Get armed with facts. Guns save lives
Bottom Line: This is a topic I regularly update as new information becomes available. This most recently occurred in April when Florida’s annual Uniform Crime Report revealed the following:
Crime in Florida declined by 4.6% in 2019, and overall arrests were at a 49-year low while gun ownership reached a record high
By definition, if the gun control advocates were correct, record gun ownership would equal record crime...not a 49-year low in crime. The prior update was last November when I shared the news regarding Mexico’s gun control efforts in the story: Mexican gun control has led to record murders. Here’s a quick refresher from that story...
There is quite literally only one-gun store in Mexico. It’s an army operated store in Mexico City that doesn’t sell any caliber above a .22. There’s a reason there’s only one. The government makes it nearly impossible to own firearms legally in the country. Paperwork is extensive, the process takes months to complete without any certainty of outcome, and if approved one must travel to Mexico City to purchase a .22 that’s priced in a way that’s cost prohibitive for most Mexican families. The net result is only 1% of Mexicans legally possessing a firearm. If fewer legally owned guns equaled less violence and safer communities, Mexico would be one of the safest countries in the world and exponentially safer than the United States – especially when only low caliber guns are possessed.
In the United States just over 30% of adults legally own a firearm. That’s literally 30 times the ownership rate in Mexico. And 84% of the guns legally purchased are higher caliber than .22. So, what’s the difference in murder rate? You’re greater than 500% more likely to be murdered in Mexico than in the United States. But gun control is supposed to be the answer, right? It’s funny how criminals don’t seem to abide by the law isn’t it? That takes me back to my story from about a year ago when I brought you this...
The most recent study on the topic was conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. They found...
- Most crimes are committed with illegally possessed guns
- State laws do heavily factor into whether a gun is obtained legally or illegally but...
- Would be criminals aren’t less likely to obtain a gun if they can’t purchase one legally – they're simply more likely to obtain it illegally with tougher laws
And this takes me back to the work I first shared years ago. Starting with the 1997 Clinton Justice Department evaluation of the defensive use of firearms. Though found:
- An estimated 1.5 million successful defensive uses 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
That's 6,850 times per day! But those almost never make the news right? Ignorance can be fixed with more information. This is an especially instructive time as Joe Biden is pledging to have Beto O’Rourke, who pledged to come to your house to take guns away, become the country’s gun czar. Also, during a time of civil unrest in which many local governments have caved to the defund police movements while also pushing strict gun control measures.
This is why it’s as important as ever to be armed with facts and if you’re inclined guns. On balance they save lives. Gun control measures provably take them as law abiding citizens comply while the criminals don’t. Truth, pass it on...