That was an interesting article. I particularly agree with one thing that the author mentioned. People who gain permission to carry guns around should first be trained and tested. That should include safety training classes and tests, as well as a shooting test to prove that they can hit a target. My gun-enthusiast brother would agree with that, too.

The author seemed to think that people with concealed weapons permits were going around randomly shooting whomever seemed target-ish. Do you know if there have actually been a lot of crimes committed with these permitted weapons?

AJ, that's a great question. I wish I had thought of it before posting this article. Trying to find answers on the internet was quite tough. Most google searches quickly landed me on biased websites shouting on either side of the debate. It seems the most common arguments that these laws lower crime rates reference work by John Lott. He's at the American Enterprise Institute, and that association instantly makes me skeptical of his work. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm wholly against guns and laws that liberalize their ownership, but the objective investigator in me still thinks the refutations of Lott's work done by the Brady Campaign, http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/issues/?page=ccw, is the best I could find. I think this quote from that study just about sums up why I consider such laws a horrible idea, "out of 30,708 Americans who died by gunfire in 1998, only 316 were shot in justifiable homicides by private citizens with firearms." More guns means more opportunity for violent crimes, accidents, etc.