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I wonder how effective / causally important this really is. I suppose it would be quite difficult to study empirically even if one wanted to. But, for example, to my knowledge there are places like Albuquerque which have a reputation for violently drugged-out homeless people and also permissive gun laws; on the other hand here in Boston, which has famously draconian gun laws -- up until a few years ago you couldn't even carry pepper spray, although that was eventually repealed on the (annoyingly identitarian but frankly correct) grounds that it was bad for women (as a small aside, I have known two separate women here who regularly carry knives, which is still quite illegal) -- the bums are not that bad, in the grand scheme of bums, and the bad ones tend to stay localized to known bad areas.
To be clear, I broadly support gun rights, and certainly if I lived in a city known for having violent addicts on the streets I would want to be able to carry a gun. However, while this would certainly have a benefit for the safety of the individual gun owners I am not convinced it would actually have any meaningful impact on the broad behavior of the homeless population -- I would expect the fear effect to be minimal on strung-out junkies who have already largely taken leave of their senses, and I would expect the, shall we say, culling effect to be negligible.
New Orleans and St Louis are extremely dangerous cities with very lax handgun laws. Concealed carry is not a solution to general crime. But it does serve to raise the stakes for homeless psychos; few of them are hassling bodybuilders.
I support concealed carry because the people who carry concealed should be prioritized over the people who attack them. This is clearly accomplished. I agree that the worst handful of homeless are unlikely to be deterred but most of even the psychos make some risk calculations.
Yeah, this part I very much agree with.
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