News Flash: Guns Prevent Crimes and Save Lives
Russ Chastain 08.26.19
A recent article by Lawrence W. Reed says something that really needs to be heard by most people — but most of them won’t hear it if they keep listening to traditional “news” outlets. Here’s the actual truth: Every day, guns save lives and prevent countless crimes.
Most of us know this, but in emotional times when some psychos have murdered multiple people in multiple places and there are suddenly numerous calls for EVEN MORE gun laws, it really needs to be said because the average person believes that doing ANYTHING has to be better than doing nothing. And that’s dangerous when the “anything” involved means loss of liberty, which, says Reed, will also mean more lives lost.
Liberty isn’t the only thing likely to be lost when gun laws are passed to appease emotions over reason, evidence, logic, and rights. Lives will most assuredly be lost, too. Lots of them.
This raises a point amplified in another context almost two centuries ago by Frederic Bastiat in his famous essay with a title that sums it up, “That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen.”
How many lives are actually saved by gun ownership? This is a supremely important question that the grandstanders and ideologues usually—and conveniently—ignore.
Reed dug around at GunFacts.info and learned this:
- Guns prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year, or 6,849 every day. Most often, the gun is never fired, and no blood (including the criminal’s) is shed.
- Every year, 400,000 life-threatening violent crimes are prevented using firearms.
- 60 percent of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they knew the victim was armed. Forty percent of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they thought the victim might be armed.
- Felons report that they avoid entering houses where people are at home because they fear being shot.
- Fewer than 1 percent of firearms are used in the commission of a crime.
He backs this up by citing CDC and JustFacts.org.
Moreover, he examines the link between “gun free zones” and crime:
By 66 percent to 32 percent, economists and criminologists answer that gun-free zones are ‘more likely to attract criminals than they are to deter them.’ A 60 percent to 40 percent margin thinks that guns in the home do not increase suicides. And a 62 percent to 35 percent spread says that guns are used in self-defense to stop crime more often than in the commission of crime. (From ‘More Guns, Less Crime’ by John Lott)
Spread the word, folks. Tell your friends and social media associates: We need MORE guns and LESS-RESTRICTIVE LAWS if we wish to shrink crime and better protect human life.
