Those of you who knew me years ago know that when a concealed carry referendum came up in St. Louis, I opposed it, and encouraged others to do so. Some of you who owned weapons, I encouraged to get rid of them. My goal was to make society safer.

Later, I happened upon a debate on C-SPAN. It was kind of odd. I caught the part where an individual was taking the "con" position, but admitted he'd examined the work and that it seemed reasonable, and that he could only really argue for errors to the extent of the effect. What debatable position could be this strong? I wondered.

It was a debate between an opponent and economist John Lott, whose comprehensive statistical crime model provided strong empirical evidence that concealed carry laws saved lives by deterring criminals. Again, the reason for my dislike of guns was to save lives, so I purchased the book, read it, looked for responses and alternative evidence on the web, and ultimately changed my position.

Again, I wanted less people to die or be hurt, and the evidence indicated I was wrong, so I altered my position. That simple. Its called keeping an open mind.

The United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia also -- they said -- wanted less people to die. At least from guns. (Though I look at total deaths, not gun deaths. I figure more dead people is worse, even if fewer deaths involve guns. I don't think the dead people or their relatives feel better about it when it was a knife or baseball bat. Odd, I know.) But they took a different approach. They banned guns, to varying extents -- the UK to the greatest. And in doing so, offered to do a little experiment for all of us, using their people as guinea pigs.

So how's it working out? Many of you know. Today, the BBC's front page story is about England's soaring gun crime rate. The violent crime rate in England, even when firearms were legal, was always below ours -- now it soars. I have heard your chances of being robbed in London are now (gasp) six times that of New York City!

The theory is very simple: Criminals don't want to be hurt. Concealed weapons deter crime because crooks don't know who's packing heat, or abort the crime when they see a gun (and may not try it again). Increased policing is less effective because criminals see the police and simply decide to wait. Only a tiny percentage of population (like 1-2%) need carry concealed weapons to have a very big effect on crime -- and are usually those in the most danger, such as women being stalked. And criminals, people who by definition break laws, don't abide by gun laws, and thus are the last ones armed.

Score one more for predictive powers of John Lott's model.

But I feel sorry for all the unnecessary English crime victims who had to prove it for us. We're dealing with real people's lives here folks, not proving petty political points.

They've already done the big brother surveilence thing and limited civil liberties thing. According to the article, now they're going to try still more firearms laws, tougher sentences and banning gun-shaped toys. In the US, we've already shown tougher sentences aren't a significant deterrant, but, well whatever. The experiment continues...