Correlation isn't causation, but Wikipedia tends to be fairly balanced so they are kinda obligated to include those studies that
claim to disprove the book's conclusions. The thing is that John Lott is no idealogue, he's a scientist who went to great lengths to adjust & include the influences of social & other effects. I've actually read the book, and it's well done. It's certainly not all 'rah, rah our side is right!'. He explictly attempts to address in advance critisisms from other academics. Even though he is considered a political conservative now, (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lott) like many of us he didn't start there. (I was once a Green, then I grew up) He has publicly stated that when he started gathering data for this study, he didn't expect the conclusions that he found, but as a scientist he couldn't just ignore what the data was telling him. His methodology was praised by other academics in his field for it's accuracy and derided mostly by academics not in his field, mostly because of ideology. Ideology doesn't enter into the book at all, nor does the moral argument. It's purely an statistiacla examination of the results.
As I said NYC crime went down drastically, no thanks to guns. I see plenty of good studies that show that correlation isn't causation. A
Nonesense, as already noted a large reason that Louisville's numbers are worse than NYC's is due to the DUI manslaughter issue, which is a social ill completely unrelated to the presence or lack thereof of weaponry. If I could seperate that out of both cities stats I would, and I would wager that would result in a lower violent crime rate for louisville. 4 out of 100K is a tiny difference, easily overtaken by the (likely much) higher incidence of alcohol related vehicular mansluaghter around here. I'm not saying that it's somehow better to die from a drunk driver than from an armed mugger, but the statement above implies that Louisville's crime rate is higher as a result of privately owned guns, which is not the case.
Do you have statistics, or you're pulling numbers out of air? DUI happens in NYC also. I am saying that it's safer in NYC. Your implication that CCW made Louisville safer is ridiculous. Don't put your words in my mouth - I will say again for deaf: Guns have no correlation on crime.
You really want to compare 2.36 millions vs 53 thousands? I hope not.... And yes, 36% of NYC is foreign born.
So the United Nations (which has it's own police force, which I beleive is independent of NYC cops) and the Federal Reserve (which halso has it's own security force that I know is independent of NYC cops) justifies the massive difference in professional police forces?
Federal Reserve has no security outside, I just went to gym on Wall Street - you can see M-16 armed NYPD cops there (mostly to take pictures with tourists). United Nations has a bunch of NYPD outposts around it, and pretty much around every major embassy. So we have heavy police force - great. When you get even close to the density of the city, lets compare again. It still I fail to see how would CCW would improve crime rate in NYC?
Interesting, I didn't know that. How does the license holder get the gun to the property? Does he have to pay the NYC cops to carry it for him from the city limits? I heard on Stossel last night that about 300 people are arrested at Laguardia Airport each year and charged with illegal possesion of a firearm because they were traveling with it in a TSA approved lockbox and transfered through NYC, even though NYC was neither their destination nor origination. Even the cops admit this is screwed up, but the port authority must abide by the laws of NYC as well, and airport property is not exempt from those anti-private-gun laws. (Because they certainly aren't anti-gun laws, or the cops would be locking up theirs too)
Ammo and the gun in separate boxes in the trunk if you have a license. But if you're out of city, do NOT ever touch your gun (or box). Let the airline handle your baggage, i.e. if your flight got cancelled you can't take baggage with your gun in it.
Rarely will it go directly from offensive action to bullet in the face. You'd have to fight pretty hard to eventually get shot... starting with refusing to leave. 
