The Sad Proportions of 'Gun-Control'

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? .....