Vice President Joe Biden is blaming gun laws for the Trayvon Martin shooting, despite not knowing all the facts of the case at this point.
Mr. Biden, who was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee for eight years, said that the Martin case underscores the need to ensure public safety in accordance with current gun laws.
"The idea that there's this overwhelming additional security in the ownership and carrying concealed and deadly weapons... I think it's the premise, not the constitutional right, but the premise that it makes people safer is one that I'm not so sure of," Biden said.
A few things. Biden is calling for a review of "Stand Your Ground Laws," despite those laws not being the issue here. Biden also says he's "not so sure" the premise that people carrying concealed makes people safer, when it has been proven time and time again concealed carry reduces the crime rate.
According to a study by criminologist Gary Kleck of Florida State University, “[R]obbery and assault victims who used a gun to resist were less likely to be attacked or to suffer an injury than those who used any other methods of self-protection or those who did not resist at all.” In approximately 2.5 million instances each year, someone uses a firearm, predominantly a handgun, for self defense in this nation.
In research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice, in which almost 2,000 felons were interviewed, 34% of felons said they had been “scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim" and 40% of these criminals admitted that they had been deterred from committing a crime out of fear that the potential victim was armed.
Allowing law-abiding people to arm themselves offers more than piece of mind for those individuals -- it pays off for everybody through lower crime rates. Statistics from the FBI’s Uniformed Crime Report of 2007 show that states with right-to-carry laws have a 30% lower homicide rate, 46% lower robbery, and 12% lower aggravated assault rate and a 22% lower overall violent crime rate than do states without such laws. That is why more and more states have passed right-to-carry laws over the past decade.
Lastly, the Trayvon shooting is a local incident. I'm not sure why President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden feel it is necessary for them to weigh in, outside of distracting away from other issues of course.
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