Affirmative Alabama allows concealed carry permits (CCP); specifically it is a shall-issue state. Shall-issue is a jurisdiction that requires a license to carry a concealed handgun, but where the applicant only has to meet determinate criteria that have been laid out in the law. Therefore, the granting authority has no discretion in awarding the license, and there is no requirement of the applicant to demonstrate good cause. Alabama should abolish shall-issue concealed carry permits. There are three main advantages of abolishing the issue, the reduction of crime, less suicides, and fewer homicides.
An advantage of abolishing shall-issue concealed carry permits would be the reduction of crime rates. Two researchers at the Department of Economics, College of William and Mary found:
Guns make crime easier to commit. Armed criminals are more easily able to secure victim cooperation. Guns also make it easier to commit larger scale crimes, such as bank robbery. More guns, therefore, can increase the number of criminals and encourage current criminals to be more active. Also, more guns in homes can encourage burglary, since guns are valuable loot.
Ian Ayres and John Donohue, Law graduates from Stanford and Yale, say:
“While certain facially plausible statistical models appear to generate this conclusion, more refined analyses of more recent state and county data undermine the more guns, less crime hypothesis. The most robust finding on the state data is that certain property crimes rise with passage of shall- issue laws… Estimating more statistically preferred disaggregated models on more complete county data, we show that in most states shall- issue laws have been associated with more crime and that the apparent stimulus to crime tends to be especially strong for those states that adopted in the last decade.
Concealed carry permits increase crime by allowing an escalation in violence.
Another advantage would be the number of people that wouldn’t commit suicide. The American Journal of Public Health states:
Suicide is a serious public health concern that is responsible for almost 1 million deaths each year worldwide. It is commonly an impulsive act by a vulnerable individual. The impulsivity of suicide provides opportunities to reduce the risk of suicide by restricting access to lethal means. In the United States, firearms, particularly handguns, are the most common means of suicide. Despite strong empirical evidence that restriction of access to firearms reduces suicides, access to firearms in the United States is generally subject to few restrictions… In a survey of 36 wealthy nations, the United States was unique in having the highest overall firearm mortality rate and the highest proportion of suicides by firearms. Guns are used for more suicides in the United States each year than for homicides (17,352 vs. 12,632). There is strong evidence that access to firearms, whether from household availability or a new purchase, is associated with increased risk of suicide. The risk of suicide by guns is far higher in states with high rates of gun ownership than in those with low ownership rates. The increased risk of suicide applies not only to the gun owner but also to others living in a household with guns. One study found that adults who have recently purchased a handgun are at increased risk of suicide by gun within a week of gun purchase, with the increase in risk persisting for at least six years. That study and others suggest that some gun purchases are made specifically with the intent of suicide. Gun availability in the household is associated with risks and benefits. The risks include accidental or intentional injury to one's self or family members, whereas the benefits include protection against home intruders and deterrence of crime. A recent review of the scientific literature concluded that in contemporary American society, the health risk of having a gun in the household outweighs the benefits, with compelling