Image courtesy No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money.
by John Boch
(Guns Save Life) – Lee Goodman of the “Stop Concealed Carry Coalition” in Illinois claims carry laws escalate violence. He also claims gun rights activists are hateful and rude.
It would seem the data don’t support his first, wild assertion, as graphed out in this wonderful graphic from John Richardson over at No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money.
Richardson’s data source:
The data used to generate this graph is available here in Google documents. As I said in the original post, unlike the gun prohibitionists, we publish our data for the world to see. The data used comes from three sources: the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, the U.S. Census, and www.gun-nuttery.com/rtc.php which tracked the changes in carry laws over time.
Here’s Mr. Goodman’s statement to the media (as printed in the Tribune) following the federal appeals court striking down Illinois’ prohibition on carrying firearms outside the home.
“As the dissenting opinion points out, the two judges who threw out Illinois’ law did not take account of the danger to the public from stray bullets, and they ignored the Illinois legislature’s determination that carrying weapons has been shown to escalate violence,” said Lee Goodman, an organizer with the Stop Concealed Carry Coalition.
I spoke with Lee earlier this week, a day before the Moore decision was released. He was calling with regards to an invitation I extended for him to address us at our monthly Guns Save Life meeting in Rantoul.
He was all excited, hearing that we had 150+ people each month, but his excitement evaporated faster than a freon spill when I told him the name of our organization.
“I don’t want to waste my time getting yelled at,” he said.
I assured him we were civil and respectful to our guests, even when we didn’t agree with them.
He didn’t believe me, and said that people on our side were very hateful and rude in his experience.
Readers don’t have to take my word for it that we are a polite, respectful and family friendly group of folks. You can see for yourself by coming to join us on the second Tuesday of the month in Rantoul… or the first Tuesday in Pontiac… or the first Thursday in Effingham!
I’m not sure why Mr. Goodman was such a negative Nelly, but he’s probably even more so now that his job at “Stop Concealed Carry” will be coming to an end even sooner than I expected!
Contrast the IGOLD (Illinois Gun Owners Lobby Day) rallies with the recent union demonstrations in Michigan, or in Wisconsin a little while back. In the case of IGOLD, thousands of people congregated, rallied, chanted, and SMILED AND HAD A GOOD TIME. In the Michigan and Wisconsin cases, not so much; more like punch out reporters, destroy property, and angrily get in people’s faces and call filthy names.
IGOLD this year is on March 6, 2013 in Springfield. Come join us.
Our side is hateful? Hmm. I recall a certain counter-protest against the “Million” Mom March at the turn of the century in downtown Chicago. They had us corralled like sheep behind barricades, but it was for our protection. I saw no less than two foaming at the mouth gun-bigot females try to come over the fence and attack politely disagreeing civil rights advocates (us) – that had to be physically restrained by the fine professionals of the Chicago police department.
Be careful if you’re ever face to face w/ a hopolophobe – they’re dangerous!!