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Guns Save Lives

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posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 08:39 AM
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Guns Save Lives
John Stossel


You know what the mainstream media think about guns and our freedom to carry them.

Pierre Thomas of ABC: "When someone gets angry or when they snap, they are going to be able to have access to weapons."

Chris Matthews of MSNBC: "I wonder if in a free society violence is always going to be a part of it if guns are available."

Keith Olbermann, who usually can't be topped for absurdity: "Organizations like the NRA ... are trying to increase deaths by gun in this country."

"Trying to?" Well, I admit that I bought that nonsense for years. Living in Manhattan, working at ABC, everyone agreed that guns are evil. And that the NRA is evil. (Now that the NRA has agreed to a sleazy deal with congressional Democrats on political speech censorship, maybe some of its leaders are evil, but that's for another column.)

Now I know that I was totally wrong about guns. Now I know that more guns means—hold onto your seat—less crime.

How can that be, when guns kill almost 30,000 Americans a year? Because while we hear about the murders and accidents, we don't often hear about the crimes stopped because would-be victims showed a gun and scared criminals away. Those thwarted crimes and lives saved usually aren't reported to police (sometimes for fear the gun will be confiscated), and when they are reported, the media tend to ignore them. No bang, no news.

This state of affairs produces a distorted public impression of guns. If you only hear about the crimes and accidents, and never about lives saved, you might think gun ownership is folly.

But, hey, if guns save lives, it logically follows that gun laws cost lives.

Suzanna Hupp and her parents were having lunch at Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, when a man began shooting diners with his handgun, even stopping to reload. Suzanna's parents were two of the 23 people killed. (Twenty more were wounded.)

Suzanna owned a handgun, but because Texas law at the time did not permit her to carry it with her, she left it in her car. She's confident that she could have stopped the shooting spree if she had her gun. (Texas has since changed its law.)

Today, 40 states issue permits to competent, law-abiding adults to carry concealed handguns (Vermont and Alaska have the most libertarian approach: no permit needed. Arizona is about to join that exclusive club.) Every time a carry law was debated, anti-gun activists predicted outbreaks of gun violence after fender-benders, card games, and domestic quarrels.

What happened?

John Lott, in More Guns, Less Crime, explains that crime fell by 10 percent in the year after the laws were passed. A reason for the drop in crime may have been that criminals suddenly worried that their next victim might be armed. Indeed, criminals in states with high civilian gun ownership were the most worried about encountering armed victims.

In Canada and Britain, both with tough gun-control laws, almost half of all burglaries occur when residents are home. But in the United States, where many households contain guns, only 13 percent of burglaries happen when someone is at home.

Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in the Heller case that Washington, D.C.'s ban on handgun ownership was unconstitutional. District politicians then loosened the law but still have so many restrictions that there are no gun shops in the city and just 800 people have received permits. Nevertheless, contrary to the mayor's prediction, robbery and other violent crime are down.

Because Heller applied only to Washington, that case was not the big one. McDonald v. Chicago is the big one, and the Supreme Court is expected to rule on that next week. Otis McDonald is a 76-year-old man who lives in a dangerous neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. He wants to buy a handgun, but Chicago forbids it.

If the Supremes say McDonald has that right, then restrictive gun laws will fall throughout America.

Despite my earlier bias, I now understand that striking down those laws will probably save lives.


And yet again, Stossel knocks it out of the park by rethinking his formerly liberal bias against firearms. This article parallels findings presented in detail in the John Lott, Jr. book More Guns, Less Crime. I heard a radio interview with Lott wherein he set out to prove exactly the opposite: that more guns meant more crime but due to his research he discovered precisely the converse and rethought his own liberal bias against firearms.

I'm glad that more people seem to be seeing the light on this issue, even with Obama favoring gun control.



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 08:47 AM
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Stossel explains it in video format for those with paragraph fatigue



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 08:48 AM
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I have long held the belief that if there were any single right that the people of the U.S. would hang onto tighter than any other, it would be their right to bare arms.

I can see that in the not to distant future most rights like free speech and assembly, as well as judicial rights may be frittered away by nefarious politics. But that darn weapon ownership right is the crux of the elites plan to control the sheep it would seem.



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 08:51 AM
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Just the other day I actually had a conversation with a die hard liberal about gun rights.
He is from Germany by the way and seems to think any American who owns a gun is some kind of nut case, redneck whose going to shoot themselves in the foot.

He is unable to accept the fact that more guns equal less crime, even when pointed in the right direction for research.
Sad really.



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 08:56 AM
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Courtesy of the Virginia Citizens Defense League



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 09:02 AM
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More guns, less violence? You have got to be kidding me right? Lets get real, the only way for people to be less violent is for us to properly raise and educate our kids on ego and super ego. The reason we have violence is material based, or due to a lack of psychological understanding because we don't teach understanding at a young age.

More guns is always bad. Stop perpetuating this crap. The problem is that we have guns in the first place.


BTW - Anyone could be a felon considering the amount of laws there are to violate.

[edit on 25-6-2010 by onequestion]



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 09:10 AM
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Originally posted by onequestion
More guns is always bad. Stop perpetuating this crap. The problem is that we have guns in the first place.


It's not "crap" and all the data supports it.

I refer you to the book I linked to in the OP. The author set out to prove that more guns meant more crime and discovered precisely the opposite.



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 09:12 AM
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reply to post by onequestion
 


You have seen our proof and case studies. Where are yours? Or, are you just giving us an emotional liberal response?

respectfully

reluctantpawn

edit for thick fingers and small keyboard spelling errors.

[edit on 25-6-2010 by reluctantpawn]



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 09:14 AM
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I'm all for the right to bear arms. I think it is a good point that more people owning guns equals less crime. Just think about it, if someone plans on using a gun to commit a crime they are definitely not going to follow any gun control laws, but if more people begin to legally carry fire arms, others might think twice before attacking or robbing someone. IMO of course.



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 09:19 AM
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Originally posted by CPT KickAss
but if more people begin to legally carry fire arms, others might think twice before attacking or robbing someone.


That much is true and it's not limited to concealed carry, but simply ownership for home defense.

Ask yourself whether you're willing to put a sign in your yard stating that you do not own any firearms.



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 09:26 AM
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Originally posted by onequestion
More guns, less violence? You have got to be kidding me right? Lets get real, the only way for people to be less violent is for us to properly raise and educate our kids on ego and super ego. The reason we have violence is material based, or due to a lack of psychological understanding because we don't teach understanding at a young age.

More guns is always bad. Stop perpetuating this crap. The problem is that we have guns in the first place.


BTW - Anyone could be a felon considering the amount of laws there are to violate.

[edit on 25-6-2010 by onequestion]



Please can you show your ignorance any more? Criminals by DEFINITION do not follow the law, so what do they have to do with me lawfully carrying a weapon? Your view would change when your house is broken into by a criminal carrying a gun and you have no means of defense against it. I can guarantee that.



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 09:27 AM
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I could not agree more OP. Excellent thread.


Guns or not if someone is going to kill someone they will try to find a way.



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 09:36 AM
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Originally posted by bigshow

Please can you show your ignorance any more?


I have a feeling people that make such proclamations really just haven't sat down and examined the issue. I don't believe I was ever "anti-gun" but there was a good chunk of my life where I found firearms unnecessary & dangerous and I probably thought that gun control was somehow a good thing. Once I really sat down and contemplated the data and the issue it hit me like a bullet (no pun intended).



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 10:05 AM
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Fact Sheet: Guns Save Lives
* Guns used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year -- or about 6,850 times a day.1 This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.2
* Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker.3
* As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves against sexual abuse.4
* Even anti-gun Clinton researchers concede that guns are used 1.5 million times annually for self-defense. According to the Clinton Justice Department, there are as many as 1.5 million cases of self-defense every year. The National Institute of Justice published this figure in 1997 as part of "Guns in America" -- a study which was authored by noted anti-gun criminologists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig.5
* Armed citizens kill more crooks than do the police. Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1,527 to 606).6 And readers of Newsweek learned that "only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The 'error rate' for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high."7



GOA



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 10:13 AM
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www.wnd.com...




As the nation debates whether more guns or fewer can prevent tragedies like the Virginia Tech Massacre, a notable anniversary passed last month in a Georgia town that witnessed a dramatic plunge in crime and violence after mandating residents to own firearms.

In March 1982, 25 years ago, the small town of Kennesaw – responding to a handgun ban in Morton Grove, Ill. – unanimously passed an ordinance requiring each head of household to own and maintain a gun. Since then, despite dire predictions of "Wild West" showdowns and increased violence and accidents, not a single resident has been involved in a fatal shooting – as a victim, attacker or defender.

The crime rate initially plummeted for several years after the passage of the ordinance, with the 2005 per capita crime rate actually significantly lower than it was in 1981, the year before passage of the law.

Prior to enactment of the law, Kennesaw had a population of just 5,242 but a crime rate significantly higher (4,332 per 100,000) than the national average (3,899 per 100,000). The latest statistics available – for the year 2005 – show the rate at 2,027 per 100,000. Meanwhile, the population has skyrocketed to 28,189



Wow look at that. They required every head of household to maintain a gun and crime fell.

If I were a theif I wouldn't rob anyone in that city. Cause they'd blow me away.




By comparison, the population of Morton Grove, the first city in Illinois to adopt a gun ban for anyone other than police officers, has actually dropped slightly and stands at 22,202, according to 2005 statistics. More significantly, perhaps, the city's crime rate increased by 15.7 percent immediately after the gun ban, even though the overall crime rate in Cook County rose only 3 percent. Today, by comparison, the township's crime rate stands at 2,268 per 100,000.



Guns banned here and crime rose 15.7%. I'd like to see this enacted in the city of Miami. Maybe we'd have more thugs thinking twice about robbing and killing people.

[edit on 25-6-2010 by grey580]



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 10:24 AM
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I find this entire discussion to be moot.

Depending on which statistics you massage, it can look pro or con.

The truth lies somewhere in between.

Guns cost and Guns save lives. It always depends on the situation.

But that has nothing to do with the right to own one IMHO.

The entire culture of forbidding other people things is bad.



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 10:38 AM
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I love my gun. I grew up with guns, and did I grow up into a life of crime? No, just denying ignorance


I cannot understand how some people want to just give up their gun rights! Why not just forfeit all of your rights to TPTB?! Make it even easier to take control of the general public, for thats usually the first order of business for dictators and the like; taking away the citizens weapons. I honestly think the people who are so supportive of the gun control or all out gun ban haven't been around guns very much, so are afraid of them. I will take the risk of getting shot over giving up ANY of my freedom.

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Benjamin Franklin



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 10:55 AM
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Originally posted by onequestion
More guns is always bad.


Are they? There are about a hundred million Americans who prove every day that they can own their firearms responsibly and safely. In fact, in many areas of very high firearm ownership rates, violent crime rates are far lower than the national average. The great irony of your statement is that the areas of the United States that have the strictest gun laws also tend to have the highest violent crime rates BY FAR.

But you've actually touched on the real problem: people. Guns are simply an inanimate object. They are not good or evil. They cannot fire by themselves. For that, they require an operator, and in cases of criminal activity involving a gun, you'll usually find that person already had an extensive criminal record and probably couldn't legally own a gun, anyway. In other words, criminals, by definition, do not obey laws and the overwhelming majority will not obey your gun ban, either. The people a gun ban will actually affect are virtually all law abiding citizens to begin with. Its like proposing that we control drunk driving by banning sober drivers because they might decide to drink and drive one day.

Really, what gun control boils down to is an attempt to slap a bandaid on the ills of society by sweeping them under the rug and giving society a sense of moral superiority without actually solving the underlying issue.



posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 11:00 AM
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Originally posted by snowen20
I have long held the belief that if there were any single right that the people of the U.S. would hang onto tighter than any other, it would be their right to bare arms.




Man....you guys can't be that prudish over the there that you're not even allowed to show your arms?






posted on Jun, 25 2010 @ 11:02 AM
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Originally posted by snowen20
Just the other day I actually had a conversation with a die hard liberal about gun rights.

(...)

He is unable to accept the fact that more guns equal less crime, even when pointed in the right direction for research.


You want figures showing that more gun rights = more violence? Fine.

In 2005, in the US, there were 5.6 homicides/100.000 people.
In 2005, in France (ban on guns), there were 1.6 homicides/100.000 people.
In Germany, 1.06 homicides/100.000 people.

Sources : www.fbi.gov...
T he Tenth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (Tenth CTS, 2005-2006)
Germany crime statistics

I'm curious what direction you pointed him to.




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