Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Defensive gun uses outnumber annual firearms-related deaths by a factor of anywhere from to 15 to 80 times. That means Americans use guns to prevent burglaries, robberies, assaults, rapes, and murders far more often than people die in incidents involving guns.
And yet gun control advocates work tirelessly to restrict gun rights and reduce the number and effectiveness of firearms in civilian hands. How many more assaults, rapes, robberies, and murders are they willing to tolerate every year to achieve their utopian goal of a “gun-free” society?
When the Virginia State Crime Commission and the House Judiciary Committee held hearings earlier this fall regarding firearm policies, it was striking how little many gun control advocates and policymakers know about basic facts related to guns and gun violence.
It also was clear how devastating many of their policy proposals would be for law-abiding Americans who choose to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
These legislators and advocates, like most of us, genuinely want to create safer communities and protect innocent people from violence. But the reality is the overwhelming majority of lawful gun owners never will be a threat to themselves or others, nor would imposing substantial barriers to lawful gun ownership make anyone safer.
Not only do Americans use their firearms for lawful purposes far more often than they use them to commit crimes, but studies routinely show that a very small number of repeat criminal offenders are responsible for the majority of gun-related crimes, even though they’re already prohibited from possessing firearms.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded in 2013 that “almost all major studies” on defensive gun uses have found that Americans defend themselves with their firearms between 500,000 and 3 million times each year. This makes lawful gun owners an important factor in overall public safety.
– Amy Swearer in These Gun Owners Were Able to Confront Criminals in September