Altidude is ToddZ

See if you can spot all the contradictions in Eugene Kane’s latest column about concealed-carry.

He describes how back in the day, his own father and other men in their rough neighborhood carried concealed handguns peacefully and uneventfully, then paints todays concealed-carry advocates as “champing at the bit for the first chance to blow someone away.”

He sneers that “They are all apparently convinced that in an unexpected encounter with nefarious individuals outside their home, they will be able to summon up their inner Dirty Harry to save themselves or others from harm,” but exempts his father from such condescension.

Rather than try to refute statistical claims that concealed-carry laws result in violent crime reductions, he dismisses them with a cynical platitude.

Kane frets that “Police officers in some of the meanest parts of urban America aren’t excited about the possibility of going out on streets with no way of telling if the person being pulled over or stopped on the street is armed” — as if they can tell today, either in Chicago and Milwaukee or in the 48 other states where some form of concealed-carry is permitted.

Like his father, Kane has mellowed over the years but this flimsy column is just a half-hearted assertion of his own emotionally-driven preconceptions.