Michigan sees fewer gun deaths — with more permits (Detroit Free Press):
Six years after new rules made it much easier to get a license to carry concealed weapons, the number of Michiganders legally packing heat has increased more than six-fold.
But dire predictions about increased violence and bloodshed have largely gone unfulfilled, according to law enforcement officials and, to the extent they can be measured, crime statistics.
The incidence of violent crime in Michigan in the six years since the law went into effect has been, on average, below the rate of the previous six years. The overall incidence of death from firearms, including suicide and accidents, also has declined.
Michigan mirrors the experience of pretty much every state that’s liberalized its concealed carry laws: Hyberbolic predictions of the streets running red with blood before, reductions in violent crime after. With each new state that goes through this process, the former become more difficult to sustain and the latter harder to ignore (though some, of course, still do).
