Enormous self-evident facts have been lost in the national debate about disarming or subarming the American public. We now have about 100 million people armed, in something like 60 million armed American homes. Raise or lower those figures by some percentage if you are pro this or anti that (the Ph.D.’s do not agree precisely), but that’s the ballpark. It’s a lot, by any standard. The Worldwide Gun Owner’s Guide places us in the Top Ten of nations with armed publics (which is virtually all nations to some degree).
Now, all those armed people, in all those armed homes—they have nothing to do with the astounding murder rate reported recently for, say, Chicago—or any of the other murder and crime zones the news media proliferates like eye-and-mind candy.
They never have been and they never will be. That’s due to one simple fact the media, and especially the anti-gun-rights people don’t want to face, which they prefer to distort and pretend doesn’t exist. To the greatest extent: People with guns don’t shoot each other. Criminals with guns shoot each other.
Decent people who buy guns by the millions every month go through the background checks, or avoid the FBI lists and background checks and buy used guns from friends and relatives. They have no intention of doing anyone any harm, and don’t. They live their entire lives, armed to the teeth, and die peacefully in their beds, leaving their caches to their families, in their wills. Or they sell them to other good people, when they get real old.
These bedrock facts are lost on the hoplophobes (people with morbid fear of guns). The talking-head “news” pundits and others who are terrified of guns and gun owners have no clue. Their understanding of the subject—standing way outside the real world—is distorted and affected by one of their two washing machines—not the one for their clothes, the one with the 55-inch flat screen for their brains.
Gunless people get zero accurate news about what real people with real guns do with those things, and it doesn’t include killing people. That’s what criminals with guns do.
In the real world, guns save lives. Guns stop crime. Guns protect you. Guns are for safety. Guns are fun. Guns are fun? How often does any of that make the news? Guns are why America is still free. And you thought the news was fair and balanced. People with guns don’t kill people. Criminals do. People are what you call, “good.” Like you, reading this, and your friends and relatives.
Real people with guns go through about ten billion rounds of ammunition annually. Did you know that? And no one dies. They use it at the range, and for plinking (informal target practice outdoors), and hunting, and for stockpiling in case it’s needed (like water, batteries, candles, canned goods and other reasonable measures against the perils of modern life). Virtually all of the guns made, sold and owned in this country have never been fired in a hostile situation. Kind of like fire extinguishers — only when desperately needed.
Look around the world at the strife, the massive migrations, and after you finish telling yourself it could never happen here, make sure you at least have candles. And water. Maybe precious metals too—lead and brass. And don’t be an idiot, practice, like the rest of us. You’ve got to at least be able to outshoot the criminals. Who shoot people. If they come out of the bad part of town.
Click On The Link To Read Alan Korwin’s Previous Articles:
KORWIN: People With Guns Don’t Kill People, Criminals With Guns Kill People
KORWIN: The Guns-Are-Dangerous Myth
KORWIN: The Loophole, Australia Model and Junk-Guns Myths
KORWIN: Moderate Judges, Armed Teachers And Guns Are Germs – Three Myths We Just Busted
KORWIN: The Big Bad Gun Lobby & Gun Buy Back Myths
KORWIN: The Undetectable Gun Myth & If Self Defense Was Common News Would Report It To You Myth
KORWIN: No Fly List = No Buy List = Gun Confiscation List
KORWIN: Gun Myth Debunked – Armed Citizens Will Cause ‘Blood In The Streets’
KORWIN: The Manchin-Toomey Gun Myth
KORWIN: Obama’s Gun Control Starts With Myth
KORWIN: America’s Real Gun Problem – The Gun Myths
KORWIN: Talking Points For The 30-Round-Magazine Debate
Alan Korwin is the author of 14 books, 10 of them on gun law. His book After You Shoot examines ways to lower your risks after a self-defense shooting. He has been invited twice to observe oral argument in gun cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. Reach him at GunLaws.com, where he is the publisher of Bloomfield Press.