“Coming from California, where it takes an act of Congress to get a concealed weapon permit, I got to Maine, where they give out lots of CCWs (carrying concealed weapon permits), and I had a stack of CCW permits I was denying; that was my orientation,” he said at a press conference on Jan. 2. “I changed my orientation real quick. Maine is one of the safest places in America. Clearly, suspects knew that good Americans were armed.”

“It could lead to vigilantism,” Detroit resident Sandra Hines said Thursday during a Detroit Board of Police Commissioners meeting. “We already have the open-carry law here, and we have the stand-your-ground law. We don’t need anybody encouraging citizens (to carry guns).”

Mr. Craig argued that research done by the Department of Justice shows that “armed citizens, good citizens, can have a deterring effect on violent crime,” The Detroit News reported.