Crime Rates Continue to Drop After Maine Rescinds Carry Concealed Weapon Permit Requirement Three Years Ago

 

By:  David Deschesne

Fort Fairfield Journal, November 21, 2018

 

   Crime continues to go down in Maine, even after the legislature rescinded the requirement to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

   Three years ago, in June, 2015, the Maine Legislature approved L.D. 652, “An Act To Authorize the Carrying of Concealed Handguns without a Permit.” The law removed the requirement to obtain a permit—which was largely a money-making venture of the government—for people over 21 years old in order to carry a concealed weapon.

   What has gone virtually unnoticed in the mainstream liberal media, however, is the crime numbers in Maine show that instead of crime going up, now that the permit requirement was done away with, it continues to go down.

   For example, the most recent numbers released from the Public Safety Commissioner’s office shows in 2017 crime decreased an average of –8.2% compared to the year before.

   Robberies decreased –7.2%; Burglary decreased –7.1%; Aggravated Assaults, which involve serious injury and usually involves a weapon, decreased –12.7%; Larceny/theft decreased –6.6% and Domestic violence assaults decreased –10.6%.

   Crime in Maine’s rural areas overall decreased –9.3% and crimes reported in cities and towns dropped 7.9%.

   While it wouldn’t be fair to correlate the drop in crime figures explicitly to the removal of the Concealed Carry permit requirement, it does illustrate that the possession of the permit in and of itself doesn’t necessarily keep crime rates down, especially when one considers the fact that those who are willing to go through the expense and time of a handgun safety course, pass a background check and be vetted by their local police chief, or other responsible law enforcement agency for their area, aren’t likely to be running around committing crimes in the first place. Ergo, the issuing of a permit to those individuals to carry concealed is virtually a moot point.

   According to the report, Crime in Maine 2016, published by the Maine Department of Public Safety, over a five year period aggravated assaults peaked in 2016 with 1002 reported for that year.  The breakdown of that number, however, does not grant any ammunition to the anti-gun/anti-self defense crowd since of those 1002 assaults, only 7.4% actually involved the use of a firearm, which was exceeded by knife/cutting instrument (16%); other dangerous weapon (22.9%); and the most commonly used assault weapon category: Hands/Feet/Fists came in at 53.8%.

   Oddly, while firearms came in at the very bottom of the list of weapons used in the assaults in Maine, and Hands/Feet/Fists came in at the very top, followed by other weapons and knives/cutting instruments, the establishment media continues to be fixated on curtailing the right to own firearms as a solution to this problem.   The same crowd spouting “common sense gun laws” seems to have nothing to say about “common sense laws” to restrict the use of other items that could be used as weapons—such as baseball bats, ice picks or rocks—or even “common sense knife laws” even though all of those categories continually exceed firearms by double digits in Maine’s Aggravated Assaults category year after year.

   The demographics of the 2016 aggravated assault numbers in Maine shows that 87.2% of those arrested were males.  The number one age range was 40+ years (24.6%); followed by 25-29yrs (22.1%); and third place, 18-24yrs (19.1%).  The vast majority of the assaults by these individuals was classified as “strong arm” hands/feet/fists;  these types of assaults totaled 539 out of the 1002 assaults recorded and the months of highest occurrence were July and August.  Given the gender, age range, months of occurrence and type of assault, it is safe to assume most of them were essentially alcohol-induced fist fights in bars and night clubs.  There is currently no rally cry to ban alcohol, though, since that didn’t work out so well the last time it was tried in the 1920’s.

   When the law to rescind the Carry Concealed Weapon permit was offered by then Maine Senator, Eric Brakey (R-Androscoggin) it was met with vehement opposition by all of the usual liberal suspects.

   At the time, Portland Police Chief Michael Sauschuck argued removal of the permit requirement would “ultimately [hurt] the safety of our communities.”

   “When we roll into a scene, we’re looking for weapons,” Sauschuck said. “Common sense would say, why wouldn’t you have a permitting process before allowing someone to conceal a firearm in the community?”

   While he continues to use the buzz phrase, “common sense,” Sauschuck's criticism is short-sighted and truly lacks common sense when the subject is broached objectively.  For example, a person who is willing to get a concealed carry permit is one who already has agreed to obey the law by undergoing the safety training to obtain the permit and has been vetted by their local police chief, or the State police. When officers “roll into a scene” the criminals they will be dealing with will, in all likelihood, be carrying a concealed weapon without first going through that permitting process and will not have a permit anyway.  While, on the other hand, those in the area who do have the CCW permit are in all likelihood not people officers need to worry about to begin with. Ergo, common sense dictates having a state permitting system does not actually guarantee police access to information about whether a particular subject has a gun on his person, or not.

   Now that Maine has elected a radical socialist Democrat governor who is violently opposed to people exercising their right to self defense, the rally cry to abolish firearms ownership can be expected to be ramped up to a feverish pitch in order to address an issue that is not even really a problem in Maine at this point.

   Firearms-related crimes in Maine continue to be extremely low and by Democrats focusing on firearms exclusively, they fail to address the much larger problem of assaults with knives, hands, fists, feet and other equally dangerous weapons which vastly outnumber assaults committed with firearms.  Unless, of course, they bring in their brown shirt gang-bangers from the CIA to instigate some stage-managed gun crimes and mass shootings to get the ball rolling in their favor.  When they do, at least many Mainers will be clued in to their contrived tactics.