A policeman carries a gun to protect himself and other citizens. Guns are safety/rescue tools - not significantly different from your cell phone, your spare tire, your flashlight, your fire extinguisher or your first aid kit. Any of these tools can be used for good or evil. A policeman will carry all of the above in his patrol car; so will a first-responder; so will any self-sufficient responsible citizen.
"Crimes are stopped with guns about five times as frequently as crimes are committed with guns." John Lott "Gun Laws Can Be Dangerous, Too" Wall Street Journal, May 12, 1999 "
"Analyzing county-level data for the entire United States from 1977 to 2000, we find annual reductions in murder rates between 1.5 and 2.3 percent for each additional year that a right-to-carry law is in effect. For the first five years that such a law is in effect, the total benefit from reduced crimes usually ranges between about $2 billion and $3 billion per year." Lott, John R., Plassmann, Florenz and Whitley, John E., Confirming More Guns, Less Crime, December 9, 2002
A gun is the most effective defense against rape. When women are armed with a gun or knife an attempted rape is 10 times less likely to be completed. U.S. Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, Rape Victimization in 26 American Cities (1979), p. 31. and see also Guns Effective Defense Against Rape by Robert J. Wooley, MD
"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." (David Kopel "More Permits Mean Less Crime..." Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 1996, Monday, p. B-5)"
"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." Guncite
"So far in Virginia, not a single Virginia permit holder has been involved in a violent crime. Similar results have been observed in Kentucky, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and other states for which detailed records are available" John R. Lott, Jr. License to Kill?
"Dade County, Florida, kept meticulous records for six years, and of 21,000 permit holders, there was no known incident of a permit holder injuring an innocent person. In addition, since Virginia passed a right-to-carry law more than 50,000 permits have been issued, but not one permit holder has been convicted of a crime and violent crime has dropped." H. Sterling Burnett, No Smoking Guns
"The reality is that criminals commit nearly 10 million violent crimes a year in the United States. And nationwide, with only 75,000 to 80,000 police officers on duty at any one time, police are simply unable to prevent most of the crimes that occur. This means that citizens are ultimately responsible for their own defense. Fortunately, research shows that they are often up to the task. Victims use firearms approximately 2.5 million times each year in self-defense, according to Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck." H. Sterling Burnett, No Smoking Guns
"911, Please hold..." Police have no obligation to respond to 911 calls, and if they do respond it is usually too late to prevent violent crimes. 1992, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership Report, Dial 911 and Die. and also a different book by the same name from Richard Stevens.
Maryland is #1 for robbery, #2 for murder, and #3 for violent crime in the nation. FBI Uniform Crime Reports
Although a permit holder may only defend their life, not their money, the current Maryland CCW permit system grants permits almost exclusively to those with money or political pull.
Criminals carry guns without permits - why should it be more difficult for the law-abiding citizen to carry than for the criminal? Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware and Pennsylvania are among 30 states that will trust law-abiding Maryland residents to carry guns in their states - but Maryland will not allow those same law-abiding Maryland citizens the right to carry in their own home state for their self-defense.
The vast majority of states (74%) are now "shall-issue" - Maryland needs to make its CCW law "shall-issue" to allow law-abiding citizens to protect themselves and to reduce violent crime.
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -- Thomas Jefferson's Commonplace Book, 1774-1776, quoting from On Crimes and Punishment, 1764, by criminologist Cesare Beccaria.
"[A]rms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them." -- Thomas Paine