The anti-gun agenda is strong throughout the nation. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. While most states have constitutional carry, it's only "most states" by a slim majority. For now, at least.
Even in pro-gun states, though, there is a tough fight to keep the right to bear arms free from further restrictions. The narrative is still strong, though, with the media echoing it all the time. Yet defensive gun uses undermine it.
The problem, though, is that while high-profile shootings are common enough, defensive gun uses never seem to make national headlines unless it can be spun as something bad. See also, George Zimmerman and Kyle Rittenhouse.
Yet they happen all. The. Freaking. Time.
Luckily, The Daily Signal tracks them. And Amy Swearer's opener is full of some interesting stuff.
As wildfires raged last month in California, tens of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes, often with just minutes of warning. To make matters worse, looters took advantage of the chaos and lack of police resources, showing up in droves to ransack evacuated areas—sometimes as helpless residents looked on in horror as their doorbell cameras captured the looting in real time.
Fortunately for residents of at least some evacuated areas, a handful of their armed neighbors stayed behind to protect their homes and livelihoods from would-be looters—in some cases, bravely patrolling their streets with firearms in what certainly seemed to be open defiance of the state’s public carry laws.
Swearer also notes how California's restrictive gun control laws make it far more difficult to defend their home. Personally, I can't help but believe some criminals took advantage of the distraction. After all, if emergency personnel--including police--were tied up with the fire, they'd be slow to respond to reports of criminal activity.
And yet, how many people were effectively powerless because of the state's laws?
Proponents of such measures claim they save lives, but here's something else Swearer brought up.
Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to the most recent report on the subject by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the issue concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.
We've all seen these numbers before. I reported on that study that found 1.6 million defensive gun uses when it came out.
A lot of people don't care, but let's understand something. According to Brady, 327 people are shot in the United States each day. That works out to just under 120,000 people each year. I'm intentionally not removing the six that are shot due to "legal intervention," which are basically officer-involved shootings for the sake of argument.
Using the most pessimistic number Swearer references, we're still looking at more than four times more people use a gun for self-defense than for hurting people.
And here's the thing. At least some of those shootings Brady cites are likely defensive gun uses.
Brady doesn't break those out in any way except when the shots were fired by a police officer. That means the number of actual criminal shootings are probably much lower.
Even without that, the number of defensive gun uses far outpaces people being shot by criminals.
Guns save lives. That's plain and simple.
The problem is that most of those never make the news. Many don't involve shots being fired at all, while others never progress beyond a report in the local news. The mainstream national media has no interest in them, and that's not completely shocking. Even without political bias involved, they're just not stories of national interest. They generally don't cover most murders, either.
But guns save lives. The numbers speak for themselves and they undermine the anti-gun narrative.
