http://www.politifact.com/florida/s...-gaetz/violent-crime-lower-states-open-carry/
Not all open carry states are the same, however, and laws vary from state to state. The
Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence lists states that prohibit the open carry of handguns in public places, states that allow open carrying without a permit, and states that require some form of license to open carry. They currently list
five statesthat prohibit the open carrying of handguns in public places.
But that’s not the only issue with these statistics.
We asked several experts about Gaetz’s methodology. Many of them said the single law was too narrow to draw meaningful conclusions about its impact. In essence, his number -- for one year -- is right, but so what?
Gaetz framed the use of the stats as "evidence that this bill does not create a less safe environment." John Pierce, co-founder of gun rights group OpenCarry.org, agreed with that point. But he said the data doesn't necessarily reflect a correlation between allowing open carry and fewer instances of violent crime.
He noted that Texas and Florida are both populous states with huge numbers of concealed carry permit holders so focusing just on open carry laws will give a skewed picture about the effect of legally-armed citizens on crime rates.
Tomislav Kovandzic, a University of Texas professor who teaches classes on research methods and gun control, was more blunt.
"The problem with this approach is that it implicitly assumes that both groups of states were identical/similar before the laws in the treatment states (in this case, open carry states) were enacted," Kovandzic told PolitiFact via email. "This is rarely, if ever, the case. As a result, the comparison merely reflects group differences that existed before the treatment states enacted the laws."
