Texas Concealed Carry Handgun Owners
by
Larry Pratt

It’s bad enough that Handgun Control has no facts to back up their claims for the gun control they want passed into law, but they also take data that support gun ownership and twist it beyond recognition!

HCI put out a press release entitled “License to Kill,” a play on the term “License to Carry Concealed.” “License to Kill” claims that the 3370 license holders who were arrested for a crime means that license holders are 66% more likely to commit a crime than are non license holders.

Here are the real numbers. There were 3679 arrested among license-holders in Texas over a four-year period. The yearly average comes to 671 per 100,000 Texans. That compares to 9,508 per 100,000 arrests for all crimes per year among the rest of the population. In other words, non-licensees get arrested 14 times more than do licensed gun packers.

By the way, getting arrested does not establish guilt. More than half of those arrested are acquitted. Also, about a quarter of the arrests are on felony charges, the rest for misdemeanors.

And the number of murders, attempted murders and manslaughter committed by this group? Well, three — in four years. That’s a license to kill? We should have such a crime wave in Washington, DC where guns are banned — or in Chicago, or L.A.

The only way I can explain the “66% more likely” number is this: HCI is 66% more likely to get it wrong than just about anybody else.