To: The United States House of Representatives and The United States Senate
Our right to protect ourselves
American citizens use a firearm to defend themselves more than 2.4 million times EVERY YEAR. That is more than 6,500 times EVERY DAY. This means that, each year, firearms are used 60 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives. Furthermore, of the 2.4 million self-defense cases, more than 192,000 are by women defending themselves against sexual assault. And in less than eight percent of those occasions is a shot actually fired. The vast majority of the time (92%), the mere presence of a firearm helps to avert a major crime from occurring.
Concealed weapons permits(CWPs) already have a list of establishments where concealed weapons are not permitted, any establishment that is not on this list shall not have the right to prevent someone from lawfully carrying their weapon.
Another class of CWP needs to be issued that will allow certain individuals, who go through a much more stringent testing, similar to what it takes to become a police officer, to be allowed to carry into all establishments including those that are currently restricted.
Why is this important?
The Denver movie theater demanded that patrons disarm themselves. This rule did not prevent some crazed lunatic from bringing in several firearms and killing 12 people. All it did was disarm those lawful citizens with valid concealed weapons permits(CWP) who could have prevented this tragedy.
If someone can serve in the military or serve in the police force to protect people then they should also be allowed to continue to protect people in everyday places such as movie theaters even when they are off duty.
We need to lift any unnecessary restrictions off of the current CWP laws and institute a new classification of CWP that will allows certain people such as former law enforcement, military or the equivelant, to be allowed to carry their weapons into all establishments.