Nationally recognized gun laws author told Guns & Patriots countering gun bias in the media is daunting yet essential to preserve our right to self-protection.

“The mainstream media hides the fact that guns serve a social purpose for good,” said Alan Korwin, owner and operator of Bloomfield Press, the largest publisher and distributor of gun law books in the country.

“Most everything you see in the news about guns is flat-out wrong,” he said.

The media portrays a distorted image of guns.  They pretend guns do not save lives or stop crimes, he said. “They only run stories that guns kill people, which is not true.”

Korwin, who is the author of 14 books, said the First Responders Report now brings us stories of people who are alive today because they had fully loaded readily accessible firearms for their intended purpose. “To protect themselves from a criminal who was about to kill them.”

The First Responders Report recently featured the story of a Washington grandmother, shot four times by two vicious thugs, who was able to return fire with a legally carried .45 caliber pistol. The healthcare worker was returning home from a double shift when the incident took place, said Korwin. “She said the gun saved her life.”

Guns saving lives is occurring a lot more frequently than the public is aware, he said. “Even the smallest scholarly studies estimate hundreds of thousands of armed self-defense incidents annually.”

The book entitled “Armed, New Perspectives on Gun Control” by Gary Kleck and Don B. Kates Jr., estimates 2,000 defensive gun uses daily in America, he said. “Armed summarizes 13 scholarly studies that shows between 700,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses every year.”

Gary Kleck is a criminologist and is the David J. Bordua, professor of criminology at Florida State University. He has done a variety of studies on the effects of guns.

Korwin said the Kleck study is the most often cited resource on the topic of defensive gun use. “He did the most exhaustive, physically sound study.”

The public is unaware of the many defensive uses of firearms. Most of the time the firearm is used defensively without a gun being fired, said Korwin. “You will have an instance with a woman that is walking down the street very confidently because she has a gun in her hand bag; a criminal will see her and search out a softer target.”

A study done by nationally recognized expert economist and gun related crime researcher, John R. Lott Jr., regarding bias in media reporting shows a lopsided printed news ratio, he said.  “Lott’s report said in one year USA Today ran about 5,660 words on gun related crimes and zero words on gun related self-defense incidents.”

Korwin, who owns and operates the website GunLaws.com, said a similar study showed that The New York Times in one year ran 104 stories on gun related crimes and one 163 word defensive story involving an off-duty police officer who stopped a burglary.

The Media Research Center did the same study about television, which he said was also extremely biased. “The media screws with the public’s mind with impunity.”  He said the public assumes that if guns helped stop crime they would hear about it in the news when the truth is the media censors it.  “The media is in on it.  It’s disgraceful.”

Providing another example of media bias, Korwin said it is inaccurate and ethically improper when the media portrays the police as first responders. “You are the first responder; the police are the second responders.”

If a burglar intrudes into a woman’s home and she shoots, she is the first responder, he said. “The police come by later; they string yellow tape, they make a report, talk to reporters and manage the crowd. They are not the first responders, they are the second responders.”

Korwin said the media refuses to run self-defense stories and the public gets a distorted view. “It’s brainwashing.” In this scenario, if the woman was not armed, she would be dead.

In spite of the cover-up in the media, he said he continues to spread the message that guns saves lives even when his own logo was under attack.

City of Phoenix, Ariz. officials, determined to keep Korwin’s company logo “Guns Saves Lives” out of the public square, banned its use, he said. “It took us three and a half years but we beat them in court.” The Goldwater Institute, who represented Korwin, were successful in reversing the city ordinance based on First Amendment grounds.

Korwin, who has been writing professionally for 25 years, said the fight to get truthful information to the public is an uphill but necessary battle. “This idea that guns should be censored or excised out of existence is such an affront to the American way.”