By Rob Morse
Gun-control advocates will tell you that the 23,000 firearms regulations we have today aren’t nearly enough. Those laws are simply a good start. In contrast, advocates of armed self defense will tell you that the right to bear arms is horribly infringed. Both are telling the truth about what they want, but they can’t both be right. In fact the results are shockingly different. Imperfect gun control fails time after time while imperfect armed defense stops millions of violent crimes each year. The truth is obvious if we’re willing to look.
There were over 278,000 cases of criminals using guns during the commission of a violent crime in 2019, the last year for which the FBI provides complete statistics. We also had 61 mass murders with a firearm in 2021. All of these crimes were committed by a criminal who shouldn’t have had a gun.
Criminals get firearms not because there are too few laws, but because criminals ignore the laws we already have. And always will. The mountain of laws on the books that regulate the manufacture, distribution, sale, and ownership of guns in this country failed to stop those violent criminals.
Every violent criminal who used a gun probably broke several gun-control laws during the commission of their crime. To start, these criminals stole a gun or bought it illegally. In addition to acquiring it, their possession of a gun was also illegal. They likely broke the law when they transported their firearm and when they carried it. Likewise, there are laws against criminals possessing or transporting ammunition. Concealing their firearm in public was against the law too.
That’s bad enough, but it gets worse. Gun control laws actually made the job of mass-murderers easier and made their attacks more deadly. These criminals deliberately attacked us in “gun-free” zones where honest citizens are disarmed by law.
Violent criminals who commit robbery, rape, assault, murder, or even mass murder are more than willing to break our firearms laws. These criminals commit many crimes before they are caught by law enforcement. That means violent criminals violate our gun control laws several million times every year. Does that surprise anyone?
Gun control has failed to stop violent criminals several million times yet gun control advocates want us to pass more of their failing laws. Insanity is doing the same thing time after time and expecting a different result the next time you try the same old thing. That’s why I think gun control is crazy.
I’m as repulsed by violent crime and mass murder as you are, and fortunately, we have options that work.
Owning a gun and using it for defense is common. Over 80 million of us own guns. Forty-one percent of us live in a household that has firearms. About one-in-a-dozen adults are armed in public. Thirty percent of gun owners have used their firearm for defense.
Honest citizens use their personal firearms for self defense about more than 1.6 million times every year. That is a lot of armed self defense and a wonderful legacy of lives that were saved.
As a conservative estimate, these armed citizens saved about 5 million victims from criminal violence. They save those lives despite the thousands of infringements on honest citizens exercising their right to keep and bear arms.
We know a lot about the armed citizens who have their permits to carry a firearm in public. These 20 million citizens are extraordinarily law-abiding and non-violent. They are less likely to break the law than the police. Ordinary gun owners are also less likely than the police to have an accident or shoot the wrong person.
When we look at their record in the last few years, these honest gun owners stopped attempted mass murder about half the time where they were allowed to go armed. That has stopped 104 attempted mass murders in the last seven years. That explains why mass-murderers choose “gun-free” zones.
The future is uncertain, but we know some things with confidence. We know that anti-gun politicians will continue to offer their same broken “solutions” for violent crime. We also know that ordinary citizens will be at the scene of those crimes every time. We know that gun control will fail and that armed citizens will stop violent criminals millions of times a year.
Does it make more sense for our neighbors to be disarmed victims or armed defenders? That choice is up to us. In fact, the choice is up to you.
This article was originally published at Slow Facts and is reprinted here with permission.
If your a civilian and a gun owner your not honest
Everything you say is a lie
Your all guilty of something
Wow!
I think the left wing crazy and delusion has been encapsulated in one person using the name Agent6, and the very first thing “it” does is troll.
Must be related to dacian.
it also works as fairly decent sarcasm.
agent6…It’s you’re not your. One time probably is a typo, numerous times validates your stupidity. HQ demands you surrender your cracker jack decoder ring.
that is what happens when you let a third grader use the computer.
Are you sure agent6 has made it past the 2nd?
To say such is the epitome of insanity!
How many people “illegally” carry everyday in states that require a permission slip? I’m not talking about hard core criminals, but otherwise law-abiding citizens. I would bet these number in the millions, but there is really no way to track them.
If your carrying a gun illegally your not law abiding.
Validation of my post above thank you.
People won’t listen to YOUR arguments, because YOU’RE wrong.
Hint: and you can’t spell, either.
“and you can’t spell, either.”
Yeah, that’s hilarious, the Jack-Booted thug wanna-be can’t be a Fed, because they have basic education requirements… 😉
You would have made a great slave catcher, agent 6. After all it was a law abiding profession.
@ agent can’t spell.
It’s “YOU’RE” you ignorant wretch. YOU’RE is a contraction for YOU ARE.
if a law is unjust, then it is one’s duty to disobey.
if, while executing that duty, one is charged with a crime, they rely on their peers to seek.justice.
On average at least once a week nearly every adult in this country commits a low grade felony or multiple high grade misdemeanors in either the state or federal venue.
99% of those violations involve no victim or injury except to the government.
Show me the man and I will tell you the crime comrade.
The anti-gunners don’t have anything else, they have to keep trying. Remember the left having most of the mainstream media on their side….until they didn’t or juice lip Biden getting swooned over by the media, all his flubs and gaffs obscured or deleted…..until they didn’t
The Anti-gun crowd had interest balancing on their side and could get unconstitutional laws through the courts because of the warm-fuzzy factor, warm-fuzzy being the State likes it, it will save lives, we get to keep the law. Of course that ended with Bruen. But legislators, Biden and some states are clinging to warm-fuzzy interest balancing like people clinging to the side of the Titanic on its way to bottom hoping it stops and floats back to the surface.
It’s not happening. Gun control got kicked in the nuts and that reality is a very tough pill to swallow. While informed gun-nuts gleefully gloat at the gun-grabbers demise, the grabbers are hanging their hopes on uninformed court decisions but in the end, THEY LOST
No gloating just desperately clawing back what should have been in the first place and looking for how to safeguard it from future incursion.
The gun control side isn’t insane or stupid. They’re simply following a strategy of incremental gains, exploiting every ripe for exploitation mass murder while ignoring those that don’t fit the bill, on their way to their true goal: total disarmament.
David Thompson is correct.
Furthermore, the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex continues to advance another argument: increasing the cost and significantly reducing the sheer number of firearms in total will reduce how often violent criminals use a firearm to attack someone.
Hugely important note:
That previous argument is correct.
Another hugely important note:
If the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex ever manages to achieve their goal, that will INCREASE the TOTAL violent crime rate since violent criminals will still have ready access to edge-weapons and bludgeons and the victim pool will be totally defenseless.
Thus, we have two simple counterarguments for the Utopian goal of disarmament:
1) There is a net loss for society if violent crimes with firearms decrease at the expense of a larger overall number of violent crimes (using alternate weapons).
2) Our right to effective self-defense is inviolate and NOT dependent on arguments of social utility.
In the photo it appears there’s a hand going to help her with a much needed proper grip. Lay your cleared weapon on a table sister. Now pick it up and grip it like this and put it down like this. Repeat that until your hands bleed.
I just never felt comfortable carrying a 1911 with the hammer cocked. I know, I know, that’s also the same reason I bash Glocks and another reason I went to packing an1873 clone. If I’m going to have to cock the hammer them cowboy gunms are a lot faster and much safer
Now the Possum is faking user names?
Geoff:
The possum has a wicked sense of humor, so maybe you’re right. Err, I mean “correct.” Oops, I almost typed “your” instead of “you’re” which would make you think I’m Agent6. (Perish the thought!)
I ask again any of the disarmament crowd to name any restriction, ban, licensing scheme, or other law that would have prevented any of the recent mass shootings, or will prevent the next one. Laws mean nothing to someone who has rationalized the irrational and chosen to commit murder or suicide by cop on a grand scale. Laws mean nothing to the drug thug, gansta’ or street punk who has no hope for any future beyond a prison cell or coffin.
Ban the semi auto rifles. OK so what do you ban when the next firearm becomes popular as a replacement. And just how do the anti gun folks intend to disarm/confiscate the existing rifles. Good luck finding a police officer or soldier willing to volunteer for that detail.
Many of the armed self defense cases are not reported nor become news worthy because no one gets shot. Many times the potential victim only had to let the criminal know they were armed and capable of defending themselves to send the criminal off to find easier prey.
And, just take a solid look at the atrocities committed upon the unarmed populaces by various governments just in the last century. Sure, I could be killed by some government thug if things do go bad. But at least I will have the chance of sending a couple of them down the hell road ahead of me.
oldmaninAL,
“Laws mean nothing to someone who has rationalized the irrational and chosen to commit murder …”
True.
Nevertheless, the Laws of Economics ALWAYS prevail and even violent criminals are subject to Economics. At this point you are probably thinking, “What in the world is uncommon_sense talking about?”
See my comment above where I show that significant wide-scale disarmament would significantly increase the cost and reduce the availability of firearms, which would decrease how often violent criminals use firearms to attack people. That is simple Economics in action.
Of course Economics also tell us that violent criminals will simply switch to more readily available and far less expensive alternate instruments for attacking defenseless victims. And because those alternate instruments are far less expensive and far more readily available–and the victim pool would be far more vulnerable–the overall number of violent attacks would actually increase, resulting in a net loss to society compared to our current situation where the potential victim pool can carry self-defense firearms.
Rob Morse:
All of what you say is true. BUT you’re preaching to the TTAG choir here. Why can’t you put this stuff out somewhere where it will do some good? Answer: Because the media powers that be don’t want it seen or heard. That’s why.
Gee, that’s an awful lot of words to express one simple truth.
Laws do not prevent; they punish.