NPR: Silly Americans, You'll Never
Use Your Gun for Self Defense

By Dan Zimmerman April 15th, 2018

Why do gun owners bother buying with firearms? The odds are so far against any individual ever needing to use a gun for self-defense, it's insane to keep those dangerous things around where they can be stolen or used in anger against a family member.

That's the gist of an NPR analysis (your tax dollars at work) which tries to make the case for the cool, clear logic behind the anti-gun left's efforts to reduce the number of firearms owned by civilians in America.

The latest data show that people use guns for self-defense only rarely. According to a Harvard University analysis of figures from the National Crime Victimization Survey, people defended themselves with a gun in nearly 0.9 percent of crimes from 2007 to 2011.

Our old friend, Dr. David Hemenway is back yet again to tell us that the risks of gun ownership simply outweigh any potential benefits.

"The average person . . . has basically no chance in their lifetime ever to use a gun in self-defense," he tells Here & Now's Robin Young. "But . . . every day, they have a chance to use the gun inappropriately. They have a chance, they get angry. They get scared."

But the research spread by the gun lobby paints a drastically different picture of self-defense gun uses. One of the most commonly cited estimates of defensive gun uses, published in 1995 by criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, concluded there are between 2.2 and 2.5 million defensive gun uses annually.

The Kleck and Gertz estimate has always been on the higher end of the defensive gun use spectrum. .......

What's the lesson here? The usual claim that firearms in civilian hands are not necessary, and even dangerous - and yet the figures are there when is comes to defensive use of firearms, when in a huge number of cases there are not even shots fired. The anti rights movement spends most of its time using criminal gun murders as the excuse to further its mission towards broad ''gun control'' - conveniently ignoring the majority law abiding gun owners and the innate right of self defense.

"You don't have to be Jewish to fight by our side."
You just have to love freedom.

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