That's not a direct cause and effect crime statistic here, and it is very likely biased due to proportionally low gun carrying rates. Even in Texas, we are talking 10% max saturation here given a representative sample. Giving someone a gun doesn't cause them to be a more lawful person, so let's just throw that out right away.

People aren't worried about these individuals carrying weapons. Call them the low hanging fruit of responsibility. What has people concerned is the implication of expanding the percentage of a de facto expansion of people carrying guns, to a point where we are no longer just on the upper end of the responsibility tail.

If you have 100 people in the mall, and 10 of them have guns, there is a decent chance that one of them will be in sight of a would-be shooter when he starts his rampage. If you up that to 20 people, you increase the chances of a successful DGU, but you also increase the chances of an accident, or crime of passion. At a certain point, the probability of accident will pass the probability of DGU. That should be fairly self evident - even the military acknowledges this.

What people like myself are concerned about is that unwillingness to consider this fairly obvious issue in gun policy debates. That we really don't want everyone to be armed, even as we respect their right to be so if they choose. I think it would be great if the top 10% most responsible people were armed, and that there were laws which set a reasonably high bar in that regard. What I don't like, is when the bar is very low, and I have no clue whether the guy across the room from me with a loaded weapon is a boy scout, or if he has serious anger issues which might cause him to lash out.