Hialeah: Only the Latest Mass Shooting by a Concealed Carry Killer

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

...in Hialeah, Florida, a man with a concealed handgun permit burned $10,000 in cash, set fire to his apartment, shot and killed six people, and then took two others hostage before the shooter, Pedro Vargas, was killed by police. An officer said it was "one of the worst shootings we've probably had ever in Hialeah."

But it wasn't the only mass shooting Hialeah has recently seen committed by a concealed handgun permit holder.

On June 6, 2010, Gerardo Regalado killed four women and wounded three others at Yoyito Cafe-Restaurant in Hialeah. As a witness described the scene: "He came in running, like a crazy man ... shooting everybody." Relatives described him as "pure evil" with a history of abusing women. And yet once again, the shooter had obtained a permit to carry a concealed handgun.

Florida is one of many states that allow virtually anyone to carry a concealed handgun in public. The result of these exceedingly lax concealed carry laws, combined with the failure to adopt other sensible gun violence prevention policies like background checks and a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, is that horrific events like these mass shootings in Hialeah are repeated over and over again.

Gunmen with concealed carry permits have been responsible for at least 25 mass shootings since 2007, claiming at least 113 victims when last weekend's Hialeah shooting is included, according to data we have compiled at the Violence Policy Center. Most states, including Florida, do not release information on crimes committed by concealed carry killers. However, based largely on news reports, we have found hundreds of examples of deadly incidents that include not only mass shootings, but other murders, unintentional deaths, and suicides.

The NRA touts concealed carry laws as the front line in its false argument that all you need to stop a "bad guy" with a gun is a "good guy" with a gun: an argument as simplistic as it is self-serving. But using a gun for legitimate self-defense purposes is extremely rare. A far more likely scenario is that the "good guy" with the gun becomes the "bad guy," endangering family, friends, coworkers, innocent bystanders, or themselves.

But, as we detail in our report Cash and Carry: How Concealed Carry Laws Drive Gun Industry Profits, that doesn't stop the gun industry from aggressively marketing guns that are specifically designed for concealed carry -- like the Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm pistol that George Zimmerman used to kill Trayvon Martin. Faced with a long-term decline in household firearms ownership, gun companies market concealed carry handguns as virtually guaranteeing personal safety. For example, in a full-page magazine ad, Beretta USA promotes its Nano "micro-compact carry pistol" as offering "8 Rounds of Prevention." Ironically, gun manufacturers also stress to potential civilian purchasers the law enforcement pedigree of guns such as the Glock 17 used in this week's Hialeah shooting -- even though we've tracked at least 14 law enforcement officers whose lives were ended by concealed carry killers.

Marketing their guns with false promises and a dismissive shrug when things go awry, the gun industry is unconcerned about the danger concealed handgun permit holders pose to the rest of us -- whether it's the latest "worst" shooting in Hialeah or anywhere else.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-sugarmann/hialeah-only-the-latest-m_b_3676274.html

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

...in Hialeah, Florida, a man with a concealed handgun permit burned $10,000 in cash, set fire to his apartment, shot and killed six people, and then took two others hostage before the shooter, Pedro Vargas, was killed by police. An officer said it was "one of the worst shootings we've probably had ever in Hialeah."

But it's the police I'm supposed to be afraid of and the concealed carry gun nuts that I am supposed to be comfortable with. Yeah, that sounds rational.

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

Ah yes a man hopped on illegal drugs who went into Roid rage and killed people.

Yes the gun is clearly the problem here .

You need to investigate before you keep posting this garbage.

This is two in a row in which the facts are totally different than the headline presented.

Maybe if the CC holder in your last story had been there he could have stoped him like he did the other criminal

So lets see

The guy was on illegal drugs

Committed Arson

But the gun killed those people

Seriously ?

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

Quote from article--"The result of these exceedingly lax concealed carry laws, combined with the failure to adopt other sensible gun violence prevention policies like background checks and a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, is that horrific events like these mass shootings in Hialeah are repeated over and over again."

Fact-Florida law required the shooter and he complied to undergo not only a back ground check, but he also took a 2 hour state mandated introduction class and a 4 hour safety class.

Isn't this exactly what you anti gun people keep telling us will prevent this exact kind of thing ?

The title is misleading

The article told out flat out lie about what the shooter had to do get his CC permit

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Ah yes a man hopped on illegal drugs who went into Roid rage and killed people.

Yes the gun is clearly the problem here .

You need to investigate before you keep posting this garbage.

This is two in a row in which the facts are totally different than the headline presented.

Maybe if the CC holder in your last story had been there he could have stoped him like he did the other criminal

So lets see

The guy was on illegal drugs

Committed Arson

But the gun killed those people

Seriously ?

The man had a concealed carry permit and legally carried the concealed weapon with which he murdered six people. He was one of the "law abiding" gun owners with a CC permit.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

This is two in a row in which the facts are totally different than the headline presented.

The title is misleading

Is, or is not the title of the linked article and the thread title the same?

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

The article told out flat out lie about what the shooter had to do get his CC permit

What lie did the article tell in regards to what the shooter had to do to get is permit?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

The man had a concealed carry permit and legally carried the concealed weapon with which he murdered six people. He was one of the "law abiding" gun owners with a CC permit.

Some people don't seem to grasp the reality that all criminals were once law abiding citizens.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Is, or is not the title of the linked article and the thread title the same?

It is the same. The truth appears to cause some severe buthurt with the gun nuts.

Some people don't seem to grasp the reality that all criminals were once law abiding citizens.

Indeed. They were law abiding citizens until they broke the law.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

It is the same. The truth appears to cause some severe buthurt with the gun nuts.

Indeed. They were law abiding citizens until they broke the law.

Every law abiding gun owner is a potential criminal.

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

Is, or is not the title of the linked article and the thread title the same?

yes not saying you did it but the whole story is BS.

Here are the Florida requirements for a CC permit..Background check,safety training and proven ability to handle a firearm safely..He did all that. Is this not the exact measures you and your anti-gun buddies have been telling us will stop gun violence ??

In fact Florida has the exact gun laws for A CC that many groups have been touting, nothing like the article described them..Lax was the word.

Ok back ground checks and training did not work..Next ?

http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/weapons/cw_license_eligibility_requirements_web.pdf

FLORIDA CONCEALED WEAPON OR FIREARM LICENSE

BASIC ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS AND DISQUALIFYING CONDITIONS

RESIDENCY AND AGE REQUIREMENTS

• You must be at least 21 years of age unless you are a servicemember, as defined in Section 250.01,

Florida Statutes, or you are a veteran of the United States Armed Forces who was discharged under

honorable conditions.

• Unless you are serving overseas in the United States Armed Forces, you must CURRENTLY RESIDE in

the UNITED STATES (US) AND be a US CITIZEN OR DEEMED A LAWFUL PERMANENT RESIDENT

ALIEN by Department of Homeland Security, US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS). If you are

serving overseas in the US Armed Forces, submit a copy of your deployment documentation with your

application. If you are not a US citizen, submit documentation issued by the USCIS proving you are a

permanent legal resident alien with proof you have resided in the state of residence (as shown on your

application) for at least 90 consecutive days prior to the date the application is submitted.

Proof of residence includes, but is not limited to:

1. Monthly utility, telephone, power, or cable bills, which show your name and address.

2. Monthly pay stubs or other documentation from your employer, which show your name and

address.

3. Monthly credit card statements, which show your name and address.

YOU MUST BE ABLE TO DEMONSTRATE COMPETENCY WITH A FIREARM (opens new browser window)

DISQUALIFYING CRIMES: FELONY CONVICTIONS

• It is important to understand exactly what the term “felony” means. A “felony” can be defined as any one

of the following:

 a criminal offense that is punishable under the laws of this state, or that would be punishable if

committed in this state, by death or imprisonment in the state penitentiary;

 a crime in any other state or a crime in the United States which is designated as a felony;

 or an offense in any other state, territory, or country punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding

one year.

• If you have been convicted of a felony in the State of Florida, you will be ineligible unless you have had

BOTH YOUR CIVIL AND FIREARM RIGHTS RESTORED by the Florida Office of Executive Clemency. If

the felony conviction occurred in another state, then your civil and firearm rights must have been restored

by the proper authorities in that jurisdiction, and you must meet all federal requirements.

• If you have been convicted of a felony under federal law, you are ineligible unless you have either

RECEIVED A PRESIDENTIAL PARDON or been granted relief from federal firearms disabilities.

• If you have had adjudication of guilt withheld or imposition of sentence suspended on a felony charge, you

are ineligible UNLESS THREE YEARS HAVE ELAPSED SINCE PROBATION OR ANY OTHER COURTIMPOSED CONDITIONS HAVE BEEN FULFILLED (or the record has been sealed or expunged).

DISQUALIFYING CRIMES: MISDEMEANOR VIOLENCE (not domestic violence)

• You will be disqualified if you have been found guilty of, or had adjudication of guilt withheld for, a

misdemeanor crime of violence UNLESS THREE YEARS HAVE ELAPSED SINCE PROBATION OR

ANY OTHER COURT-IMPOSED CONDITIONS HAVE BEEN FULFILLED (or the record has been sealed

or expunged.) This does not apply to misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence.

DISQUALIFYING CRIMES: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

• If you have been convicted of a domestic crime of violence, you will be deemed ineligible unless you can

show proof of one of the following three conditions:

a) that you have received relief from federal firearms disabilities;

b) that you have received a presidential pardon; or,

c) that a court has sealed or expunged the record.

• If you have had adjudication of guilt withheld or imposition of sentence suspended on any misdemeanor

crime of domestic violence, you will be INELIGIBLE for licensure UNLESS THREE YEARS HAVE

ELAPSED SINCE PROBATION OR ANY OTHER COURT-IMPOSED CONDITIONS HAVE BEEN

FULFILLED (or the record has been sealed or expunged).

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

It is the same. The truth appears to cause some severe buthurt with the gun nuts.

Indeed. They were law abiding citizens until they broke the law.

indeed you are correct truth causes Butt Hurt

Florida required proficiency training, background checks, and safety training.

Is that not what you have been proposing ?

Currently there is a 90 day backlog while investigators do the background check

Edited August 20, 2013 by The conciliator

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

indeed you are correct truth causes Butt Hurt

Florida required proficiency training, background checks, and safety training.

Is that not what you have been proposing ?

Gun safety and proficiency in 3 hours? That's the duration of the basic concealed weapons class in the state of Florida. One gains safety knowledge and gun handling proficiency in 3 hours? Only a gun nut would even consider making that ridiculous an argument. You don't disappoint.

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/14859-florida-update-concealed-carry-permits-up-violent-crime-down

Florida Update: Concealed Carry Permits Up, Violent Crime Down

The recent report from ABC News that in Florida, where there are more concealed weapons permits than anywhere else in the country, violent crime has dropped to the lowest point in history, delighted Sean Caranna, executive director of Florida Carry, Inc. “We’re happy to have facts and statistics put into these debates, because every time they do, we win,” he said.

Firearm-related violent crimes in Florida have dropped by one-third in just four years, 2007 to 2011, while concealed carry permits jumped by 90 percent in that period. Further, violent crime of any kind dropped almost as much, 26 percent.

There were naysayers, but their voices are becoming muted as more and more states have adopted “shall-issue” carry laws and have seen their own crime rates drop as well. One of the naysayers was Gary Kleck, a Florida State criminologist who calls himself “as liberal as they get.” He said the link between more permits and less crime might just be a coincidence. He said that nationally, crime has been falling steadily since 1991 and Florida’s numbers might just be part of that trend. He warned against drawing too hasty a conclusion that one statistic caused the other. "The real problem there in drawing conclusions is that you’re guessing why that decline or change in gun violence has occurred," he stated.

In a backhanded support of Kleck’s warning, Arthur Hayhoe, the executive director of the Florida Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, said “It’s difficult to attach gun control to the reduction of crime, and vice versa. We don’t know what works. We can’t prove that gun control works because we don’t have gun control laws.”

Kleck has authored numerous books and articles over the last 20 years, but none garnered as much national attention as his 1994 National Self-Defense Survey which, based on a survey of 5,000 households, concluded that there were far more incidents where gun owners defended themselves against potentially violent crime than there were actual crimes involving the use of guns. This outraged liberals who thought Kleck would find something that would support their typically anti-gun posture. One such was Marvin Wolfgang, another liberal Florida criminologist who described himself as being “as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among all criminologists in this country.” He said,

I would eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police. I hate guns — ugly, nasty instruments designed to kill people.... What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck … The reason I am troubled is that [he has] provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator … I do not like [his] conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault [his] methodology….

Such a report from Florida must encourage Professor John Lott, who in 2000 authored the groundbreaking book More Guns, Less Crime. Lott never intended to become the lightning rod for the anti-gun forces. He began the study initially because he saw that much of what passed for valid statistical analysis in the field was poorly done, and he saw an opportunity to correct and update it. What it did was change his life, and not necessarily for the better. In his recent update to the book, Lott wrote,

Ten years have passed since the second edition of this book. During that time, both the argument and the data have been hotly debated. This debate has often been unpleasant, vociferous, and even disingenuous. To say that my career has suffered as a result is something of an understatement.… And yet … within the scholarly community [my] research has withstood criticism and remains sound. Further, the additional ten years of data provide continued strong support for [my] arguments.…

When Florida passed the first “shall-issue” law requiring authorities to issue concealed weapons permits to qualified citizens upon request in 1987, critics warned that the Sunshine State would soon become the “Gunshine” State, with predictions of differences being settled by gun fights in the streets, and crime soaring. The exact opposite happened. As Guncite.com noted, “homicide rates dropped faster than the national average [and] through 1997, only one permit holder out of over the 350,000 permits issued, was convicted of homicide.”

That was then. This is now. Lott provided an update on right-to-carry laws for the Maryland Law Review last October in which he noted that there are now more than 912,000 permit holders in Florida, many of whom have had their permits for years. Across the country, as some 40 other states have joined Florida in its decision to allow “shall-issue” permits to its citizens, the number of permit holders has reached nearly eight million, and is still climbing. And Lott is getting support for his once-controversial view by recent studies showing similar declines in violent crime. Wrote Lott:

There have been a total of 29 peer reviewed studies by economists and criminologists, 18 supporting the hypothesis that shall-issue laws reduce crime, 10 not finding any significant effect on crime … and [one] paper … finding that right-to-carry laws temporarily increase one type of violent crime: aggravated assault.

He noted that the predicted disasters following passage of such laws never happened. In fact, despite more and more states adopting them, not a single one of those laws has been repealed. As Lott noted,

One simple measure of how well these laws have worked is a political one: despite states adopting right-to-carry laws as long ago as the 1920s, there has never even been a legislative hearing held to rescind these laws.

In that paper, Lott took delight in debunking so-called studies by anti-gun groups that have distorted the data to prove a different, and less favorable, conclusion:

A June 2010 analysis of the gun control groups’ claims examined those groups’ claims for Florida: the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center portray Florida as Ground Zero for problems with concealed handgun permit holders.

They boldly assert that seventeen Florida permit holders have “killed” people with their guns over the past three years [from May 2007 to May 2010] and that this one state by itself accounts for seventeen of the ninety-six “killer” permit holders nationwide.

Yet even though a newspaper reported on the shooting, seven cases were such clear-cut cases of self-defense that no one was even charged with a crime, three cases involved suicide, and two of the other cases, including one involving a police officer, actually didn't involve permit holders. [Emphases added.]

That means that, following Lott’s rigorous refutation of those inflated statistics, just five out of more than half a million permit holders were involved in a criminal case in that three-year period.

That latest information from Florida just confirms what Lott had discovered years ago: Carrying reduces crime. Wrote Lott: "Armageddon never happened … in state after state when right-to-carry laws have been adopted, the entire debate quickly becomes a non-issue within a year."

The time is almost here when carrying a concealed firearm is so commonplace that it won’t even be worth commenting on. Florida and Professor John Lott have led the way.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Kleck!

Lott!