Now this is an interesting story:

Six years after new rules made it much easier to get a license to carry concealed weapons, the number of Michiganders legally packing heat has increased more than six-fold.

But dire predictions about increased violence and bloodshed have largely gone unfulfilled, according to law enforcement officials and, to the extent they can be measured, crime statistics.

The incidence of violent crime in Michigan in the six years since the law went into effect has been, on average, below the rate of the previous six years. The overall incidence of death from firearms, including suicide and accidents, also has declined.

Contrast that with this story:

Gun violence rose sharply in the District in 2007, with the number of homicides jumping 7 percent after several years of decline.

The city had recorded 181 killings as of late yesterday, an increase that police officials attributed in part to escalating violence in the drug trade and fighting among neighborhood gangs. Nonfatal shootings and other gun crimes were also up, preliminary police data show.

…

The increase in gun violence in the District comes as the city is waging a U.S. Supreme Court fight to preserve its 30-year-old gun law, one of the strictest in the nation. Critics have said the law violates Second Amendment rights and has been proved ineffective, as evidenced by the large number of guns that wind up on city streets. D.C. officials argue that matters would be even worse without the law.

That last sentence goes right back to what I said on the podcast yesterday with Guy Midkiff. When the results of a liberal solutions come back with detrimental results, rather than admit the program may be the cause, they put forth the idea that it would be worse without the program.

Look at Michigan and tell me they’re right.