- Jerry Heck
Good Guy or Gal with a Gun: Defensive Gun Use in America
Utah has joined 20 other states that have enacted a Constitutional Carry policy. While a concealed carry permit is not a requirement to posses a firearm a NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) is still mandated for its purchase.
CNN reported that gun sales reached a record level last year of 23 million, with the biggest increases in background checks for firearms overlapping with months of social and political unrest, according to industry and government data.
In its final analysis of FBI background checks, the National Shooting Sports Foundation estimated gun sales some what lower at about 21 million, but still a huge 34% jump over the previous record set in 2016, another year where politics (Hillary) helped to drive sales. Unique to last year was the surge in sales to first-time gun buyers including women and blacks. (The massive gun purchases by Blacks, which is up by 58% is perplexing as photographic identification is a strictly enforced requirement. Does not the learned Leftist consistently interject that black Americans are incapable of obtaining photo ID and such a requirement is proof positive of systemic racism?)
Approximately 2.5 million defensive gun uses per year
Why? Many Americans have come to the conclusion that nothing beats a bad guy with a gun better than a good guy or gal with a gun and that law enforcement agencies are not omnipresent. Moreover, even the very best lawman is minutes away when seconds count. The best defense from predatory criminals is often the armed law abiding citizen. Too often the corporate media censors by omission defensive gun use. Defensive Gun Use (DGU) does not fit the hoplophobic, anti-freedom narrative. Florida State University Professor Gary Kleck found that there are approximately 2.5 million defensive gun uses per year in the United States. In an armed defender situation most often a shot is never fired. The confident presentation of a firearm may “persuade” the assailant to slink away; as a result many of these defensive gun uses aren’t reported to police, much less make the local or national news. To their credit the Heritage Foundation’s interactive on-line Defensive Gun Use Database highlights the few stories that do make the paper. ( https://www.heritage.org/data-visualizations/firearms/defensive-gun-uses-in-the-us/ )
Click on the map icon near your home. Here are a few examples from KSL News (Salt Lake City, UT): Just last month a school employee in Ogden thwarted a man’s attempt to kidnap an 11-year-old girl from the playground. Police said the employee shepherded the girl and other students into a classroom. When the would-be kidnapper tried to break a window and force his way inside, the employee drew his firearm and held the criminal at gunpoint until police arrived. And on June 22, 2020 Headline: Man charged in shootout with ex, charges state... The victim retrieved her .380 Ruger pistol and shot at Jose,” the charges further stated". Jose is believed to have fired approximately four rounds at the victim and her boyfriend as they dove for cover behind another vehicle.… The report did not state the severity or nature of Jose’s wounds or even if he was struck or not.
Also from KSL on May 15, 2020. Headline: Vineyard man shot, killed intruder - A group of several homeless people, traveled from Salt Lake City to Vineyard “to rob and assault the victim. This appears to be an act of self-defense,” said Utah County Sheriff’s Sgt. Spencer Cannon.
The threats are real and the armed citizen mitigates that menace. The FBI reported that Justifiable Homicides with a firearm occurred 268 to 317 times between 2015 and 2019 and many experts say that these stats are under reported. The blogger at Clergy In Support Of The Second Amendment explains that with the felony murder rule. Justifiable Homicide is grossly under reported. He cites an example of where an 84 year-old Pittsburgh area man over came and shot one of two home invaders. When a death occurs in commission of a crime, the accomplice is charged. So that when the intruder died the crime statistic records the event as a murder not a justifiable homicide, even though that is what actually occurred. Similarly, as with armed robbery the get-away car driver - who never even entered the liquor store and if a clerk is killed during the robbery, the driver too is charged with murder. I suspect that the Bureau does not want the public to be fully aware of the prevalence of Defensive Gun Use.
2/3 of homicides are suicides
The Bureau also reports that 13,927 Americans were murdered in 2019. In order to advance a cause for firearm seizure the opposition inflates the number of actual murders more than three fold by including suicides in the homicide stats and renaming the statistic as “gun violence”. Yet where is the outcry to ban sleeping pills, neckties or gas ovens?
Another in-depth data base is maintained by the Chicago Sun Times. Homicides in Chicago: a list of every victim ( https://graphics.suntimes.com/homicides/?_ga=2.268161100.359989542.1551114885-1053806772.1520361305&fbclid=IwAR076omVu6LdT9r3U8SHtaCS_4-VNqs7lxNyGldsUXp_71YKR0Kpiyu6SjM ) The site is updated daily.
Deadliest and most violent weekend this year in Chicago
The list is inclusive of all shooting and homicides not just the cherry-picked deaths that reinforce the propaganda narrative preferred by the corporate media. In the deadliest and most violent weekend this year in Chicago, 92 over the long Fourth of July weekend, 16 of them killed. Among the 76 wounded were six children and teenagers and two Chicago police supervisors. Five of the kids were shot within nine hours Sunday evening through early Monday.
Both the number of fatal shootings and the number of shootings overall are highs for 2021, according to a Chicago Sun-Times database of shootings. By 5 p.m. Monday, Chicago had recorded 2,000 shootings.
It's is the behavior not the object.
It's the behavior not the object. Rep. Robin Kelly (D) Illinois like most of her Leftist allies advocate more gun control. This leaves citizens more vulnerable to the criminal element. Kelly references a letter from Wesley Pickett a felon convicted for illegal gun sales. Pickett boasts that buying a gun is like buying a pack of cigarettes. In Chicago felons can easily obtain firearms, but the law abiding citizen is hindered with a lengthily application process and waiting period!
Maj Toure rips Biden gun control as 'a form of racism'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUkAbhNToOY
Conrad Black recently submitted in The Epoch Times that Chicago has tough gun laws, but its worst areas are shooting galleries where the arrest rates are so low that it is obvious that the police are either compromised by their association with violent gangs or confining themselves to the perimeters of the most crime-ridden areas and have abandoned the core of those areas to the Darwinian masters of them, (and these desperate conditions are certainly not confined to Chicago).
Leo Terrell blasts Mayor Lori Lightfoot's leadership as 'shameful.' ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5oYCkcgbCg ) It is proven that more guns in rightful hands means less crime. Yet the Progressive Left wants to disarm law abiding American citizens. The underlying diabolical plot is chaos or the invocation of a constant crisis and a crisis should never go to waste. Dependent subjects who are in constant fear are more easily controlled.
Defensive Gun Use in the U.S.
https://www.heritage.org/data-visualizations/firearms/defensive-gun-uses-in-the-us/
Ogden School employee thwarts kidnapping by pulling gun on suspect, police say
Firearms: The right of the people to keep and bear arms is a fundamental part of American liberty, serving as an important individual defense against crime and a collective defense against tyranny
https://www.heritage.org/firearms
CDC Study: Use of Firearms for Self-Defense is 'Important Crime Deterrent'
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/cdc-study-use-firearms-self-defense-important-crime-deterrent
Vineyard man shot, killed intruder in self-defense, police say
Man charged in shootout with ex, charges state
Clergy In Support Of The Second Amendment (FBI under reports justifiable homicide) https://2ndamendmentclergy.blogspot.com/2018/01/why-fbi-stats-on-justifiable-self.html
Justifiable Homicide
Degrading Scientific Standards to Get the | By Gary Kleck
https://www.saf.org/wp-content/uploads/journals/JFPP11.pdf
Boom: 21M guns sold in 2020, up 60%, women, blacks top buyers
Homicides in Chicago: a list of every victim
Chicago’s most violent weekend of 2021: 92 shot, 16 killed, 6 kids among the wounded By 5 p.m. Monday, Chicago had recorded 2,000 shootings this year, a Sun-Times’ database shows.
Rep. Robin Kelly (D) IL
Conrad Black: A Tsunami Of Crises About To Swamp Biden Administration
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/conrad-black-tsunami-crises-about-swamp-biden-administration
Leo Terrell blasts Mayor Lori Lightfoot's leadership as 'shameful'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5oYCkcgbCg