He looks a little more like Mussolini with every lower lip jut. Fuck him with his concealed handgun.

He is sweet!

"self-defense, plain and simple"
Um, moar liek local peacekeeping forces, actually.

I have no problem with law-abiding people having guns, but I support laws that require responsible gun ownership. People who own guns should be required by law to acquire, maintain, store, use, and transfer them responsibly. While there are a large number of people who should be allowed to own guns, there are also many people who should not be allowed to own guns. Our laws that keep guns out of those people's hands should be stronger, more tightly enforced, and more severely punished than they are today.
I don't understand how even a "gun nut" can oppose this sort of reasonable regulation.

Last time I checked, the crime rate among concealed weapons holders is statistically almost zero.

Because criminals don't get gun licenses.

So I'm not sure what the big deal is... unless you simply don't like guns.

If I wanted to live in the old. West, I'd have been born in 1857, not 1957.

@4: They don't oppose keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. They just think that any attempt to do so using regulatory authority will inevitably lead to a total confiscation of guns and the internment of all American citizens. They believe this because they have been told to.

@5: Because, like the linked studies and review note, an increase in carrying correlates to increases in non-self-defense homicides, suicides, and firearms injury.
And where's your source on the claim that CCW permit-holders have a negligible rate of crime?

He sure knows his supporters. I'll give him that.

if people don't like gun owners and guns kill more gun owners than other people why not let it be and the herd thins itselF? (disclaimer: i like guns)

@10: [citation needed]
@11: To paraphrase: "you can't be forced to incriminate yourself, and if you're a felon, agreeing to a background check for the purposes of buying a gun would be self-incriminatory, therefore it's unconstitutional to require background checks"
This is what gun nuts actually believe.
@12: Your links only have detailed information for 1992 and 1997. Nothing in the links is relevant to your claims or the numbers in them.
@13: Again, your link doesn't contain the numbers you throw out in your post.
@14: As usual, no source on any of your numbers. (The extremely poor quality of your line of reasoning is another issue, but that would take a few minutes to explain, and you're really not worth much of my time.)

Look, I know you're nuts and probably clinically insane, but can you at least try to string a few coherent thoughts together?

@7

Nationwide statistics are hard to come by, but there is data available fro some states. Here's the synopsis of a study done in Texas in the years after CCW licensing was enacted:

http://concealedguns.procon.org/sourcefi…

No male Texas CHL holder was arrested for negligent manslaughter during the 1996 through 2000 period.

The average male Texan who is 21 years or older is 18 times more likely to be arrested for committing a non-violent crime than the average male CHL holder.

"...on average: male Texans who are over 21 years old and are not CHL holders are 7.9 times more likely to be arrested for commission of a violent crime than male Texans with a CHL; and female Texans who are over 21 years old and are not CHL holders are 7.5 times more likely to be arrested for commission of a violent crime than female Texans with a CHL."

So where are your sources? Ones that you claim show "an increase in carrying correlates to increases in non-self-defense homicides, suicides, and firearms injury." And is that data pertaining to concealed licensing or carrying of firearms in general?

@16: The sources, as I mentioned, are in the article we're commenting on. Links near the bottom. I read 'em; they're two primary research documents plus a review of the literature of sorts.

@17: There's nothing to disprove, m88. Your linked sources don't actually provide any of the numbers you post. And if you think they cover 1991-2013, well, you clearly haven't actually read any of them. (Go ahead and deny that; you and I both know it's true, to your eternal shame.) The first link is birth and death data from 1997. The second link is crime statistics from 1996 and 1997. The third link is birth, death, marriage, and divorce data from 1992. The fourth link is firearms death tallies and rates among all Americans, white Americans, and black Americans from 1979-2010. The fifth link is a databank ranking the rates of gun ownership of different countries in comparison to Russia. None of these bear any relation to the claims made in your post.
That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. If you want to cite some sources for the numbers you have apparently pulled out of your ass (or possibly someone else's ass; I have a lurking suspicion that you might have just copied someone else's post), we can have this debate. Until then, you're just making a laughingstock of yourself.

@19: I actually spent a good few minutes trying to find good sources for those numbers and I simply couldn't. If you have sources for them, please share them, and I'll happily believe that those numbers are sound and correct. Same for the alleged NICS and NSSF data. Until then, don't waste my time telling me to believe whatever numbers you say; anyone can make shit up on the internet, and without a reputable source, there's no way to be sure you're not doing just that. And remember, the burden of proof is on the person making the claims; if you want to prove a point, it's up to you to prove it, not others to disprove it. Otherwise I can say that Cygnus X1 is a supermassive lump of boron and dare you to prove me wrong.

And hey, if you think guns make you safer, lemme show you this plot. (Suicide rates are in incidence per 100,000 per year and sourced here, and gun ownership is in percent of households in the state with a firearm, originally found here which is now a dead link, but consistent data can be found here.) As you can clearly see, states where more people have guns have STUNNINGLY higher rates of suicide. Argue with THAT.

Yammering on about liberals and gun-grabbers and making wild claims with ass-pulled numbers without any evidence to back them up may fly on some other blogs. But when you come to SLOG, you step into my wheelhouse and that of several others. You're playing with the adults now, and you may want to STEP UP YOUR GAME, SON.

LOL b&