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Guns Save Lives
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Guns Save LivesIn June, a new book will be published that I urge every American to read. It's called "Guns Save Lives: True Stories of Americans Defending Their Lives With Firearms." The author is Robert Waters. The publisher is Loompanics Unlimited.If your politically correct bookstore doesn't have it by June, tell it to order the book for you.This is not a dull, scholarly study, nor is it a book of arguments. Robert Waters has just done a fine job of reporting. He tracked down 14 people who had been forced to defend their lives, their families or their employees and businesses with a firearm. He interviewed them and others involved in the cases, including police. Then, like a good storyteller, he tells you what happened, blow by blow.These are exciting stories, some of them terrifying. To summarize just one, imagine that you are a woman with two small children in the house. You're home recuperating from recent surgery. You go to the front door, and a man shoves his way in and begins to stab you with a knife - in the chest, in the arm, in the eye.Your screams bring your 11-year-old son down from upstairs, and he hurls his frail, little body on the back of the thug who is trying to kill you. The thug shakes the boy off and begins to beat him. This gives you the chance to stumble downstairs and retrieve your pistol. It is a mother's love that gives you strength through all your pain and fear to climb back up those stairs, gushing blood every step. You know only you and that pistol stand between death and your children. You shoot the * four times. He drops, paralyzed from the chest down.This time the guy was sentenced to life without parole. I said "this time" because he had a record of felony convictions that should have kept him in prison. That is a common theme. In almost all of these cases, the bad guys were convicted felons who never should have been let out of prison, but were by a badly run criminal justice system.I say it plainly: If you rely on the criminal justice system to protect you and your family, you're relying on a flawed system that has resulted in the deaths and serious injuries of literally thousands of innocent people who were murdered or assaulted by people with many convictions on their records. The revolving door of our prison system still has not been completely shut, though some progress in some states has been made. Even so, there are still many idiots in black robes who seem to have far more sympathy for the criminals than for the victims.Incidentally, if you want a reason to never vote for a liberal governor, that's it. A liberal governor is going to appoint liberal judges, and unless you are a career criminal, that's the last kind of judge you want sitting on the bench. It breaks your heart to read these stories of good, decent people who were terrified and often badly injured before they could save their lives with a firearm.I don't make any bones about it: I hate the gun-control crowd. They are liars and deceivers at worst and fools at best. The men who took up private arms to win their liberty from British tyranny wrote the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights to make sure every American would also have a firearm for self-defense and for the defense of liberty.Scholarly works that have been done - more than 20 of them - show that anywhere from hundreds of thousands to 2 million Americans defend themselves or their property with firearms every year. Yet deaths from firearm accidents have steadily decreased until they are next to dead last on the list of accidental fatalities.Of course, if you buy a gun, learn what the laws are, learn to use the weapon, and learn to use it and store it responsibly. That goes without saying. This nation was created by intelligent and responsible people for intelligent and responsible people. Don't vote for one single politician who even hints he or she might want to limit your right to own and use a firearm in self-defense. This is a no-compromise issue. http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20020401/index.php
Comments
http://townhall.com/columnists/douggiles/2013/02/03/armed-guard-saves-school-last-week-gun-control-freaks-wrong-again-n1503840?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2008/02/27/guns_save_lives?page=full&comments=true
by John Stossel
It's all too predictable. A day after a gunman killed six people and wounded 18 others at Northern Illinois University, The New York Times criticized the U.S. Interior Department for preparing to rethink its ban on guns in national parks.
The editorial board wants "the 51 senators who like the thought of guns in the parks -- and everywhere else, it seems -- to realize that the innocence of Americans is better protected by carefully controlling guns than it is by arming everyone to the teeth."
As usual, the Times editors seem unaware of how silly their argument is. To them, the choice is between "carefully controlling guns" and "arming everyone to the teeth." But no one favors "arming everyone to the teeth" (whatever that means). Instead, gun advocates favor freedom, choice and self-responsibility. If someone wishes to be prepared to defend himself, he should be free to do so. No one has the right to deprive others of the means of effective self-defense, like a handgun.
As for the first option, "carefully controlling guns," how many shootings at schools or malls will it take before we understand that people who intend to kill are not deterred by gun laws? Last I checked, murder is against the law everywhere. No one intent on murder will be stopped by the prospect of committing a lesser crime like illegal possession of a firearm. The intellectuals and politicians who make pious declarations about controlling guns should explain how their gunless utopia is to be realized.
While they search for -- excuse me -- their magic bullet, innocent people are dying defenseless.
That's because laws that make it difficult or impossible to carry a concealed handgun do deter one group of people: law-abiding citizens who might have used a gun to stop crime. Gun laws are laws against self-defense.
Criminals have the initiative. They choose the time, place and manner of their crimes, and they tend to make choices that maximize their own, not their victims', success. So criminals don't attack people they know are armed, and anyone thinking of committing mass murder is likely to be attracted to a gun-free zone, such as schools and malls.
Government may promise to protect us from criminals, but it cannot deliver on that promise. This was neatly summed up in book title a few years ago: "Dial 911 and Die." If you are the target of a crime, only one other person besides the criminal is sure to be on the scene: you. There is no good substitute for self-responsibility.
How, then, does it make sense to create mandatory gun-free zones, which in reality are free-crime zones?
The usual suspects keep calling for more gun control laws. But this idea that gun control is crime control is just a myth. The National Academy of Sciences reviewed dozens of studies and could not find a single gun regulation that clearly led to reduced violent crime or murder. When Washington, D.C., passed its tough handgun ban years ago, gun violence rose.
The press ignores the fact that often guns save lives.
It's what happened in 2002 at the Appalachian School of Law. Hearing shots, two students went to their cars, got their guns and restrained the shooter until police arrested him.
Likewise, law professor Glen Reynolds writes, "Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school's vice principal took a .45 from his truck and ran to the scene. In (last) February's Utah mall shooting, it was an off-duty police officer who happened to be on the scene and carrying a gun".
It's impossible to know exactly how often guns stop criminals. Would-be victims don't usually report crimes that don't happen. But people use guns in self-defense every day. The Cato Institute's Tom Palmer says just showing his gun to muggers once saved his life.
"It equalizes unequals," Palmer told "20/20". "If someone gets into your house, which would you rather have, a handgun or a telephone? You can call the police if you want, and they'll get there, and they'll take a picture of your dead body. But they can't get there in time to save your life. The first line of defense is you."