Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide ?

To research that question, researchers Gary Mauser and Don Kates compiled statistics for the rates of murder and gun ownership for nations stretching from the Baltic to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to the Pacific.

You’ve heard the bogus satistics, skewed studies and incompatible comparisons that the anti-gun lobby and the media elite endlessly repeat a nauseum in their propaganda, which blames firearm freedom for violent crime.

*  “A gun kept in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a family member, friend or acquaintance, than to be used to kill someone in self-defense.”

* “Americans are more likely to be shot to death than people in the world’s other 35 richest nations.”

* “Every day in America, 13 children ar killed by guns, almost a classroom full of children every two days.”

By drilling you with these anti-gun “statistics” until you can recite them in your sleep, they hope you’ll come to accept and expect them, like the morning sun in your window, or the drone of an air conditioner that you swiftly cease to hear.

But now, in an authoritative analysis of dozens of existing studies on the subject, Don Kates, a Yale-educated attorney who served as a professor at Stanfard Law School, and Gary Mauser, a Canadian university professor and author, have shattered the anti-gunners’ elaborate facade into a thousand fragments of falsehood.

Their paper is entitled, “Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence,” and it was published this spring in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy–the nation’smost widely distributed law review, with 10,000 copies sent to federal judges and attorneys–where it’s likely to have a big impact on the national debate.

In their analysis, Kates and Mauser compared different countries, different population groups and different types of interpersonal violence, homicide and suicide throughout much of recorded history, and found that the old anti-gun exioms that you so often hear are false.

Read full story:  http://www.nraila.org/Issues/Articles/Read.aspx?id=247&issue=007

Wethere gun availability is viewed as a cause or as a mere evidence is that gun ownership spread widely throughout societies consistently correlates with stable or declining murder rates.

Armed Citizen

POLICE SAY TWO or three men who broke into a home looking for drugs messed up big time. “The victims had never seen them before. They probably picked the wrong house,” explained Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Charles Jurcak. “[The suspects entered the location, confronted the husband and demanded to know where the pot was.” When the couple said they didn’t know anything about marijuana, the frustrated intruders began to beat them. While they focused on the husband, the wife went to the bedroom t retrieve a firearm. On her way back, she was confronted in the hallway by one of the intruders and shot him several times. The suspects fled, but the injured intruder was found lying nearby and arrested.

Inland Valley Daily Bulletin,Ontario, Cal. 06/15/07

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LEROY HUDSON was asleep upstairs while his wife, Janice, slept downstairs. Both awoke with alarm to loud, suspicious noises coming from their enclosed back porch. Leory got a firearm while Janice called 9-1-1 to report an intruder. Leory, 71, opened the door and encountered a man in his mid-20s. He demanded to know what the intruder was doing in hopes of getting him to leave. But the man refused to speak, instead moving toward Hudson, who fired a single shot, incapacitating him.

The Oregonian,Portland, Ore.,06/30/07

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A PASTOR AND A 17-year old boy were guarding their church’s fireworks stand late at night when a group of suspicious juveniles approached. According to police, the suspects tried to enter the stand and concocted a phony story when confronted. They returned thirty minutes later. This time, two or three suspects attempted to distract the pastor while the others went around and again tried to sneak inside the stand. “When the 17-year-old confronted them, they began assaulting him,” said Muskogee, Okla., Deputy Police Chief Johnny Teehee. “The boy was screaming for help…” The pastor answered his cries, shooting one of the assailants, who will be arrested after his release from the hospital. Four other juveniles were also arrested. The 170-year-old was treated at the hospital and released.

Tulsa World, Tulsa, Okla., 06/26/07

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THREE ARMED MEN allegedly barged through the unlocked front door of a home occupied by five men and one woman, most of them students. Police say the residents fled in multiple directions as the suspects raided the home. One of the victims grabbed a semi-utomatic AK-47 and hid in a closet. He heard two shots fired somewhere in the home and the next thing he knew one of the intruders was trying to force his way into the closet with a handgun. The victim fired three rounds, killing the gunman. “He did everything possible to avoid a physical conftrontation. The last thing he wanted to do was kill somebody,” said Orlando Deputy Sheriff Carlos Padilla, who didn’t know why the house was targeted. “Deep down in his heart, he felt his friends were getting killed.”

Orlando Sentinel, Orlando, Fla., 06/22/07

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Studies indicate that firearms are used more than 2 million times a year for personal protection, and that the presence of a firearm, without a shot being fired, prevents crime in many instances. Shooting usually can be justified only where crime constitutes an immediate, imminent threat to life, limb, or in some cases, property.