So, there was a debate on Tuesday night, and something interesting was said by Robert O’Rourke. He presented a solution to violent crime. Instead of proposing tougher sentences on criminals who commit crimes with weapons, he proposed sending armed policemen to the homes of law-abiding gun owners and confiscating their means of self-defense from armed criminals.

The Daily Caller reports:

Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke conceded Wednesday that his proposed gun control plan might result in sending police officers door to door to enforce compliance.

After weeks of insisting that his plan — a mandatory buyback program for “assault weapons” such as AR-15s and AK-47s — would not lead to door-to-door confiscation, O’Rourke admitted to “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough that failure to comply would have to result in “a visit by law enforcement to recover that firearm.”

Wow. So Democrats have more concern about the firearms of law-abiding gun-owners than they do about illegally-obtained firearms used by criminals to commit crimes. I can guarantee you that if you stiffened the penalties for using weapons during a crime, you would get fewer people using weapons to commit crimes. But Democrats don’t want to target criminals. They want to disarm the victims of criminals.

So let’s just take a quick look at some stories of law-abiding gun owners using their firearms to defend themselves. Remember, these stories of self-defense would become impossible if Democrats are elected.

The Daily Signal reports on self-defense stories from just last month alone – here are a few:

Sept. 1, San Antonio, Texas: A young woman shot and injured a man who was trying to break into her home through a back window at 2 a.m., police said. The man later was determined to be the woman’s ex-boyfriend, though she did not know who the intruder was at the time she fired.

Sept. 3, Houston: After a woman parked her vehicle outside her home in the early hours of the morning, two men approached the driver’s side window and attempted to rob her. The woman drew her firearm from her purse and fired two rounds at the men, who ran away, police said. One would-be robber was wounded in the process and later was charged with aggravated robbery. The woman told local reporters: “I got the gun for that purpose, but I never thought I would really have to use it. . . . I saved my own life.”

Sept. 8, Virginia Beach, Virginia: A Florida man was shot and paralyzed by his stepdaughter after he broke into his estranged wife’s Virginia home and assaulted both the wife and stepdaughter with a wrench. Investigators said they later found garbage bags, zip ties, duct tape, and various weapons in the man’s car, along with a journal detailing his plans to kill his wife.

Sept. 11, Cherokee County, Georgia: A homeowner used her firearm to defend herself against a man who started banging on her doors and windows. The homeowner did not know the man and yelled at him to leave, and he temporarily retreated. The man returned and became even more aggressive, threatening to kill the homeowner, who had armed herself with a firearm. When the man began to approach the homeowner, she shot and killed him, police said.

Sept. 19, Miami-Dade County, Florida: A lunch break for an armed Good Samaritan took a heroic turn when she intervened to stop a brutal robbery and assault occurring outside a Popeyes restaurant. The woman fired her handgun at an assailant as he pummeled a bleeding and helpless victim lying on the concrete, police said. The rounds missed the assailant, but the shots were enough to make him run away. The woman told reporters this was the first time she had fired her gun outside a gun range, and that although it was “an intense moment,” she just “had to stop” the assailant. “I just had to save the guy’s life,” she said. “That’s all I did was try to save someone’s life.” Police later arrested the assailant.

Sept. 26, Redding, California: A holder of a concealed carry permit helped intervene in a kidnapping after it became clear to him that another customer at a gas station was holding a woman against her will. Earlier in the evening, the man had assaulted the woman’s sister before forcing the woman into his car and driving off, police said. The permit holder noticed the woman was in distress, confronted the man, and held him at gunpoint until law enforcement arrived.

When I see Democrats talking about taking the legal firearms of law-abiding people, the first thing that comes into my mind is that they have armed security, and live in very wealthy neighborhoods with gates and security guards and security systems. They’ll be fine. Maybe that’s why they’re so care-free about depriving you of your right to defend yourself and your loved ones from criminals.

The peer-reviewed research

Whenever I get into discussions about gun control, I always mention two academic books by John R. Lott and Joyce Lee Malcolm.

• The Lott book was published by the University of Chicago Press (now in its 3rd edition)
• The Malcolm book was published by Harvard University Press

Here is a paper by Dr. Malcolm that summarizes one of the key points of her book.

Excerpt:

Tracing the history of gun control in the United Kingdom since the late 19th century, this article details how the government has arrogated to itself a monopoly on the right to use force. The consequence has been a tremendous increase in violent crime, and harsh punishment for crime victims who dare to fight back. The article is based on the author’s most recent book, Guns and Violence: The English Experience (Harvard University Press, 2002). Joyce Malcom is professor of history at Bentley College, in Waltham, Massachusetts. She is also author of To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an AngloAmerican Right (Harvard University Press, 1994).

And the result of the 1997 gun ban:

The result of the ban has been costly. Thousands of weapons were confiscated at great financial cost to the public. Hundreds of thousands of police hours were devoted to the task. But in the six years since the 1997 handgun ban, crimes with the very weapons banned have more than doubled, and firearm crime has increased markedly. In 2002, for the fourth consecutive year, gun crime in England and Wales rose—by 35 percent for all firearms, and by a whopping 46 percent for the banned handguns. Nearly 10,000 firearms offences were committed.

[…]According to Scotland Yard, in the four years from 1991 to 1995 crimes against the person in England‟s inner cities increased by 91 percent. In the four years from 1997 to 2001 the rate of violent crime more than doubled. The UK murder rate for 2002 was the highest for a century.

I think that peer-reviewed studies – from Harvard University, no less – should be useful to those of us who believe in the right of self-defense for law-abiding people. The book by economist John Lott, linked above,compares the crime rates of all U.S. states that have enacted concealed carry laws, and concludes that violent crime rates dropped after law-abiding citizens were allowed to carry legally-owned firearms. That’s the mirror image of Dr. Malcolm’s Harvard study, but both studies affirm the same conclusion – more legal firearm ownership means less crime.