’t pack in any place that serves drinks, even a Denny’s. TN and AZ have just passed laws to fix that, by the way, although they haven’t taken effect yet. I’ll be honest: we do violate those rules a lot. Example: you’re out with friends, they want to eat at Red Lobster or whatever, you’re strapped…your choices are say nothing, don’t drink and keep it concealed, or “come out of the gun closet” to, say *coworkers*...oops. Or one I run into a lot: I’m a biker, no safe place to leave a piece on a sportbike. So we end up packin’ someplace we’re technically not allowed to. The good news is we do NOT drink under such circumstances, certainly not more than one, and we keep a low profile so it’s just not an issue. And the vast majority of the time we’re not talking about a “bar”, but rather an eatery that serves some booze. Big difference as far as “odds of a big fight breaking out”.
Virginia has a strange twist on all this - you can’t carry concealed in a “bar” (more often an eatery) but you can open-carry. So then you’re in this weird zone where if you accidentally cover it, you’re screwed. Sigh.
It’s all idiocy top to bottom.
Now let’s talk about “discretionary CCW”.
One state that I know of handles discretionary CCW at the state police level: Maryland. It’s an absolute crapshoot as to who gets a permit, with damned near no way of predicting what will happen. Fewer corruption reports, granted.
But ponder what we’re talking about here: what do you propose as standards for who gets a permit? Business-cash related somehow? Great - you’ve just introduced a racial bias into the process because whites are far more likely to be business owners. You may not have meant to…
Speaking of race: I touched on this briefly. Have you heard folks complain about being pulled over for “driving while black” (or brown)? I didn’t take that sort of thing seriously until I started tracking the discretionary gun permit process in California. I damned well do now. News flash for anybody white: cops are often racist. They usually didn’t start that way, but constant contact with the slime that shows up in the jails and prisons often turns them that way. And weirdly enough, it can do so even if the cop in question is black…I can show you the studies.
They’re even more often homophobic. Ever looked up the odds of violence being committed against somebody transgendered? They have a rate of being murdered somewhere around 500x the population as a whole. I know one who applied for CCW in California on that basis: denied.
One of the more horrifying conversations I ever had was with a guy running for Sheriff in Contra Costa County California in 2002. He was (and I assume remains) a deputy who had joined the department six years earlier in order to run for sheriff, and was already a lawyer. The Sheriff (still in office) is Warren Rupf, a seriously foul character who was thoroughly corrupt in selling permits…I’ve got a massive file on that clown as I lived there at the time:
http://www.ninehundred.net/~equalccw/posse.pdf
OK. So I wanted to support Jacobs. We talked for an hour. He said that when he first got on the job, he was in favor of a shall-issue CCW reform. Six years into the job, he told me he just couldn’t support it anymore. I asked him why, and I’ll never forget for a moment his next words: “California is too diverse”. Six years on the job had turned him into a stone-cold racist.
(cont.)
wpanak said:
“...you said only about 5000 aross 21.5 years…“
I just quoted what the stste of Florida said.
I’m guessing they did some tough data extrapolation, like keeping records and counting.
Now, let’s look at H.R. 197: National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2009. Gun advocates have been very successful in getting CCW permit law passed in many states, with the majority of states now having “shall issue” laws. This new federal bill, if enacted into law, would essentially unify state laws with regard to allowing CCW permit holders to move from state to state, so long as they follow the laws of the neighboring state.
Yet we now have the VPC study that shows, at least in Texas, that gun crimes are occuring more frequently for CCW permit holders than for unarmed citizens. Assuming this generalizes to other states (I believe it does—the odds ratio will vary state-by-state, but I expecct this finding can be replicated where data are available), we could be in a situation where the promise of “shall issue” is not being met. Yes, more people have permits, so that promise has been delivered to the gun owners. But the more important promise regards public safety for everyone, and there’s no good data showing that more guns in the hands of CCW permit holders are lowering crime (remember, it could simply be stiffer federal penalties for drug crimes, and better medical treatment and kelvar armor that reduces cop murders), but there is good data that CCW permit holders are being arrested for more gun crimes.
Have the gun advocates pushed for “shall issue” laws and the widest possible distribution of CCW permits, and now that this has been in play for 15 years (about the length of prohibition) the downside impacts are being seen. Could it be that the “shall issue” laws are actually worsening the problem that they were designed to solve? And because the “shall issue” laws were pushed out fast, with no plan to fulfill on the public safety side of the promise (all the focus is on permits, little attention to course-correcting and adjusting if issues arise), the system is about to suffer a big failure, public backlash, and repeal?
And now, with more Democrats in power at a federal level, if they have success with a few things like the economy and health care, and then some big “shall care” gun violation event get publicized, will the Democrat’s power snowball and suddenly you see a drastic alteration of the 2nd amendment?
I would think, with all that, it would good time to pull back on the reins, think through the issues, and figure out what can ensure success of the public safety promise. When I see gun rights bill at the federal level (reciprocity, concealed weapons in national parks) being pushed into the public forum right when the current situation is showing some weaknesses at the seams, it makes me think the gun rights advocates have the worst possible strategy—they are seeking the biggest possible wins at the worst possible time, and the opportunity for backlash grows with every new bill introduced for consideration, but where the downsides of the new law have not been considered.
Let’s be clear—I’m not out there working to make that happen. I don’t have a big stake in this. All I’m pointing out is, when one side wins big and believes they have the power, they often over-reach. It has happened time and again in the private sector (mortgage lending, discrimation in hiring and promotion, mismanagement of toxic waste) and the public sector (prohibition, Iraq war, election of politicians who turn out to be complete failures).
If both sides sit at the table, focus on the real issues, and anticipate errors and plan on how to course-correct, a better solution will occur. Neither side will get everything they want, but if both sides listen to what matters to the other side, takes that into account when thinking about solutions, and is willing to live with some accommodations because they see the other side also living with accommodations, then the result will likely work better for everyone. Finally, a joint solution, one that everyone agrees with, is easier to fix when it is found to need repair—there is less finger-pointing, and more willingness to help, because both sides own up to the fact that the solution was not perfect, and both sides are engaged in brainstorming for solutions.
If that makes me a bleeding heart liberal wanting a kumbaya experience, I can live with that. But if you think that, remember that almost nobody saw the subprime mortgage crisis coming, a lot of very smart and experienced politicians voted for the Iraq war and then later regretted that vote, that Prohibition was a total failure even though people had good intentions, and GM built a whole bunch of massive SUV’s that were quite profitable, so long as gas prices stayed low and people were willing to trade equity in their homes for vehicles where the cost of replacing the tires was more than what our parents paid for their new cars in 1960.
There is always middle ground, and failure to seek it while ignoring the mistakes you may be making is a bad, bad strategy.
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