• Bookstore
• Donation
• Home

Sample Letter to the Editor: The Joplin Chief of Police

The Joplin Globe
Letters to Editor
March 7, 1993

"Dismayed at editorial position"

As the Chief of Police for the city of Joplin, I was extremely dismayed by your recent editorial advocating the passage of Sen. Steve Danner's legislation which would permit almost anyone to legally carry a concealed weapon (Senate Bill 295). I would be shirking my sworn responsibility to protect the citizens of Joplin if I did not bring facts concerning this bill to their attention.

While the proponents of this bill would have you believe that the carrying of a concealed weapon will reduce crime, violent crime in Florida has increased since passage of its concealed weapons law.

Between 1987 - the year Florida enacted its law - and 1991, violent crime rose 16 percent. And Florida's overall crime rate continues to remain higher than the national average according to FBI statistics.

You purport in your editorial that an attack on a House staff member might have been prevented had that individual been armed. A recent FBI study shows that police officers who are killed in the line of duty rarely even fire a round at their assailant and frequently the police officer's own firearm is used to kill the officer. Law enforcement officers receive hundreds of hours of training on the use and security of their service weapons. Yet the FBI study of 51 incidents where 54 police officers were murdered revealed that 85 percent of the officers killed did not fire their service weapons and 20 percent were killed with their own firearms. If the best trained law enforcement officers are being killed, what will happen to the average citizen? Of the 12,000 people murdered in the nation with handguns in 1991, only 249 were justifiable homicides by civilians.

Proponents of S.B. 295 have argued that the measure is intended to be a crime-fighting tool. The more people who are carrying guns, the theory goes, the more crimes that will be thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The last thing a law enforcement officer needs in a situation that involves an armed suspect is for some well-intentioned civilian to fire off a half dozen rounds into a crowded shopping mall. The result is likely to be innocent people being wounded or killed, and the suspect to escape.

According to the U.S. Public Health Service, the majority of people who are murdered are not killed by a stranger during a hold-up or similar crime but are killed by someone they know, 16 percent by a family member.

If carrying concealed weapons is as good a crime fighting strategy as your editorial suggests, then why is law enforcement unanimously opposed to this bill? A coalition of all law enforcement organizations in the state of Missouri has steadfastly opposed this bill from its inception because a vote for carrying concealed weapons is a vote against law enforcement. It will also set back police community relations because officers will have to treat everyone they come in contact with as being armed!

Law enforcement is not against the purchase and ownership of firearms. It is already legal to have a gun in your home or business. But if guns are the answer to the crime problem in this country, why do we still have such a problem? As law enforcement officers sworn to protect the public, we believe more guns on the street will result in more tragedy, not less, as your editorial suggests.

David R. Niebur
Joplin