Concealed carry does more harm than good

Statistics show concealed carry only leads to more injuries and deaths

Tanner Smith, JagWire editor-in-chief

What do a bar, a college campus and a state park have in common? They’re all places where you can bring your gun because of Kansas’s laws on concealed carry. This means that just about everywhere you go, people can carry a gun. This should not be allowed. Concealed carry should not be legal.

While some gun advocates will argue that concealed carry helps to stop crime, the overwhelming data suggests that putting guns in more situations actually leads to more shootings.

According to a study by the the National Bureau of Economic Research, concealed carry has increased crime by 15 percent in states that allow it.

If you put guns in more situations, more people get shot by those guns. According to a study by Giffords Law Center, at least 32 mass shootings and 1,289 killings have been a direct result of concealed carry laws.

Another huge problem is that the laws surrounding concealed carry are ineffective at best. For starters, you need no permit to concealed carry in Kansas, meaning that if you purchased your gun by legal means you can take it pretty much anywhere.

While laws should be able to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, through processes like buying guns at a gun show people can legally get guns without ever having training or a background check. The final issue with concealed carry is that in places like college campuses, bars and even just walking down the street, places where you should be safe, there can be guns all around you.

This needs to change. We cannot let people walk around with a firearm without proper vetting pretty much anywhere they want. It is vital that we stop concealed carry because it does much more harm than good.

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