When you carry concealed, you raise NO doubts whatsoever because no one knows you're carrying.
At the individual level, that is certainly true. But at the macro level? Lott's work offers evidence to support the thesis that as the number of persons carrying (generally looking at CC, I believe), violent crime rates decline. The economic theory is that as the risk of facing an armed victim rises, the cost of engaging in violent crime increases, and this decreases the "demand" for such activities.
Looking at this, we might go so far as to suggest that OC is better for the individual gun carrier as criminals are likely to move on to a softer target and the LAC who is OCing is less likely to ever need to draw her gun. On the flip side, widespread CC may be better in reducing crime rates overall as criminals cannot determine which potential victims to avoid and so must weigh whether to engage in the violent crime at all or whether to find less confrontational methods (ie smash and grabs, ID theft, etc) to obtain ill-gotten gains.
This is, of course, ignoring the benefits to the RKBA community (and thus ultimately to the nation) from the educational and social normalizing that takes place through OCing but doesn't (to nearly the same degree) when CCing.
It is also assuming that we are unlikely to ever achieve anywhere close to 100% of adults carrying guns. As we look at States with a long history of shall issue permits and laws that still favor obtaining a permit rather than carrying sans permit, we can get an idea for how many adults will obtain a permit. Utah currently has slightly over 10% of our adults (21 years+) holding Utah permits, with more Utah permits issued to non-Utah-residents than to residents. According to
this political fact checking site (checking on a claim by Jeb Bush) Florida and Connecticut have a total number of valid permits equal to about 6% of their total population. With 20% of the population under 18 years, and a lot of permits issued to non-residents, we might figure about 5% of adults have permits in Florida. According to
this news report out of Florida in April 2014, "5 percent of people in that [Miama-Dade county have] permits ... [while in] Nassau County, ... 13 percent of adults hold concealed weapons permits." (I question whether the station really calculated the difference between total population and adult population in these numbers.)
In any event, methinks that if everyone who carried OCd, criminals could readily avoid 1 person in 10 or even 1 in 5 who is OCing, choosing to prey upon those who are not armed. However, if most everyone CCd, criminals might find 1 in 10 (or even 1 in 20 or 1 in 100) odds of picking an armed victim to be much too high for a long term career in violent crime. The addict feeding a fairly small habit who is mugging 2 people a week is going to run through 100 victim in a year. If I've got my math right, even if only 1 in 100 persons CCs, he would have a 63% chance of facing an armed "victim" within that year, and an 87% chance of facing an armed victim within two years. If 1 in 10 is CCing, he has a 99% chance of facing an armed victim within the first 50 confrontations.
Just some food for thought and maybe discussion.
Charles
