On CCW in general:
From:
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdgcon.htmlIn 1987, when Florida enacted such legislation, critics warned that the "Sunshine State" would become the "Gunshine State." Contrary to their predictions, homicide rates dropped faster than the national average. Further, through 1997, only one permit holder out of the over 350,000 permits issued, was convicted of homicide. (Source: Kleck, Gary Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, p 370. Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York, 1997.) If the rest of the country behaved as Florida's permit holders did, the U.S. would have the lowest homicide rate in the world.
From: Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 1996
In Florida, where 315,000 permits have been issued, there are only five known instances of violent gun crime by a person with a permit. This makes a permit-holding Floridian the cream of the crop of law-abiding citizens, 840 times less likely to commit a violent firearm crime than a randomly selected Floridian without a permit.
From: "More Guns, Less Violent Crime", Professor John R. Lott, Jr., The Wall Street Journal, August 28, 1996
Our most conservative estimates show that by adopting shall-issue laws, states reduced murders by 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7% and robbery by 3%. If those states that did not permit concealed handguns in 1992 had permitted them back then, citizens might have been spared approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and 12,000 robberies. To put it even more simply criminals, we found, respond rationally to deterrence threats... While support for strict gun-control laws usually has been strongest in large cities, where crime rates are highest, that's precisely where right-to-carry laws have produced the largest drops in violent crimes.
I'll grant that drawing a causal relationship between reduced crime stats and shall issue CCW laws would be wrong, at least on this evidence alone. However this does lend strong support to the conclusion that liberalized CC issuance does not result in aggregate increased gun violence or that there is statistically significant increase in criminal gun use by CCW holders. Indeed, the evidence is strong enough to conclude that legal CCW holders, even under liberalized CCW laws, are drastically less likely to commit violent gun crime than others of the population.
Changing topics, I read the NYT article that was linked to earlier in the thread. I found nothing overtly concerning about the cases mentioned in the article.
1) Prostitute kills a guy who threatened to kill her and then himself: She managed to get his gun away from him and shot the guy. This is how the article describes it. How did she get it away from him? Was there a struggle? Was she in a position to evade (yes, read into that all you want)? I'm inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the person originally threatened.
2) Cabbie kills drunkard: He had to stun gun the guy out of the cab because he wouldn't leave. The guy pulls an object (cabbie says he thought it was a knife) and make a move toward him, cabbie fires a shot or two toward the mans feet and yet he continued to move toward the cabbie, cabbie shoots and kills him. The suggestion is made that the cabbie could have called in on the radio. Perhaps so, but that is only in relation to his trying to get the man out of the cab in the first place, after he removed the man he doesn't seem to have been in a position to do so. Should he have called it in from the get go? Assuming the man wasn't belligerent, yeah probably, but then again we don't know what kind of neighborhood this was, what time it was (coming from a bar probably safe to assume it was night, perhaps late), or how the occupant was behaving besides refusing to leave the cab. It was also suggested that the cabbie could have evaded by getting in his cab. We have no idea if his car door was open, if he was blocked by the rear door, how close the guy was to the cabbie, or of the pace and timing of the events. Without more info it is hard to say. In this case, however, the guy was tried, but not convicted for his actions (9-3 deadlock leaning against him). The quoted line from the jury foreman doesn't instill much confidence in me that they were serious about protecting the accused's self-defense rights (“He could have just gotten in his cab and left. The thing could have been avoided, and a man’s life would have been saved.”), but without knowing more about the case I won't pass judgement either way.
3) Ex cop shoots neighbor (not dead) after heated argument about garbage: It is not as simple as "the neighbor shot over the number of garbage bags he put out". I note that this was an ex cop that shot the guy. While some are eager to hold the police in the lowest regard, as a general rule they are a good bunch. They also tend to know the law when it comes to gun use and have training in offensive and defensive gun use under high stress situations. The case basically boils down to he said, he said. Neighbor knocks on cop's door, argument ensues, cop alleges neighbor put foot in door while trying to close it and that neighbor tried to make forced entry into the house, ex cop shoots neighbor in gut. That's the extent of what the article says. If that is indeed all there is and it is supported by the evidence (scuff marks in the door jamb? blood evidence?) then that is a reasonable use of force.
The act of making (or being in the immediate process of making) unauthorized entry into a home is in and of itself threatening to the occupant(s) and, should the occupant(s) feel their lives are in danger, are entitled to use deadly force (in my ever so humble opinion, that is not the law in my state of NY). I would make an attempt to call police and warn the intruder off and inform him of having a gun (if I did have one) if at all possible, but the intruder takes on the risk of lethal force being applied to him by being in the house and is not entitled to that warning. Regardless of the level of actual threat the intruder poses or what their state of mind is, all levels of risk are justly perceived by the occupants in the heat of the moment. The fact that laws exist that would hold a person in such a situation to instantaneously assume a dispassionate, rational, highly empathetic posture toward that intruder, to the point of requiring evasion, backing up "to the wall", warnings, assessment of threat level, etc. instead of acknowledging and accepting natural self-defense imperatives and human physiological responses when confronted with such an invasion and situation... it boggles the mind.
Lastly on this:
“They’re basically giving citizens more rights to use deadly force than we give police officers, and with less review,” said Paul A. Logli, president of the National District Attorneys Association.
Um... yeah. Of course we hold government to a higher standard of proof, both in prosecution of the law (innocent until proven guilty) and when it comes to explaining actions of police and other such agents. There may be room for argument around the edges of the "castle doctrine" law, but crying foul over citizens being held to a lower standard than the police is not a good line of such argument.
Uh, it was a Halloween Party, boyz. A costume party. Even if you understand English, who's to say you drop on that command at a masquerade event? Especially if you're not acting in a lethally-threatening manner at the time.
(Well, outside of NE PA. 
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