{"id":107855,"date":"2025-02-26T19:20:58","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T01:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=107855"},"modified":"2025-02-26T19:20:58","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T01:20:58","slug":"107855","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=107855","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Group Alleges 2.5k+ Unlawful Deaths at the Hands of CCW Holders<\/a><\/p>\n

There are\u00a0an estimated 21.46 million<\/a>\u00a0concealed carry weapon permit holders in the United States. Violence Policy Center is a group that\u2019s known to try to put their finger on the scale, and they’re directing their ire at those CCW holders today. They\u00a0pushed out a release<\/a>\u00a0vilifying the practice. VPC once was a very powerful group that affected policy on firearms in the U.S. Now, they\u2019re seemingly a shell of what they were. On Tuesday, February 25, 2025, they came forward stating there were \u201cMore Than 2,500 Non-Self Defense Deaths Involving Concealed Carry Killers Since 2007.\u201d<\/p>\n

VPC is known for being less than genuine in their practices. We\u2019ve covered it before and we\u2019ll cover it again. VPC was the group responsible for pushing the so-called \u201cassault weapon\u201d narrative.<\/p>\n

The 1988 VPC publication, \u201cAssault Weapons and Accessories in America<\/a>,\u201d highlighted what Josh Sugarmann, the founder of the group,\u00a0really thinks about the American people<\/a>\u00a0[emphasis added]:<\/p>\n

Assault weapons\u2014just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms\u2014are a new topic. The weapons\u2019 menacing looks, coupled with the public\u2019s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons\u2014anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun\u2014can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
\nIn addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the other disingenuous things Sugarmann did was see that the \u201crelief from disabilities\u201d statute was financially gutted. Under federal law, those who have had their Second Amendment rights removed used to be able to apply to have them returned. Sugarmann had the financing for this gutted via his lobbying efforts in the 1990\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Sugarmann leaned on statistics to implore Congress to defund the vehicle for people to actually get their rights back. What statistic was that? He found an alleged 2.6% rate of recidivism on those who received relief but subsequently fell back into criminal activity.<\/p>\n

Just to put that whopping 2.6% recidivism rate into perspective, data from the federal\u00a0Bureau of Justice Statistics found that<\/a>\u00a0\u201c66% of released state prisoners were rearrested within three years and 82% were arrested at least once during a ten year follow-up.\u201d<\/p>\n

One study<\/a>\u00a0on criminal activity and the police noted that, \u201cGoogle News searches resulted in the identification of 6,724 cases in which sworn law enforcement officers were arrested during the time period January 1, 2005, through December 31, 2011.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we dive into VPC\u2019s data, keep in mind that near seven-year period indicating almost 7,000 arrests of police officers. VPC\u2019s data set examines alleged \u201cnon-self defense deaths\u201d from 2007 to present \u2013 an 18-year period.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cConcealed handgun permit holders are responsible for at least 2,541 deaths not involving self-defense since 2007, according to the Violence Policy Center\u2019s (VPC) ongoing Concealed Carry Killers (concealedcarrykillers.org) project, an online resource that provides examples of non-self defense killings involving private citizens with permits to carry concealed handguns in public,\u201d states VPC\u2019s\u00a0release<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The true motives of this sudden Chicken Little publicity stunt are reflected by the following statement by VPC:<\/p>\n

This latest\u202fupdate comes as legislation endorsed by the gun lobby and firearms industry has been introduced in the U.S. House (H.R. 38) and Senate\u202f(S. 65) to allow individuals with state-issued concealed firearm permits to carry their weapons\u202fin any state that issues carry permits or does not prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The group seems to be petrified by the notion of national reciprocity.<\/p>\n

Sticking with the tradition of being less than above the fold, VPC stated that \u201cThirty-eight of the incidents were fatal mass shootings as defined by federal law.\u201d The fact that there\u2019s no \u201cfederal law\u201d defining \u201cmass shooting\u201d does not stop VPC from making the inaccurate statement. \u201cThe U.S. government has never defined mass shooting, and there is no single universally accepted definition of the term,\u201d\u00a0a Rand report<\/a>\u00a0states.<\/p>\n

Sugarmann\u2019s group highlighted their methods on data collection:<\/p>\n

Because there is no comprehensive recordkeeping of deaths involving concealed handgun permit holders and many states in fact bar the release of such information, the examples in\u202f Concealed Carry Killers\u202fare taken primarily from news reports along with the limited information collected by a few states.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s nothing there. The \u201cdata\u201d is mostly from news reports. That\u2019s no way to make statements of fact. In reality, they have no statistics. Just allegations.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

VPC Government Affairs Director Kristen Rand states, \u201cFor the firearms industry concealed carry reciprocity is good for business, while for the gun lobby it\u2019s one more organizing tool. For the rest of us, it\u2019s the latest pro-gun assault on public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kristen Rand fails to say how concealed carry reciprocity is \u201cgood for business.\u201d Rand should consider if her ability to exercise free speech across state lines sells more books. Or if we take a privilege, such as driving, and ask if being able to drive into other states causes more cars to be sold.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear their logic is flawed.<\/p>\n

Looking at VPC\u2019s alleged 2,541 non-self defense \u201ckillings,\u201d and contrast that to the 21.46 million concealed carry holders, you get a rate of .012% across 18 years, or 0.000657036% annually.<\/p>\n

Or are we better off looking at the nearly 7,000 arrests of police officers across a seven year period, more than double the numbers VPC is looking at in an 18-year period?\u00a0One report<\/a>\u00a0said that there were 720,652 police officers in the U.S. in 2023. According to those numbers, the rate of police arrests annually is .14% \u2013 213 times more than VPC\u2019s alleged non-self defense killing rate.<\/p>\n

VPC is doing exactly what they did in the late 80\u2019s and 90\u2019s. They pushed a narrative about assault weapons, and made them the hot topic for gun-grabbers for years \u2013 by banking on Americans\u2019 ignorance. They pushed the narrative that a 2.6% recidivism rate was way too high for those seeking to get their rights back \u2013 when in reality it\u2019s over 25 times less than the national average rate within three years.<\/p>\n

If the American public wants to take the gun control narrative and embrace it, they need to know that they\u2019re being fed warped statistics. Is VPC going to change their spots? Not likely. But we\u2019ll keep on pointing out their flawed methods and their bigotry towards civil rights in the United States. Keep your eyes on this nonsense, it\u2019s going to be used as reciprocity marches its way into Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Group Alleges 2.5k+ Unlawful Deaths at the Hands of CCW Holders There are\u00a0an estimated 21.46 million\u00a0concealed carry weapon permit holders in the United States. Violence Policy Center is a group that\u2019s known to try to put their finger on the scale, and they’re directing their ire at those CCW holders today. They\u00a0pushed out a release\u00a0vilifying … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-propaganda-o-the-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107855"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107856,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107855\/revisions\/107856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}