Somebody Finally Admits It!
Licensed Citizens are "Responsible Gun Owners"
A gun control proponent recently acknowledged that citizens
licensed to carry "tend to be responsible gun owners." How about that?!
By Dave Workman. Aug 25, 2025
Article Source
Here's something you don't see every day, especially at a "mainstream" publication such as Axios, where a recent story — which (full disclosure) included a quote from yours truly — featured a stunning acknowledgement from the CEO of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, a Seattle-based, billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobbying group.
"While we acknowledge more guns pose a greater threat to our communities, CPL holders tend to be responsible gun owners," Alliance boss Renee Hopkins told Axios.
From an anti-gunner in the Evergreen State, that's a choking mouthful. Just to make sure it wasn't a typo, I spoke with reporter Christine Clarridge, a veteran journalist not known for flubbing a quote and was satisfied the remark was accurate.
Which raises the question: If the gun control crowd admits law-abiding, legally-armed citizens are not a problem, why do anti-gun-rights advocates continue pushing legislation which they know will only affect the good guys? The easy answer: They know honest citizens will remain so and they also know trying to get criminals to comply is a dead-end endeavor.
Back in 2021, Dr. John Lott, founder and CEO at the Crime Prevention Research Center, did an essay on just how law-abiding CCW permit holders are. To give readers an idea about where his research went, Lott wrote this: "In Florida and Texas, permit holders are convicted of firearms-related violations at one-twelfth of the rate at which police officers. In the 19 states with comprehensive permit revocation data, the average revocation rate is one-tenth of one percent. Usually, permit revocations occur because someone moved or died or forgot to bring their permit while carrying."
Dr. John Lott, founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center,
says private citizens licensed to carry are far more law-abiding
than most other people.
He added, "Academics have published fifty-two peer-reviewed, empirical studies on concealed carry. Of these, 25 found that allowing people to carry reduces violent crime, and 15 found no significant effect. A minority (12) observed increases in violent crime. These 12, however, suffer from a systematic error to varying degrees: they tend to focus on the last 20 years and compare states that recently passed concealed carry laws with more lenient states that had sustained growth in permits over the past two decades. The finding that crime rose relatively in such states is consistent with permit holders reducing crime."
The Axios piece centered on Clarridge's report about the rising number of concealed pistol licenses in Washington state. I've been reporting on this for some years, but the establishment media avoids the story like the Olympic shooting competitions. Nobody on the left wants to acknowledge the Evergreen State has more than 709,000 active CPLs, and that roughly 20 percent of those licenses are held by women. What's the number in your state, and what percentage of armed citizens are women?
In the Federal Court #1
Last month, a coalition of six major Second Amendment groups joined in a federal lawsuit challenging the ban on suppressors in the state of New Jersey. It's a good effort against a stupid law.
The complaint was filed by attorneys representing the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), American Suppressor Association (ASA), National Rifle Association (NRA), Safari Club International (SCI), Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs (ANJRPC) and the New Jersey Firearms Owners Syndicate (NJFOS).
This one is worth watching because suppressors actually have a benefit to one's hearing. They lower the muzzle blast of a pistol to a reasonable 120-140 decibels. According to a statement from the group, "why the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the National Hearing Conservation Association, the Academy of Doctors of Audiology, the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgeons, and Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership all recommend the use of suppressors as a tool to mitigate preventable hearing damage."
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
A federal judge ruled against the Los Angeles County Sheriff's
Department in its effort to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the
agency's foot-dragging on carry permit applications.
In the Federal Court #2
Last month in a federal District Court, Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett — a 2022 Joe Biden appointee — denied in part a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Second Amendment Foundation, California Rifle and Pistol Association (CRPA), Gun Owners of America (GOA), Gun Owners Foundation (GOF), Gun Owners of California (GOC), and several individual plaintiffs challenging the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for delaying concealed carry permits.
In a case known as CRPA v. LASD, Judge Garnett ruled SAF has standing to sue the department on behalf of all of its members.
"This means that as the case progresses to a final judgment, any favorable outcome for SAF will apply to its entire membership facing similar delays," SAF said in a prepared statement.
Letting permit applications gather dust has been a favorite tactic of anti-gun law enforcement agencies across the country. As the lawsuit continues, it should send a signal to other agencies to stop the foot-dragging. The sheriff's department had filed a motion to dismiss, which SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb said was an effort to "severely restrict the scope of relief SAF is seeking in this suit."
"At the core of their argument," Gottlieb said, "was the idea that even if the court dragged them kicking and screaming into processing these permit applications, they should only have to do so for the handful of individual plaintiffs, while continuing to violate the rights of all other SAF members in the state. We're thrilled the court saw through this guise and shot this motion down."
Back in March, the Justice Department launched an investigation into the sheriff's department's alleged foot dragging, according to Courthouse News. The lawsuit, filed in late 2023, alleged "Defendants have flat-out denied Plaintiffs their rights to be armed outside of their homes by establishing an onerous permitting regime replete with exorbitant poll tax-like fees, egregious wait times lasting well over a year, and nefarious discretionary requirements designed to flout the Supreme Court's precedents." The original complaint may be read here.
Painful Consequences
Back in 1996, an emotion-driven citizen initiative banned mountain lion hunting with hounds in Washington State, and the consequences have been gradually showing in recent years, with cougar attacks on humans.
Dave lives in predator country and he doesn't leave the pavement
without a sidearm, so he's prepared in case of an emergency. Animal
attacks are rare, but when they happen, things get nasty fast.
In the most recent encounter, a 4-year-old toddler was attacked while on a family outing in the Olympia National Park. Sometime later, a second encounter was reported near the southwest Washington town of Toledo, about a hundred miles away.
The cat that attacked the child apparently was wearing a collar, and was tracked down the next day and killed. Another cougar was killed early last year by a Department of Fish & Wildlife agent after it attacked a woman cyclist near North Bend, and back in 2018, authorities tracked and killed a different mountain lion in the same general area after it killed one cyclist and mauled another while they were cycling on a gravel road.
In California, where cougar hunting is banned, there have been a couple of fatal attacks in recent years, one in 2024 and an earlier attack in 2004.
While mountain lion attacks are admittedly rare, they only need to happen to somebody once. Rare or not, you're not likely to find this humble correspondent traipsing around the wilds without a sidearm of ample caliber to, uh, adjust a predator's attitude.
