Tag Archives: Gun

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Recent examples of law-abiding gun owners defending themselves from criminals

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American woman defending herself from an armed home invader
A woman defending herself from an armed home invader with her handgun

I’ve noticed that people outside America sometimes don’t understand why Americans are so committed to owning firearms. Well, first of all, it’s specified in our Constitution that we are allowed to keep and bear arms. And second of all, it’s not always feasible to call the police and wait for them to arrive when a criminal shows up and menaces us or our loved ones.

And I have an example from just last week from ABC local news.

Excerpt:

A robbery suspect was killed and a second ran away after a liquor store clerk opened fire in southeast Houston, police say.

The clerk opened fire during a robbery Wednesday night at Mike’s Liquor Store in the 8700 block of MLK Boulevard near Reed.

Houston police said that at least two armed suspects went into the store, where two employees were working at the time.

One of the employees had a concealed handgun license and got into a shootout with the suspects.

The robbery suspect who was shot managed to escape, but died a short time later just south of the store.

The suspect’s body was found by police, who put two and two together after receiving a call for a robbery at the store.

The employees were not injured.

Now, you might think that this self-defense stuff only happens once or twice a year, and the rest of the times guns are coming alive by themselves, and just flying around shooting children randomly. But actually, the number of defensive gun uses far outweighs the number of accidental deaths.

The Daily Signal had an article on this, with a bunch more examples from last month.

I just grabbed a few of my favorites from the article:

  • Feb. 5: A Nashville, Tennessee, woman was attacked from behind by a would-be purse thief, who proceeded to repeatedly slam the woman’s head into a wall when she resisted him. The woman’s husband heard her cries for help and came to her defense, firing his gun at the thief and causing him to flee.

  • Feb. 9: When three armed men attempted to rob a Little Caesars restaurant in North Fort Myers, Florida, a patron inside pulled his own firearm to defend other customers. One suspect was shot and the other two fled.

  • Feb. 12: A homeowner in Jackson County, Georgia, heard someone trying to break into her house through a window. She found a man standing outside and warned him not to come into the house. Nevertheless, the man broke the glass window, so the armed homeowner shot him.

  • Feb. 13: Sullivan County, Tennessee, Sheriff Jeff Cassidy praised the actions of a concealed carry permit holder who ended a deadly domestic violence incident at a dentist’s office. The armed citizen shot and detained an active shooter who killed his wife and may have planned to harm others in the office.

  • Feb. 20: A 79-year-old Commerce, Georgia, homeowner called 911 to report a burglary in progress after she heard someone breaking into her home. The burglar ignored her threats and came in through an upstairs window before police could arrive. The homeowner shot at the burglar, who was so scared that he hid in a closet until the police arrived.

  • Feb. 26: The Mobile County, Alabama, Sheriff’s Office posted a Facebook video showing an armed local homeowner’s recent encounter with two would-be burglars. The burglars attempted to enter the occupied home in broad daylight, and were only deterred when the homeowner fired her handgun at them.

  • Feb. 28: Two men helped rescue a woman from a would-be kidnapper in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, after seeing her struggle to escape on the side of the road. After the two men stopped their car, one of them pulled out his handgun, prompting the suspect to flee. He was later apprehended and confessed to kidnapping the woman.

Daily Signal did the same thing for January, and I grabbed a few of my favorites for January, too:

  • Jan. 2: The security officer of a grocery store in Loomis, California, confronted a couple suspected of shoplifting. When one of them pulled a knife and tried to stab the security guard, a good Samaritan with a concealed weapons permit drew his firearm, stopped the confrontation, and held the couple at the scene until law enforcement arrived.

  • Jan. 9: An Arizona man awoke to the sound of four intruders breaking into his home. He flicked his lights on and off several times to warn the intruders that someone was home, hoping this would cause them to flee. But the intruders proceeded to smash windows and enter through the back door. The homeowner opened fire, hitting all four intruders and killing one.

  • Jan. 10: A Florida resident held an intruder at gunpoint until law enforcement could arrive. The man had broken into the garage and was in the process of filling his bag with the homeowner’s firearms and ammunition.

  • Jan. 23: Police responded to a 9-1-1 call from St. Louis, Missouri, resident who used his firearm to protect the other people in his home from three armed men attempting to force their way inside. One intruder was shot and killed on the scene while the other two fled.

  • Jan. 28: A woman arrived at her Campobello, South Carolina, home to find it being burglarized for the second time in just a few weeks. She shot one of the three intruders, while the other two fled the scene and were later arrested by law enforcement

It’s very important that law-abiding  people be allowed to defend themselves and their loved ones from criminals. And that’s why law-abiding Americans are so committed to being able to own firearms and obtain concealed carry permits.

News

Every day in America law-abiding citizens use legally-owned guns to stop crimes

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Gun ownership up, gun violence down
Gun ownership up, gun violence down (Source: Congressional Research Service)

I have some European friends on Facebook, and they cannot understand why Americans like to own guns as much as we do. Many of them are influenced by Hollywood movies that glamorize gun use. They perceive guns in a way that is different than the people who actually own them. So why do law-abiding Americans own firearms? It’s a very simple and obvious reason, really. We own guns because we don’t like criminals robbing us, raping us, murdering us, and damaging the property we bought with our own earned incomes.

Here are a couple of examples from earlier this week that illustrate this concept.

First one from Virginia, reported by local news:

Neighbors are praising a Henrico man who took matters into his own hands when he noticed something wrong in his neighborhood. When the man saw another man looking into vehicles parked along Viking Lane, near Woodman Road, at about 8:30 Tuesday night — he confronted the individual, police said.

“When the resident approached the suspect, the suspect drove a pickup truck right in the path of the resident until the resident drew a handgun, forcing the suspect to stop,” Henrico Police spokesman Sgt. Colin Rooney said.

Neighbor Theresa Strickland witnessed the tense situation.

“I saw him demand that he get out of the truck and was standing in the path of the truck and I thought how in the world is he going to make this guy stop his vehicle,” she said. “Apparently he did and I’m thankful he did.”

In Europe, Canada, or other pro-criminal countries where the law-abiding populations are disarmed, this would never happen. Liberals run those countries, and they just don’t see the point of allowing taxpayers to prevent “redistribution of wealth” by criminals. After all, if criminals are poor, they should be allowed to take the property of their law-abiding neighbors. It’s always the poorer law-abiding people who are the ones most threatened by crime… but liberals don’t care about them – they care about the criminals.

Here’s another from Ohio, reported by local news:

Trotwood Police were called to a home at the dead end of Atlas Road around 6:00 Monday morning.

Police tell FOX 45 three masked men armed with firearms forcibly entered and attempted to rob the homeowner.

[…]”I got my gun and I started shooting and they ran,” the female caller told dispatchers. “They all three had guns, I’m confused … they must not have had bullets because after I pulled the trigger they just took off, instead of firing back. I don’t know if I hit one or not, I don’t see blood anywhere.”

The three suspects were caught on home surveillance outside the residence, before they kicked their way inside.

Police say two kids were asleep inside the home in the room where the invaders kicked their way in.

[…]Trotwood Police said two of the suspects tried to steal a safe, while the third held the victim and two kids at gunpoint. They say the homeowner was able to get away and grab a gun she had hidden in the room, then started firing shots at the suspects.

Now, the response of most liberals, criminals and terrorists, and other predators to this story will be to say “she should just let the criminals assault her and the kids, steal her property, rape them all, and murder them all.” That’s the liberal view, after all – let the criminals do as they please while you wait for the police to arrive. In fact, in the UK, people who defend themselves with any weapon are usually arrested by the police, for example in this case or in this case. This makes sense to liberals – they want to arrest people who scare criminals off by defending themselves.

Learn about the issue

To find the about guns and self-defense, look in the academic literature. Here are two books I really like for that.

Both of those books make the case that permitting law-abiding citizens to own firearms for self-defense reduces the rate of violent crime.

News

Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy paper: gun control doesn’t lower murder rate

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Guns are for self-defense against criminals
Guns provide effective self-defense against violent criminals

Doug Ross linked to this study published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.

He writes:

The Harvard study attempts to answer the question of whether or not banning firearms would reduce murders and suicides. Researchers looked at crime data from several European countries and found that countries with HIGHER gun ownership often had LOWER murder rates.

Russia, for example, enforces very strict gun control on its people, but its murder rate remains quite high. In fact, the murder rate in Russia is four times higher than in the “gun-ridden” United States, cites the study. ”Homicide results suggest that where guns are scarce other weapons are substituted in killings.” In other words, the elimination of guns does not eliminate murder, and in the case of gun-controlled Russia, murder rates are quite high.

The study revealed several European countries with significant gun ownership, like Norway, Finland, Germany and France – had remarkably low murder rates. Contrast that with Luxembourg, “where handguns are totally banned and ownership of any kind of gun is minimal, had a murder rate nine times higher than Germany in 2002.

The study found no evidence to suggest that the availability of guns contributes to higher murder rates anywhere in the world. ”Of course, it may be speculated that murder rates around the world would be higher if guns were more available. But there is simply no evidence to support this.”

The authors also took a look at the effect of gun control laws in various U.S. states, gun ownership in rural and urban areas, and across racial lines. The long and short of it is that a small number of extremely active criminals with lengthy criminal records are responsible for the overwhelming super-majority of all gun crimes, and these criminals are psychopaths that ignore all laws.

The study also cited a previous report that was unable to find a single gun control law implemented in the United States that is proven to have reduced violent crime.

This is not the first time that a study in a presitigious journal has challenged the liberal gun control narrative. People who oppose guns oppose them because of feelings. Guns are scary and guns are loud, they say. That’s their reasoning. But if you actually look at the data, you’ll find that guns do reduce crime rates.

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.

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).

Upon the passage of The Firearms Act (No. 2) in 1997, British Deputy Home Secretary Alun Michael boasted: “Britain now has some of the toughest gun laws in the world.” The Act was second handgun control measure passed that year, imposed a near-complete ban on private ownership of handguns, capping nearly eighty years of increasing firearms restrictions. Driven by an intense public campaign in the wake of the shooting of schoolchildren in Dunblane, Scotland, Parliament had been so zealous to outlaw all privately owned handguns that it rejected proposals to exempt Britain’s Olympic target-shooting team and handicapped target-shooters from the ban.

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.

If you still think that guns are somehow bad for reducing crime, why not check out a formal academic debate featuring 3 people on each side of the debate?

If you want to know why the Democrat parts of the United States have such high rates of violence, then you need to look at the enormously high out-of-wedlock birth rates in the Democrat parts of the United States. Democrats have no problem with having fatherless children, and they support paying people welfare in order to do it. No wonder they have a crime problem that’s caused by the fatherlessness that is caused by their own values and policies. When Democrats stop paying single mothers money to have fatherless kids, then the crime rates in the Democrat parts of the United States will go down.