The Rest of the story. Lives saved by defensive use of guns
Bottom Line: Of all the political/ideological debates devoid of reality and perpetuated by sheer emotion gun control is at or near the top of the list. Last summer I shared the following:
In 1997 the Clinton Justice department found the following:
There were an estimated 1.5 million defensive users of firearms per year
More recently in a separate study published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology conducted by Northwestern University School of Law in-conjunction with Florida State the following was found:
2.5 million law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminal activity per year
But those almost never make the news, right? Ignorance can be fixed with more information but will it? Will we ever focus on the underlying issues that've led to the proliferation of violence and evil being carried out in people in our society or simply focus on a political objective of additional gun control? I supported the reform in Florida and believe there's room for reform at the federal level as well, but additional gun control isn't a solution to the real problems in our society. I've pointed out that three times as many people are killed by knives per year as compared to all rifles combined but does anyone care? Nikolas Cruz would have been a threat to society regardless of existing laws just as the Austin bomber was a threat.
The contrast in the reaction is telling. In the case of the Austin bomber people immediately focused on what went wrong with the man who carried out the attacks rather than the delivery of his attacks. Why? Why not bomb control or knife control? Sure, that sounds absurd right but how is it intellectually any different than focusing on gun control in a virtual vacuum?
Even though there is documentation demonstrating that thousands of people per day, on average, successfully protect themselves with the defensive use of a firearm – that information is never considered either. In fact, an additional study published from the Crime Prevention Research Center once again backs the evidence that legal gun owners are, in general, highly responsible and more likely to be law abiding than the average non-legal gun owner.
The research homed in specifically on concealed carry permitted gun owners and demonstrated the following:
6.5% of all adults hold concealed carry permits
Record 16.3 million adults now hold permits
In every state/situation studied concealed carry permitted owners were more law abiding that the average adult
Here's a link to the 61-page study if you're inclined: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3004915
Your average concealed carry permit holder was at least 50% less likely to commit a crime. Now to those of us who are gun owners...that's not surprising. You can see once again that the most pervasive form of media bias is omitting information as you've likely still never heard any of this unless it came from me in the first place. Something else that's omitted from many who're politically motivated... According to Gallup's research 28% of Americans would like to end private ownership of guns. While doubtless most of those rallying/protesting are well intended... A. How well informed are they about the entire picture B. Are they being co-opted by some who have a much bigger political agenda? C. Even if every legal gun were removed from our society will we really have solved the problems that impact our society's safety?