Lott concluded his book by asking: Will allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns save lives? The answer is positive (http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/493638).
This conclusion seems outrageous to the critics of Lott's book. Philip Cook, a professor of public-policy at Duke university, came up with the next argument: " A heavily armed public could easily lead to a more heavily armed army of robbers and assaulters- which would only result in a higher crime rate ("Should People Carry a Gun- 257). However, the assumption that easy access to guns causes crimes is refuted by the facts. The research conducted by the National Institute of Justice in 31 American states revealed that the states which have laws allowing the citizens to carry concealed firearms have 24 percent lower violent crime rate, a 19 percent lower murder rate and a 39 percent lower robbery rate than states that forbid concealed weapons. The truth is the nine states where the crime rate is the lowest permit their citizens to carry guns (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/190351.html). Another interesting evidence is an example of Bodie, one of the largest towns on the trans-Sierra frontier at the end of the ninetieth century. The records suggest that the rate of robbery, burglary, and rape in the town were significantly below the average numbers in modern America. Bodie's burglary rate, for instance, was 13 times lower than that of the US in 1980. Since the low enforcement in Bodie was not merely as effective as it is nowadays, the most effective crime prevention was the fact that almost everybody in the town owned a gun (McGrath, R. 17-21). Moreover, if the correlation between the crime rate and the number of guns really existed, Israel and Switzerland, the countries with the highest rate of gun possession, would be the most criminal places in the world (Krug, E. 245). However, these countries have a lower rate of homicides than the US (5.
