Despite National Tragedy, Truth Is, Guns Save Lives

• FBI statistics prove Second Amendment must remain intact

By Victor Thorn

On December 11, Jacob Tyler Roberts, 22, wearing tactical clothing and a hockey mask, randomly opened fire on shoppers and employees in the Clackamas Town Center shopping mall in Clackamas County, Oregon, killing two people and seriously wounding a third before committing suicide. Three days later, after allegedly murdering his mother while she slept, Adam Lanza, 20, allegedly shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and viciously murdered 20 first-graders and six adults before taking his own life.

Although it appears that both incidents may be the work of mentally-ill individuals, the latter sent severe shock waves across the planet of an intensity not exhibited since the 9-11 false-flag attacks over 11 years ago. Sadness gripped the country and Americans openly sobbed for the innocent lives that were so savagely ended.

Although it seems nearly certain that some sort of gun control legislation will pass Congress in next year’s session and be signed into law, it’s worth remembering that guns are responsible for saving many more lives than they are given credit for in the corporate-controlled mainstream media.

Gun-Haters  Seize the Moment

Leftist anti-gun zealots in D.C., N.Y. and L.A. should admit, once and for all, what they really want: the outlawing of privately-owned firearms by American citizens. Of course they’ll never reveal their true motives, so instead tragedies such as the Newtown massacre are exploited to erode our Second Amendment rights.

The unspoken secret harbored among these gun-hating movie stars and politicians is that many of them have concealed carry permits, as do their armed bodyguards. Plus, they work in buildings protected by metal detectors and security personnel that brandish weapons. In other words, they’ll remain safe, but nobody else will.

As news broke regarding the Sandy Hook school shooting, it didn’t take long for NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg to declare, “[Obama] needs to send a bill to Congress to fix this problem. Calling for ‘meaningful action’ is not enough. We need immediate action.” What Bloomberg failed to mention was that Connecticut already has some of America’s most severe gun control laws.

Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) pronounced that Obama should “exploit” this heartbreaking situation, whereas Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) sneered, “The NRA is an enabler of mass murder, and it’s time we stood up to them.” However, both of these legislators neglected to tell constituents that on the same day as the Connecticut murders, a man in Beijing, China wielded a knife—not a gun—to attack 23 children inside their elementary school.

On the West coast, Hollywood bleeding hearts such as Alec Baldwin, Michael Moore and Mia Farrow all demanded “gun control now,” as did newsman Keith Olbermann. CNN talk show host Piers Morgan had an on-air meltdown, comparing Sandy Hook to Scotland’s 1996 slaying of 16 children inside a school. “This is America’s Dunblane,” Morgan frothed. Finally, MSNBC blowhard Ed Schultz called the Founding Fathers who wrote our Second Amendment “slave owners.”

For his part, only two months ago during the second presidential debate, Barack Obama specifically floated the notion of “getting an assault weapons ban introduced.” As his former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel once famously quipped in true Machiavellian fashion, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”

Dave Workman Interview

One day prior to the Sandy Hook tragedy, AMERICAN FREE PRESS interviewed Dave Workman, senior editor at The Gun Mag, the official publication of the Second Amendment Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works tirelessly to protect Americans’ inalienable right to bear arms.

Saddened by the senseless tragedies, Workman said: “These are rare events, and because they don’t happen all the time they’re obviously high profile. As the media says, ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’ When news stories like this surface and flash across the country they receive plenty of coverage. It gives the impression that America is a violent country but that’s not necessarily correct.”

Confirming a previous AFP report from the August 13, 2012 edition, Workman said, “Over the past five years, there’s been a steady increase in firearms sales and concealed carry permits. Plus, more people that have never owned a gun are also purchasing them for the first time. Yet, during this same period, the violent crime rate has steadily decreased. If you check FBI statistics, they speak for themselves.”

Well versed on this subject, Workman stressed: “These numbers clearly point out that it was a myth to begin with when the gun prohibition lobby claimed that more weapons in private hands would lead to more crime. It’s nothing but scare rhetoric.”

The irony here, added Workman, is that the exceptions to America’s declining crime rate are largely located in cities that have banned guns.

“If you look at large municipalities like Chicago, L.A., D.C. and Detroit that have higher crime rates, they’ve also enacted strict firearms laws,” said Workman. “Citizens can’t fight back even though they possess a constitutionally protected civil right to do so.”

When asked why certain groups can’t seem to connect the dots, Workman replied, “The progressive mindset is one of denial. They refuse to acknowledge that one of their core beliefs may in fact be wrong, or that they were mistaken. Without an evolution of thought or a process of maturity, they can’t deal in a logical adult way with proof that everything they believed about guns being bad was wrong. The core of their foundations would be shaken to the ground.”

Pertaining to this same subject, only hours after the Newtown massacre, Barack Obama vowed to “take meaningful action” to satisfy his left-leaning supporters. Workman’s thoughts on this subject were evident. “A lot of people are concerned that during Obama’s second term he’ll enact some sort of gun control legislation. Obama went on the record in 2008 with a Pittsburgh newspaper [Tribune-Review] stating that he’s against concealed carry. His record in Illinois also proves that he’s no fan of guns. If Congress handed him a pure pro-gun rights bill, I’m certain he’d immediately veto it.”

Obviously, the latest massacres will do nothing to change the impression that America is teeming with violence, especially to those residing in foreign countries with strict gun control laws. Workman observed, “They still think we’re the Wild West. It’s a cultural thing. People learn about us by watching our movies. These films make for colorful entertainment, but they’re a lot of hype and not very realistic.”

Similarly, Workman pointed out, “Following Australia’s Port Arthur Massacre, authorities confiscated a majority of guns. Of course, shortly thereafter homicides shot through the roof. Violent crime is also going way up in England. There, defending yourself can land you in jail. It’s a crime.”

Comparing their societies with our own, Workman concluded, “The Wild West was actually a pretty peaceful place because people knew the other guy would shoot back. Today in the U.S., taking out a bad guy is a public service.”

Florida Violence Declines

• Criminals don’t like it when citizenry is well-armed

By Victor Thorn

In mid-December, Florida surpassed the one million mark for concealed carry permits. Even though one in every 17 Floridians now holds a permit allowing them to carry a concealed firearm—with 55% of them being over 50 years of age—the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has reported: “The overall violent crime rate has had a significant decrease of 56.7% [from] 1991 to 2011. Florida’s population increased 43% during that period.”

According to the Violence Policy Center, a nonprofit organization intent on increased regulation of firearms and archery equipment in the United States, those Floridians with concealed carry permits killed 499 individuals from May 2007 to November 2012. Although that figure sounds relatively high on the surface, when one does the math it comes to an average of seven killings per month. In a state with 19 million residents, seven killings per month by concealed carry gun owners is an exceedingly low number.

As is the overall trend in America, murder in Florida has significantly decreased. In 1991, when 13 million people resided in the Sunshine State, 1,276 murders occurred. Two decades later, with a population of 19 million, that number of murders dropped to 985.

Florida is undeniably a safer place, as are its law-abiding citizens, especially since the 2005 passage of what is known as “stand your ground” legislation. Based on the “Castle Doctrine,” which states that all individuals have the right to defend their homes with deadly force, the “stand your ground” statute reads, “A person has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force if they reasonably believe it is necessary to do so.”

Despite justifiable homicides tripling in Florida over the past decade, in 2010 a mere 40 “stand your ground” killings transpired in the entire state. Again, with 19 million residents, it’s safe to say that Floridians justify these rare instances of self-defense in exchange for the ability to protect their families, homes and selves.

Recent photos of George Zimmerman’s bloody face seem to indicate that he was not the aggressor but the victim during his life and death scuffle with Trayvon Martin. This law, if successfully applied in Zimmerman’s case, may be responsible for saving a life, albeit not the one that the mainstream media clearly had hoped for.

Chicago Sees Huge Spike in Crime

• Increase in homicides, violence related to strict anti-gun laws

By Victor Thorn

Rather than succumbing to the latest gun-grabber frenzy, Barack Obama should focus on the real problem: a proliferation of black violence that is scarring his hometown of Chicago. Whereas crime statistics have declined nationwide over the past two decades, Chicago is facing a 38% rise in homicides since last year.

During the first six months of 2012, black-on-black violence laid the foundation for 80% of all Chicago murders. To put this matter into perspective, the Chicago Tribune’s David Heinzmann wrote on July 12, “While blacks make up about 33% of the city’s population, they accounted for nearly 78% of the homicide victims.” He added, “A majority of both homicide victims and offenders are young black men with criminal records.” In this veritable war zone, more Chicago police officers were murdered via firearms than in any other American city.

Yet for all his anti-gun bluster, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, has been a dismal failure. As The American Spectator, a conservative-oriented news magazine, noted on July 24, “If more gun control is all it takes to prevent tragedies, then Chicago ought to be the safest city in the United States as it has had the strictest municipal gun laws in the country for the past 30 years.”

Black libertarian Walter Williams, a Chicago columnist, points the finger of blame directly at Obama and other so-called civil rights leaders like Reverand Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. “Blacks are exploited by other blacks and liberal politicians,” Williams asserts, “to build political power. Blacks are treated as a ‘victim group’ to get them to buy into a political ideology.”

Since Obama and Emanuel both control bully pulpits, why won’t they tell blacks to pull-up their saggy pants, quit speaking in ebonics, get out of the drug dealing business, refrain from having scores of illegitimate children, and stop acting like gang-banger thugs that black rappers sing about? Doesn’t Obama feel an obligation to help his own people? Only when these violent young blacks are told to assimilate into a more peaceful culture will they have a chance to escape Chicago’s ghetto violence.

Fortunately for crime victims, on December 11, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit struck down Chicago’s ban on carrying concealed weapons. Law-abiding citizens now at least have an equal chance against Chicago’s more sordid elements.

GUN SAFETY FACTS

The National Self-Defense Survey—one of the most comprehensive studies of U.S. firearms and violence ever done—conducted by Florida State University criminologists in 1994 found the following:

• The rate of defensive gun use can be projected nationwide to be approximately 2.5 million per year—one defensive gun use for every 13 seconds.

• Among 15.7% of gun defenders interviewed nationwide during the National Self Defense Survey the defender believed that someone “almost certainly” would have died had the gun not been used for protection—a life saved by a privately held gun about once every 1.3 minutes. In another 14.2% of cases the defender believed someone “probably” would have died if the gun hadn’t been used in defense.

• In 83.5% of these successful gun defenses the attacker either threatened or used force first—disproving the longstanding myth that legal gun owners are more likely to initiate violence.

• In 91.7% of these incidents the defensive use of a gun did not wound or kill the criminal attacker. In 64.2% of these gun defense cases the police learned of the defense, which means that the media could also find out and report on them if they chose to.

• In 73.4% of these gun-defense incidents, the attacker was a stranger to the intended victim. Defenses against a family member or intimate were rare—well under 10%. This disproves the myth that a gun kept for defense will most likely be used against a family member or someone you love.

• In over half of these gun-defense incidents the defender was facing two or more attackers—and three or more attackers in over 25% of these cases. No means of defense other than a firearm—martial arts, pepper spray or stun guns—gives a potential victim a decent chance of getting away uninjured when facing multiple attackers.

• In 79.7% of these gun defenses the defender used a concealable handgun. 25% of gun defenses occurred away from the defender’s home.

Source: The World Wide Web Gun Defense Clock maintained by author J. Neil Schulman. For more information on Schulman’s books or writings, write 150 S. Highway 160, Suite C-8, PMB 234, Pahrump, NV 89048 or call (775) 751-0770.

Victor Thorn is a hard-hitting researcher, journalist and author of over 50 books.