But, the possession of such a permit in most States does reveal quite a bit about the individual and statements to the contrary simply do not bear up to an objective investigation. Ignoring the extremely rare case of permits issued in error, the possession of a permit to carry reveals that the person was eligible to get the permit. In most cases this revels a clean criminal and mental health history. In Utah, for example, persons with a permit are less likely than the general population to ever commit a serious crime and FAR less likely to commit a serious crime than is a person who is ineligible for a permit.
I have respect for folks who get permits so that they may carry when otherwise they wouldn't, but that has nothing whatever to do with my objection.
Anyway, selection bias: comparing those who
have permits with those who are
ineligible to have permits.
Not being able to get a permit says a thing or two. But it simply doesn't work the other way. What can you affirmatively say about the trustworthiness of a person who has received a felony conviction? Now, what can you say affirmatively about the trustworthiness of
everyone else?
Statistically, most crimes are committed by a few people. So, statistically, by eliminating those people you've eliminated "most crimes" from consideration. But that doesn't reveal much of use (this is why statistics and technocratic analysis, and by extension things like government licensure, tend to be useless), because those people wouldn't bother getting permits anyway. Unfortunately, the vast majority of remaining crimes (especially serious crimes like murder) are committed by those without an extensive rap sheet. Most of those folks
could receive permits; whether they do so or not must depend on other factors not under consideration.
There is nothing inherent about licensure which disfavors these "late in life" killers. If these folks are less likely to seek permits, there are other sociological causes, which are free to change at any time (being independent of the law).
When you
know an individual is a criminal (i.e. has received a felony conviction), you are equipped to make a specific judgment about that person. But knowing a person has no convictions is not the same as knowing they are not a criminal. What you have here is the difference between making a specific statement about one specific individual, and making a class (category) assumption about the other.
Individuals are not statistics. It is not especially meaningful to discuss the "likelihood" of a given
individual's actions, while it may be quite meaningful to do this to people as a
class. For instance, I am highly unlikely to be killed my any person I meet walking down to the convenience store. Therefore, as a class, people I meet walking down the street are "unlikely to commit crimes". Now, say I encounter a particular individual walking down the street. All I know about him is that he belongs to the class of "people walking down the street". What else am I equipped to say or predict about his likelihood of killing me
compared to everybody else's? The answer is, of course, "nothing", from which we can see that class generalizations do not readily apply usefully to the individual.
I'm sorry, Charles. I just don't buy it. Lots of work has been done massaging numbers to prove one or other various political points, but you're a long way from demonstrating that category distinctions such as "people I do not know to have committed crimes" have utility, or that government is particularly positioned to make these determinations, or indeed even that a criminal history is an especially good criterion for making the determination. After all, government has implicitly declared that all presently-employed police are stable, law-abiding, professional individuals (certainly none of them are convicted felons).
The simple fact is when you are comfortable around a random stranger, you are making a class/category judgment. You are making the same sort of judgment about a licensed individual. The only implication from selecting permit-holders as a "more preferable" category is that non-permit holders are "less preferable". But why should you treat a non-permit-holder any differently from any random Joe of the street? If you shouldn't, then why are we touting the merits of permit eligibility?
Frankly, it seems to me that you're operating from a position of innumeracy coupled with an exaggerated, credentialist notion of the value of bureaucratic approval.