Anti-Gun Hysteria Doesn't Pan Out in Atlanta

The Examiner took a look a the aftermath of some new gun laws in Georgia and how reality compared to the anti-gun hysteria that followed the change in the law:

The Georgia General Assembly passed HB 89 in 2008, which made criminal prohibitions on carrying firearms on public transportation, in restaurants that serve alcohol, in state parks, and in wildlife management areas inapplicable to Georgians possessing a firearms license. HB 89 took effect on July 1, 2008, and many predicted mass bloodshed as a result. Nowhere was the controversy so acute as the city of Atlanta and its public transportation system.

The city of Atlanta immediately declared the airport off limits to firearms, and won a lawsuit filed by GeorgiaCarry.Org seeking to enjoin arrests of people with firearms licenses at the Atlanta airport. The other hot button issue was the carry of firearms on the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit system, known affectionately to Atlantans by the acronym MARTA. People predicted shootouts on the trains and busses, and both the city of Atlanta and MARTA officials lobbied strenuously against the bill.

MARTA bus drivers gathered more than 1,000 signatures on a petition to have bullet proof shields installed, as if Georgia firearms licensees had just been waiting for the new law to pass so that they could shoot a bus driver. "We don't want cameras. Cameras don't save people's lives. ... We want something that gives us a fighting chance," said Terry Jackson, the MARTA driver who started the petition. Beverly Scott, MARTA's general manager, called the bill "vigilantism."

Atlanta's mayor went so far as to declare, "The presumption needs to be, in order to have a safe city, that there are no concealed weapons."

MARTA Office of Government and Community Relations employee Rhonda Briggins issued a widely distributed "Call to Action!" alert calling the gun bill "a recipe for disaster."

So at the end of 2009, it is worth a look to see what actually happened to crime rates on MARTA. Since July of 2008, there have been no news stories of blazing gun battles on MARTA, which would surely have been newsworthy events. That leaves interested researchers with the publicly available crime rates, and they tell a story at odds with the hysterical predictions of 2008.

Murders drop to zero

In 2007, MARTA had two murders occur on its property. In 2008, the year the new law took effect and peaceable citizens began lawfully carrying firearms on MARTA trains and busses, the number of murders dropped to zero, and there has not been a murder reported on the system since.

Robbery rate drops

The murder rate was not the only category of violent crime to go down in the wake of the new gun law. There were 94 robberies on the MARTA system in 2007. In 2008, the year the new law took effect, the number of robberies dropped to 71, and in 2009, it has dropped again to 67 (although we still have two weeks to go).

Overall rate lower

The overall rate per number of riders has also dropped since the new law took effect.

You have to understand the liberal mindset when it comes to guns. Guns are inherently evil, and anyone possessing one is likely to become evil. You never know when they'll just pull out a gun and start blasting away.

In reality, wherever concealed carry laws have been relaxed crime has gone down. Why? Criminals don't like targets that might shoot back so they seek different opportunities. All it takes is a story or two of an armed citizen stopping an attack or robbery with his personal weapon to take the enthusiasm out of the bad guys.

Bad guys seek soft targets. The potential of armed citizens in a particular area makes that a much harder target and one that's not worth attempting.

However, no matter how many situations like the one in the story above are documented, liberals will never understand that guns are tools, and in the hands of the right person, can create a more polite and safer society.