While guns used in crimes grab the headlines, people in the United State have a long history of relying upon firearms for self-defense. However, the reports go largely unnoticed since the masses are unaware of how often weapons are used for protection.
“Having a gun is by far the safest course of action when people are facing a criminal by themselves,” Dr. John Lott, an economist and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told Fox News Digital. In particular, he pointed to women who “behave passively” and are “about 2.4 times more likely to end up being seriously injured than a woman who has a gun to protect herself.”
Since violent crime has surged in major cities since 2020, women have become more dependent upon firearms, according to Fox News.
“Thank God I had my gun, or I’d probably be dead right now,” a woman in Chicago with a concealed carry permit said in October after two thugs approached her outside a bank, intending to take her car.
Last week in New Orleans, a mother, who is also an Air Force veteran, pulled a weapon on a suspect who tried to get into her car while she was sitting in gridlocked traffic with her 2-year-old son. Simply drawing the weapon convinced the perpetrator to flee.
‘Self-defense cases don’t make the news’
According to Lott, the media reports about 2,000 defensive gun use stories in a typical year.
However, he said “that is a dramatic undercount, because the vast majority of successful self-defense cases don’t make the news.”
Lott made a bold assertion that is rarely discussed. The number of people using firearms as self-defense is much higher than most people can imagine.
There are about 2 million defensive gun uses per year, according to the average of 18 national surveys.
The Heritage Foundation launched a database tracking how often guns are used in self-defense cases. They cite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which looked at various studies and found “that Americans use their firearms defensively between 500,000 and 3 million times each year.”
“The reality is, I think this number shocks a lot of people,” Amy Swearer, a legal fellow in the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital.
Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck and research partner Marc Gertz have contended the number of people using a firearm for self-defense is about 2.5 million annually, Law Officer reported.
Their research came prior to the violent crime wave that hit in 2020 and 2021 when gun sales hit record numbers. So you can be certain the number of weapons being used for protection have also increased.
The primary reason that guns used in self-defense cases fly under the radar is because the confrontation doesn’t lead to the suspect being wounded or killed. In essence, it’s not a “sensational” story.
“There is a reason why the media proclaims, ‘If it bleeds, it leads,'” said Law Officer managing editor Jim McNeff. “It’s true. The ‘train wreck’ stories always attract more readers and viewers. We are a society of rubberneckers. We see it every day in our own work at Law Officer. Unfortunately, a gory story always receives more attention than a ‘feel good’ news item.”
According to Lott, “Ninety-five percent of defensive gun uses involve merely brandishing a gun, and less than 1% involve the attacker being killed or wounded. But most news stories only report on cases where attackers are killed and brandishings are ignored. It is understandable that someone getting killed is more newsworthy than a woman brandishing a gun and the criminal running away without committing a crime, but from a policy perspective we care about both cases.”
Sixteen (16) major cities broke homicide records last year. Moreover, other crimes like carjackings, smash-and-grab robberies as well as follow-home robberies plagued cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia.
Fear is a natural reaction when violent crimes spike. Hence, people have flocked to gun stores since so many law enforcement agencies have been somewhat neutered by radical politics crippling their ability to provide adequate public safety.
Even the “rich and famous” of Beverly Hills have congregated in the only gun shop in the city to buy a weapon as their posh lifestyle has been interrupted by crime and aggressive demonstrations.
“People want to feel protected and the liberal establishment is letting them down in a big way,” a recent gun purchaser told Law Officer. “What’s interesting is that progressive liberals don’t want us to own guns, yet their policies and all this criminal justice reform make us afraid to live without one. If they would keep criminals in jail, I might feel differently.”
Russell Stewart owns Beverly Hills Guns. His business has benefited from the violence.
Heightened fears over being the victim of a crime has sent Beverly Hill residents — actors, real estate moguls and film executives — to their local gun shop with many purchasing a firearm for the first time, Stuart told LA Mag last year.
“This morning I sold six shotguns in about an hour to people that say, ‘I want a home defense shotgun,’” Stuart told the outlet. “Everyone has a general sense of constant fear, which is very sad. We’re used to this being like Mayberry.”
Handgun permits surge
Concealed carry permits have increased along with violent crime statistics. The number of concealed handgun permits surged to 21.52 million in 2020, a 48% increase since 2016 and a 10.5% increase from the same time last year, according to a study conducted by the Crime Prevention Research Center released in October.
According to a statement from Lott last year, “women made up 28.3% of permit holders in the 14 states that provide data by gender.” However, the astonishing demographic was found among black Americans. They grew 135.7% faster as permit holders than their white counterparts.
“The people who benefit the most from owning guns are also the ones who are the most likely victims of violent crime — poor blacks who live in high crime urban areas,” according to Lott.
Activists, researchers and Democratic leaders argue that with more guns comes more crime, Fox reported.
To Lott, what most people miss amid the emphasis on gun crimes is that “over 92% of violent crime has nothing to do with guns.”
“The data shows that while violent crime reported to police rose 5% between 2019 and 2020, you can’t blame that increase on guns because gun crimes actually fell by 27%,” he said.
“The bottom line is that if you want to reduce gun crime, you do the same things that you do to reduce violent crime generally, and that is make it riskier for criminals to commit crime.”
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