Statistically, a case has been made that American communities where concealed weapons are permitted have lower incidences of violent crime than less permissive jurisdictions.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q...2U3YTU4YzNmNGE=
The primary purveyor of the theory is reputable economist John Lott:
There is a strong negative relationship between the number of law-abiding citizens with permits and the crime rate—as more people obtain permits there is a greater decline in violent crime rates. For each additional year that a concealed handgun law is in effect the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2 percent, and robberies by over 2 percent.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/493636.html
There is some dispute as to the interpretation of that data:
http://www.jcpr.org/wpfiles/LudwigGu...TOKEN=43960794
and
http://islandia.law.yale.edu/ayers/pdf/lottreview.pdf
There is also the theory that you see in your local paper from the Calgary police that people used to get into fist fights when they had a dispute. Now they're using knives and access to guns would mean they'd likely use them.
Lastly, if I'm not mistaken, Great Britain, which has restrictive gun control policies, recently passed America as a place where the common citizen is most likely to be the victim of a violent crime.
I'll also note that in the four years since the America engaged the Iraq conflict, about 64000 Americans have died violently - murdered - within their own borders versus 3,300 on the battlefield. One number is 19 times higher than the other but obviously the more relevant number politically is the smaller one.
Cowperson