Angie Craig: “I rise to introduce the Personal Safety and Community Protection Act. In recent years, a movement has swept the Nation…”

“I rise to introduce the Personal Safety and Community Protection Act. In recent years, a movement has swept the Nation to enable individuals to carry concealed firearms for their protection. Forty-two of the fifty States have some right-to-carry permit mechanism in place, and they are finding these laws make a significant impact on crime. The benefits of right-to-carry laws were verified by a landmark study released late last year. Following a comprehensive analysis of annual FBI crime statistics from all the Nation's counties, over 15 years, the authors concluded: [a]llowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes and it appears to produce no increase in accidental death or suicides. If those states who did not have right-to-carry concealed gun provisions had adopted them in 1992, approximately 1,800 murders and over 3,000 rapes would have been avoided yearly . . . The primary author of the study, John R. Lott Jr. of the University of Chicago Law School, has pointed out that the benefits of concealed-carry laws are not limited to those who carry the weapons but extend to their fellow citizens, as well. The drop in crime is not necessarily the result of using firearms in self-defense, but of criminals changing their behavior to avoid coming into direct contact with a person who might have a gun--which in a concealed-carry State could extend to a wide cross-section of the public.”