The Sad Proportions of 'Gun-Control'
By Rob Morse. Dec 20, 2023
Article Source
Gun Prohibitionists call for more 'gun-control' every time a criminal uses a firearm. Like a bunch of short attention span headline surfers, we pass more 'gun-control' laws every year without asking if they actually work. When you stand back and look, you can't help but notice that the places with the strictest 'gun-control' laws include some of our most violent cities. Are 'gun-control' laws making us safer, or are they putting us in greater danger?
We know a lot about the honest people who own guns. There are between 80 and 100 million gun owners in the US today. 40 to 50 percent of us live in a household with a gun, though one report said that number might be as high as 60 percent. We know that gun owners defend themselves about 1.6 million times a year, and people who have access to a legally owned firearm defend themselves as much as 2.8 million times a year. That is over 7,600 times a day. We use a firearm to make our families safer.
We know a lot about individual gun owners too. We know the identity of the particular individuals who applied for a license to carry a firearm in public. They obviously own a gun. About one in a dozen adults legally carry a firearm in public. Because we know who they are and can track their history, we know that these concealed carriers are safer with their guns, less violent, and more law abiding than the police. For the vast majority of us, firearms are used to prevent violent crime rather than to cause it. What does that say about making guns harder to get?
We also know about criminals. Most violent criminals did not use a firearm in the commission of their crimes. Said another way, if we somehow disarmed all the criminals, then about 90 percent of violent crime would continue unchanged since those criminals didn't use guns in the first place. Though informative, those statements leave out vital information.
Most criminals don't use a gun, but many honest citizens do use a firearm to stop a crime. Also, many of the most violent crimes were committed by criminals with a firearm. Why didn't our laws stop those criminals?
The good news is that violent crime is relatively rare. Murder is localized and extremely rare. Most counties won't have a murder of any kind, let alone one that involves a firearm. Most of our murders are in our failed Democrat controlled cities. In those cities, most of our murders are committed by drug gangs. In those drug gangs, most of our murders are committed by a few particular criminals. Two percent of our counties account for over half of our murders. Most of our murders are in a few zip codes. Those simple statements contain a lot of uncomfortable truth.
Most cities stopped murders, and it wasn't with a law. They stopped crime with a mom and a dad who were sober. They stopped crime with a job and a future. It isn't that you and I couldn't kill, but that we choose not to. You couldn't make us hurt an innocent person.
It isn't the law on paper that keeps us from committing murder,
but the law we've written onto our hearts
while we were sitting around the dinner table.
The truth is that we have crime in our failed cities because of bad political decisions. Politicians need to appear relevant so they pass new laws. That doesn't mean the laws have to work other than to produce a media event.
Ink on paper isn't what stops you and I from killing, and ink on paper doesn't stop the violent enforcers in drug gangs either. In fact, disarming honest people makes it simpler for criminals to find easy victims. If 'gun-control' stopped violent crime then Democrat cities would be utopia.
Millions of honest citizens living in blue states recently learned how hard it is to buy a firearm legally. Getting a gun legally can take months or years while criminals get their guns on the street in a few minutes. 'Gun-control' laws don't change criminal behavior. Gun- control makes it harder for honest people to defend themselves.
Criminals get their guns the same place they get their drugs.. off the street.
The way I see it, 'gun-control' laws serve one purpose. Politicians need 'gun-control' laws to mask their failures. No wonder we have 23-thousand gun regulations.. and the list is growing every day.
I gave you 700 words and a lot of thought. I study how you defended yourself every week. Please leave a comment and share this article. I'm also getting better every day as I recover from a cold. RM
