Mr. Dan Hesse
Chief Executive Officer
Sprint Nextel Corporation
5208 Belleview Ave
Kansas City, Missouri 64112
Sir,
Several weeks ago, I stopped by the Sprint Store located at 3195 28th St SE, Grand Rapids, MI. I have done business with this location for many of the years during which I have been a loyal Sprint customer. However, during this particular visit, I noticed something new on the entry door - a sign indicating that firearms carry is prohibited on the premises.
With all due respect, I find this to be quite confusing.
You see, by all objective standards, the incidence of violent crime, particularly firearms-related crime, has been diminishing for years. According to FBI data, such crimes are at historic lows, yet, at the same time, ownership and legal carry of firearms are at all-time highs. The correlation is difficult to dismiss: more legally-carried firearms makes the commission of crimes more dangerous to attempt.
With all due respect, your issue isn’t with those of us who obey the laws, particularly with those of us who have gone out of our way to obtain state-issued licenses (the application process for which requires detailed background checks) entitling us to carry firearms on our persons, and posting a sign will not stop someone with intent from using a firearm to commit a crime on property that has been so posted. In fact, if you look at the history of firearms-related crimes against businesses, you will find that the majority occur at businesses that have posted themselves as so-called “gun-free” zones. It is at such businesses that criminals are the least likely to encounter people who are able to defend themselves, and so guarantees the highest number of victims. And with police forces diminishing across the nation and response times to 911 calls lengthening as a result (in Grand Rapids, MI, per the Grand Rapids Police Department’s Crime Prevention Office, that time is 20 minutes or longer) it simply does not make sense to deprive employees or customers of their right to self defense.
If your fear is that allowing legally-armed individuals to carry on your premises will lead to more shootings, particularly accidental shootings, the data indicate that you have nothing to fear from the average citizen legally carrying his or her firearm.
“Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, using surveys and other data, has determined that armed citizens defend their lives or property with firearms against criminals approximately 1 million times a year. In 98 percent of these instances, the citizen merely brandishes the weapon or fires a warning shot. Only in 2 percent of the cases do citizens actually shoot their assailants. In defending themselves with their firearms, armed citizens kill 2,000 to 3,000 criminals each year, three times the number killed by the police. A nationwide study by Kates, the constitutional lawyer and criminologist, found that only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The ‘error rate’ for the police, however, was 11 percent, over five times as high” (John Snyder, “A Nation of Cowards, The Public Interest, November, 1993).
Sir, no matter how you look at this, posting such signs on the premises of your businesses fulfills the words of Cesare Bonesana, an Italian jurist, philosopher, and politician, who made the following observation in his work, On Crimes and Punishment, in 1764:
The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator? and does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty? It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons” (Cesare Bonesana, On Crimes and Punishment, originally published in Italian in 1764, published in English by Philip H. Nicklin, 1819; italics added).
I respectfully ask that you re-consider this policy.
Sincerely,
