It's so odd to me that so many gun control activists insist that they're not opposed to gun ownership, yet will claim that actually owning one makes you a gajillion times less safe. I wish they'd just come out with it and say what they mean: they absolutely are opposed to gun ownership, and anything they can do to make more expensive, legally dangerous, and burdensome is a good thing because it will prevent some folks from keeping a firearm in their home.
USA Today columnist Joel Burgess is just the latest in a long line of gun control fans to bemoan gun ownership while pretending he's reluctantly okay with it so long as their are some strings attached.
A long-running cultural narrative says we should rely almost entirely on ourselves for safety. That would seem to mean having a gun in your house is necessary to stop bad guys from hurting you and your family, a message reinforced by the gun lobby and our entertainment industry.
But my grandfather’s gun made nobody safer. And the facts we know about firearms tell a similar story, like that guns are used defensively in only about 1% of personal and property crimes – a lot less frequently than the gun industry has said.
Burgess's grandfather took his own life with a gun, and I can understand why that makes him hostile to the idea of owning one himself. I don't buy that study he cited, though. Supposedly, there are only about 65,000 defensive gun uses every year; a number that has largely remained unchanged from the 1990s through the early 2020s, even though there are millions more gun owners today than there were 30 years ago. That 65,000 figure is also incredibly low compared to other surveys that have found anywhere between 100,0000 and 1,000,000 defensive gun uses per year.
Even if we were to accept that 65,000 figure, we're still talking about more DGUs than gun-involved homicides, suicides, and accidental/lnegligent deaths combined.
Burgess asserts that owning a gun increases the risk of suicide, citing a study by longtime anti-gun activist Dr. Garen Wintemute. I don't put much stock in Wintemute's "research," but even Burgess admits that risk can be mitigated by simply securing a firearm so that unauthorized users don't have access to it.
It turns out, I’m the minority among my close friends – all of whom are fathers. When I asked why they have firearms, they said it was for protection, which didn’t surprise me, since it’s the most common explanation Americans give for gun ownership.
What did surprise me was when I learned – only recently – that there was a gun in the home where I grew up.
My mom told me stories about her father, the talented son of an immigrant who as an engineer patented a gyroscopic navigation device. Scarred by his death, she didn’t want to even look at a gun. And I never saw one in our house.
But my dad, who is 85 and grew up in Central Florida with people doing daily target practice in their backyards, has now told me he kept a pistol hidden away. When I was 16 and we moved to a rural area, he loaded it and put it in his bottom clothes drawer.
“I felt like I needed it for protection. For us,” he said.
So, as it turns out, Burgess himself grew up in a home with a loaded and unsecured firearm. Did that gun make him safer or less safe? If Burgess never knew about it until he was a grown man, I'd say it didn't really have an impact on his safety at all.
I do understand the concerns that Burgess has about guns and suicide. I've lost friends and family who've taken their own lives. When my oldest son passed away in 2022, and when my wife died on New Year's Day in 2025 and those of us left behind were grieving the loss, I made sure that every one of my firearms was secured. I wasn't worried about me, but I was a little concerned about my kids.
That wasn't the only step I took, though. I made sure that they could talk to a grief counselor if they wanted, even if it had to be virtually given the rural part of Virginia where they live. More importantly, I made sure that they could talk to me if they wanted. I still do, as a matter of fact.
It could take 20 minutes or more for sheriff's deputies to get to my home if they're ever needed. The odds of a home invader are pretty low, but they're not non-existent, and having access to a gun and being comfortable and competent shooting it could very well save my life and the lives of my youngest children.
If Burgess doesn't want to own a gun, that's his choice. It's not just not a choice I will make. I believe I am safer with guns in my home than I would be otherwise, and nothing he or any other gun control advocate could say is going to change my mind... or me exercising my Second Amendment rights.
