Most Americans believe that people have a right to self-defense. Most Americans believe that a firearm is an effective tool for self-defense. Which is why most Americans support the right to keep and bear arms. There are other reasons why some Americans are pro-gun (e.g., defense against tyranny and hunting) but armed self-defense is the thing. Which is why gun control advocates will do and say anything to undermine the idea that guns save lives. Proponents of civilian disarmament like the alliterative Marvin Meadows (above) . . .
Mr. Meadors has penned an anti-pistol polemic entitled Guns Are Killing People and It is Not The “Bad Guys” Getting Killed: More NRA Propaganda Exposed! The HuffPo headline is accurate enough — at least in terms of Mr. Meadors’ mission. The self-professed accountant, political commentator and chess enthusiast presents readers with an anti-gun agitprop three-fer: guns kill people (all on their own!), defensive gun use is a myth and the NRA is evil.
If you need someone to cook the books for your business, Marvin Meadow’s your man. Check out the way he manipulates numbers to discount the frequency — and thus importance — of Americans who’ve utilized armed self-defense . . .
One of the biggest myths of the NRA and gun advocates is that guns are critical for self-protection and the saying goes that all that is necessary to ward off an attack of a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. The NRA likes to frame things in this dichotomy of “good vs. evil” creating a simplification of reality very appealing to conservatives. In doing so they neglect the accidents which are all too common like the recent incident in which a two-year-old found the gun of his mother’s boyfriend under a car seat and accidentally shot his mother in the back killing her.
Well, even the myth of guns being used frequently for defensive purposes turns out to be another falsehood. According to a recent study by the Violence Policy Center (VPC) citing data collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation:
In 2012, across the nation there were only 259 justifiable homicides involving a private citizen using a firearm reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program as detailed in its Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR).
That same year, there were 8,342 criminal gun homicides tallied in the SHR. In 2012, for every justifiable homicide in the United States involving a gun, guns were used in 32 criminal homicides. And this ratio, of course, does not take into account the tens of thousands of lives ended in gun suicides or unintentional shootings that year.
Mr. Meadors is only counting justifiable homicides as defensive gun uses. That’s like counting fatal car crashes to estimate the number of automotive accidents. Any incident where an innocent person brandishes a firearm to defend themselves against rape, robbery and/or physical attack — regardless of whether or not a single shot’s fired — is a defensive gun use (DGU).
Clayton Cramer’s paper Why the FBI’s Justifiable Homicide Statistics Are a Misleading Measure of Defensive Gun Use does an excellent job of skewering gun control advocates like Mr. Meadors, anti-gun rights crusaders who seek to “debunk” both the efficacy and frequency of DGUs for personal protection.
Using the correct definition, the most conservative DGU estimate pegs the number at 55k per year. That’s about 151 DGU’s per day. Not that the right to keep and bear arms is subject to arguments about social utility, but the FBI recorded 11,961 firearms-related homicides in 2014. That’s roughly 33 per day. Even without considering higher estimates of annual DGUs (as many as 1 million or more), or the fact that most of those homicides were criminal-on-criminal (criminal lives matter!), private gun ownership is an indisputable net positive for society.
[Note: gun control advocates always lump in firearms-related suicides with firearms-related homicides to inflate the number of Americans killed by “gun violence.” As Mr. Meadors’ article focused on homicides, I’ve left suicides out of the equation. Even if you add them in, though, the most conservative estimate of DGU’s still outpace firearms homicides by a significant margin.]
Knocking down the myths of the NRA such as the number of the defensive gun uses will not convince gun advocates and conservative politicians bankrolled by the NRA to change their minds about passing sensible gun legislation. They can not be convinced and the far right largely lives in a post-truth environment anyway where there is no objective reality and whatever one believes is the truth becomes the truth. But with defensive gun uses being so rare one wonders if the ubiquity of hand guns is necessary. It is interesting in an very Orwellian way how the NRA controls not only the politicians who block sensible gun legislation, but the very reality we live in by controlling the information on gun violence we have access to. Surely, the right wing wants us to adopt this post-truth environment they have long become accustomed to. No thanks!
The NRA and the far right don’t know the truth about guns? As you’d expect from a proponent of civilian disarmament (seeking to reduce the “ubiquity” of privately-held handguns to zero), Mr. Meadors has it exactly backwards.
I love how he uses that one example where the boyfriend was a security guard. I was always under the impression that most anti-gun advocates were for “armed professionals”. Also if you ever want to disputed the whole justified vs criminal homicide argument just tell them this. The whole point of a defensive gun is NOT to kill anyone it is to stop the criminal act.
“whole point of a defensive gun is NOT to kill anyone it is to stop the criminal act.”
In the anti’s world, you have two choices, run away or talk a criminal out of a crime. When a citizen has a gun it leverages the conversation.
“In the anti’s world, you have two choices, run away or talk a criminal out of a crime.”
Actually there’s a third choice. Lie back and enjoy it.
I know woman to took a self-defense class YEARS ago who was taught to yell NO! to attackers. That should take care of it. She asked the instructor about using a gun. The horrified instructor literally said NO! That she might be killed, but at least she wouldn’t have stooped so low as to use a gun.
What the hell is wrong with these Sheeple?
” The whole point of a defensive gun is NOT to kill anyone it is to stop the criminal act.”
Yes. The anti 2a crowd loves to call firearms things that are designed only to kill people, which couldn’t be farther from the truth.
I like to shoot targets, to learn myself how to handle and operate the thing, and to compete against myself to get as close as possible to the aim point under different conditions.
The absolute last thing I would ever want to have to do with my gun is to shoot another person, and even worse would be to have to end his life, and I would only do so were I forced to. And this is true for basically all law respecting firearms owners. No one wants to kill another man, excepting of course the criminal bad actor and the insane, which exist but they are a small number in terms of percentages – of and good luck keeping firearms out of the hands of those who are so nuts they want to kill people for fun or are just plain criminals, how does any law prevent that? It doesn’t.
Last thing, literally last.
So how is it possible that this firearm is designed only to kill a man?
If you make this distinction based on use, clearly the thing is designed to make holes in paper.
A few of my firearms are designed to ring steel (in addition to making holes in paper). I have versitle firearms you know.
Is that not a musical instrument?
According to the ATF, you can change the design of something by how you use it…
Love how he mentions defensive gun uses being rare in that last quote. It almost shows how intentionally misleading he is.
When the truth isn’t helping your argument, you get guys like this….
Here’s the thing, I don’t even care what people like Mr. Meadors, Ms. Schumer and others of their ilk say any more. They are like car alarms, after you hear them going off constantly, you just quit paying attention. They are going to say what they say and I’m going to not listen.
Typical left wing style attack, when in doubt, lie. Then, scream racism. I’m actually quite surprised he didn’t scream racism at some point. Or maybe he did and I missed it. Can’t have a true liberal argument without calling someone a racist sexist.
“In 2012, across the nation there were only 259 justifiable homicides involving a private citizen using a firearm reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program…”
Justifiable homicides – regardless of all the other BS statistics he spouts, whatever happened to the “If it saves even one life…” meme they keep trotting out? Sure sounds to me using his stats above that private firearms saved 259 lives, at a minimum. Hypocrites.
And don’t you just love how Liberals put an equal value on every single life until it comes to a Conservative they don’t like, then they go all out joyful when anything bad happens to them.
only 259 justifiable homicides involving a private citizen using a firearm
So many qualifiers in such a short sentence. It was carefully constructed to omit 1000 or more justifiable homicides by cops and the many thousands of episodes with either no shots fired or the bad guy only wounded.
Personally, I think that the unalterable fact that cops justifiably kill four times more people than “private citizens” is a big tribute to us, no?
To press the point further, there are twelve times more of us then there are cops, and yet they justifiably kill four times as many as we do.
“Mr. Meadors is only counting justifiable homicides as defensive gun uses.”
And yet again, we see the craven dishonesty of the anti-gun cult.
If an assailant sees my gun and flees, have I not defended myself?
If I shoot and incapacitate my assailant, have I not defended myself?
If nobody DIES, have I not defended myself?
Does he apply this bloodthirsty standard to OTHER means of self-defense?
If he uses the martial arts, WITHOUT choking, beating or kicking someone to death, has he not defended himself?
If he uses mace or pepper spray, and nobody DIES, has he not defended himself? What would he recommend instead? Sarin? Mustard gas?
It’s not called the Huffington Compost for nothing. 100% propaganda rag.
“They can not be convinced and the far right largely lives in a post-truth environment anyway where there is no objective reality and whatever one believes is the truth becomes the truth.”
This, from the crowd that invented participation trophies, is priceless.
Life and death are a black and white affair. I don’t care if someone attacking myself or others is misunderstood, crazy, on drugs, or desperate, my life comes first when being attacked.. That is a black and white affair.
Meadows is attempting to create a debate which is on his favorable turf. That is, he is trying to justify the removal of an individual right, guaranteed by the Constitution, via the use of statistics. Now, statistics are fine and dandy, but they have about zero to do with individual rights. If 1000 people use their right to free speech for bad purposes, that means nothing to my right to free speech. My right remains intact in the a same manner in which it did before the abuse.
In other words, individual rights are individual rights. And, we shouldn’t allow the argument to be shifted onto grounds which may or could favor “society” (as defined and abused by Meadors). Everything is not negotiable via the majority. Individuals have rights regardless of what mobs say.
“… the far right largely lives in a post-truth environment anyway where there is no objective reality and whatever one believes is the truth becomes the truth.”
Now that’s rich … coming from the Left who unabashedly bend reality into a pretzel when their feelings compel them to do so.
I was just wondering if someone could help me understand something. Now, before I get started, I do know as a fact that liberal and logic have only one thing in common, the fact that they can both be found under “L” in the dictionary! Even given that fact, how does their mind work in such obvious contradiction to any logic possible? As an example: Liberals are all up in arms over the bathroom laws. They say “you are discriminating against the LGBT community (which by most estimates amount to approximately 3.8% of the population) in order to guard against the possibility of a sexual predator entering the women’s restroom and targeting innocents. They argue that bad people will be bad regardless of whatever laws you pass, and we need to concentrate on the perpetrators to get to the root of the problem!
Then, in the same breath, they scream we must pass more gun laws and punish an estimated 41% of Americans who are law abiding gun owners, because a few bad people use guns illegally! How does this make any sense at all?
It all becomes clear when you realize the real goal is socialism. In both cases they are attacking an institution of capitalism. Industry and morality.
“In 2012, across the nation there were only 259 justifiable homicides involving a private citizen using a firearm reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program…”
Clearly, it would better if that number were higher. So what – more long gun?
The NRA is not a “conservative” or “right”-anything group.
They are a constitutional group.
They don’t address any issues but those related to the bill of rights, particularly the second amendment.
If guns didn’t work, Bloomberg wouldn’t have a full-time, paid security staff of seventeen heavily armed men protecting his vile ass.
While publications lean a certain way even the Wash Post gave the Pres three Pinnochios for his comment about mass killings don’t happen in other industrialized nations.
Huff Post allows articles like this. So there is hope.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mario-almonte/in-gun-control-controversy-can-americans-handle-the-truth_b_7267134.html
LA Times is left and it published article about how we aren’t talking about the same things when we discuss safety & gun control. It talked about cultural bundling where we type cast or profile the “other.”
“Surely, the right wing wants us to adopt this post-truth environment they have long become accustomed to. No thanks!”
Hey kids today’s special word is Projectionism!
I have used my gun a few times to stop a violent assault. I dont need a meaningless hoplophobe explaining the importance of my gun to me any more than obama needs a hoplophobe telling him he doesnt need armed men protecting him
Huffington Poop
I find it very very funny that this is all in defense of the NRA. Saying that guns are needed to protect ourselves against criminals with guns. The reason there are so many criminals with guns is the NRA. Why have they lobbied so strongly since 1934? They supported the act only after handguns were taken off the legislation. No where do I ever see the full sentences of the second amendment. “The right of the people to keep….” is incorrect. A well REGULATED militia being necessary to a secure state, ( does everyone see the comma) the right of the people to keep…….. The NRA has created a never ending loop of gun violence through their legislative branch. We have allowed the people who are making millions and millions off the sales of guns to lead the discussion about a public safety issue of which they are the cause. Closer to the intensions of the founding fathers, allow the states to decide. You had to check your weapon at the sheriff’s office in the wild west when you came into town. The gun manufacturers are the biggest villains here. I support sportsmanship, hunting, marksmanship, but non of this other BS 7 children under the age of 19 die everyday in this country. There is blood on your hands. You are no better than a group of terrorists.