It has been a slippery fact to pin down statistically, but the scientific jury is in. Right-to-carry laws lead to more violent crime – not less.
It is a combination of every confrontation ending with murder, and the legal gun owners who like showing off their guns so much that they get stolen.
While impulsive violence is an issue, Donohue said, perhaps the bigger problem is that “when you start carrying guns, you make them much more likely to be stolen,” which means that right-to-carry laws offer a steady supply of guns to people who are already inclined to commit crimes.
“American gun owners, preoccupied with self-defense, are inadvertently arming the very criminals they fear,” explained Brian Freskos at The Trace, kicking off his November investigative report on the way stolen guns have become a major component of the gun crime problem.More than 237,000 guns were stolen from legal gun owners in 2016 alone, though Freskos believes that is a drastic underestimate, as many gun owners never report thefts to the police. One reason gun theft is so common is because right-to-carry laws and NRA propaganda encourage gun owners to have their firearms accessible at all times: in their cars, in their homes or on their person. If people kept guns locked up (as responsible firearms owners did for generations), this problem largely wouldn’t exist. But when guns are on coffee tables, in glove compartments or carried in holsters, they become easy targets for thieves. Reliable estimates suggest as many as 3.5 million stolen guns have entered the black market over the past decade.
