By MORGAN 0. REYNOLDS & H. STERLING BURNETT

Nationally, gun-rights advocates have been on the defensive since the early '90s. But in the states, where the fight against crime is won or lost, they're winning the debate. That's because they have the facts on their side.

Thirty-one states now let citizens carry concealed weapons -- up from just nine states in '86. Have these "right-to-carry" laws made the public safer, or have they caused a sharp drop in public safety, as opponents warned?

The standard argument against "concealed carry" laws is that there is no good reason for the average Joe to carry a gun. But federal courts have ruled that police aren t obliged to protect individuals from crime. That means citizens are ultimately responsible for their own defense.

But do concealed weapons deter crime? Criminals commit 10 million violent crimes a year. Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck found that victims use handguns about 1.9 million times in self-defense.

Criminals weigh the costs of the crime against the benefits. You don t have to be a criminal mastermind to know that the possibility of a concealed weapon tilts the odds in the victim's favor. Research shows that robbery and rape victims who resist with a gun are only half as likely to be injured as those who don't.

A recent study by John Lott and David Mustard of the University of Chicago published in the Journal of Legal Studies bears this out. They found that concealed handgun laws reduced murder by 8.5% and severe assault by 7% from 1977 to '92. Had "right-to-carry" laws been in effect throughout the country, there would have been 1,600 fewer murders and 60,000 fewer assaults every year.

Vermont has long had the least restrictive firearms-carry laws. Citizens there can carry guns either openly or concealed without any permit. Perhaps in part because of its liberal gun policies, Vermont has among the lowest violent crime numbers in the country.

In 1980, when murders and robberies in the U.S. had soared to 10 and 251 per 100,000 people, respectively, Vermont's murder rate was 22% of the national average and its robbery rate was 15%.

In 1996, Vermont s crime rates were among the lowest in the country: 25% of the national murder rate, 8% of the national robbery rate.

Another objection to concealed-carry laws is that they'll boost impulse killings -- fostering a "wild West" mentality with more shootings and deaths as people vent their anger with pistols instead of fists. Yet FBI data show that killings stemming from arguments are falling as a share of all homicides.

In fact, concealed-weapon permit holders are involved in fewer incidents than off-duty police officers.

Consider also:

Dade County, Fla., kept detailed records for six years. Of 21,000 carry permit holders, there was no reported incident of a permit holder injuring an innocent person.

Virginia issued more than 50,000 permits since it passed a right-to-carry law in '95. In that time, not one permit holder has been convicted of a crime, and violent crime has dropped.

Opponents are left to argue that concealed-carry laws will put guns in untrained hands and accidents will go up.

But there has been no rise in accidental shootings in counties with right-to-carry laws. Nationwide, there are about 1,400 accidental firearms deaths annually -- a figure far lower than the number of deaths blamed on medical errors or car accidents.

And data show that civilians are even more careful with firearms than police officers are. There are only about 30 mistaken civilian shootings in the U.S. each year. The police commit more than three times as many mistaken killings as civilians.

In fact, the death rate from firearms has dropped in the last 20 years even as gun ownership has more than doubled and 22 states have passed right-to-carry laws.

The fatal firearm accident rate has dropped more than 19% in the last decade, and the number of gun-related accidents among children fell to an all-time low of 185 in '94 -- down 64% since '75.

Keeping honest, law-abiding people unarmed and at the mercy of armed and violent criminals was never a good idea. In the gun policy debate, gun-rights advocates can argue honestly that a general concealed-carry law is sound public policy.

Morgan 0. Reynolds is director of the National Center for Policy Analysis Criminal Justice Center and an economics professor at Texas A&M University. H. Sterling Burnett is a policy analyst for the National Center for Policy Analysis.