TO THE EDITOR:
I believe we’re all in agreement Alert Carolina significantly dropped the ball in response to Monday’s armed robbery. But to suggest a more desirable outcome would have resulted from the victims being allowed to carry concealed weapons is simply presumptuous and, well, blatantly erroneous.
The ability to act definitively in a crisis situation is paramount to using a weapon constructively. Hypothetically, let’s say one of the victims responded to the threat of gunpoint by reaching for his own weapon; who’s to say the perpetrators wouldn’t have fired their weapon to prevent him from getting the upper hand? What if that bullet caused the victim or one of his peers serious bodily harm — or worse, death?
Fatal errors are more likely to occur with the addition of weapons to the mix. Giving more people the ability to inflict lethal injuries is antithetical to enhancing safety.
To all who reference John Lott Jr.’s claim that “more guns lead to less crime,” please do your research. The data he collected to support his inference is antiquated and outdated. More significantly, his findings have since been debunked: Yale Law Professor Ian Ayres and Stanford Law Professor John J. Donohue III published a comprehensive study in 2003 entitled “Shooting Down the ‘More Guns, Less Crime’ Hypothesis” that contains many pages of empirical evidence invalidating Mr. Lott’s original argument.
More guns do not lead to a safer society. It’s not just common sense — it’s fact.
Jordan Heide
Junior
Journalism and Economics
