Armed Citizens Are The Solution, Not the Problem

“Manners being violent, the wearing of arms was prohibited, but only honest folk conformed to the law, thus facilitating matters for others.” – Jusserand, A Literary History of the English-Speaking People from the Origins to the Renaissance, 1895

The right to bear arms is more than a Constitutional right: every human being has the natural unalienable right to self-defense. Cicero said 2,000 years ago, “If our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.”

The U.S. Constitution, the constitutions of 44 states, common law, and the laws of all 50 states recognize the right to use arms in self-defense. Right to carry laws respect the right to self-defense by allowing individuals to carry concealed firearms for their own protection.

So many liberal politicians and self-appointed experts want to keep honest Americans from having access to firearms, even though, since 2003, in states which allow concealed carry, violent crime rates have been lower than anytime since the mid-1970s. The reverse logic of this “knee jerk” reaction is astounding and has lead to an outright assault on our basic Constitutional and natural rights.  These misguided policies to keep firearms out of the hands of law-abiding citizens literally mean a death sentence for thousands of Americans.

Look at the facts.  According to a study by criminologist Gary Kleck of Florida State University, “[R]obbery and assault victims who used a gun to resist were less likely to be attacked or to suffer an injury than those who used any other methods of self-protection or those who did not resist at all.” In approximately 2.5 million instances each year, someone uses a firearm, predominantly a handgun, for self defense in this nation.  

In research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice, in which almost 2,000 felons were interviewed, 34% of felons said they had been “scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim” and 40% of these criminals admitted that they had been deterred from committing a crime out of fear that the potential victim was armed.

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Gun Ownership As A Cost Of Health Care Reform

The National Institute Of Health (NIH) recently began studying the relationship between gun ownership and health issues.

At one time, this sort of research was done by the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) until Congress cut funding for the program, after it was found that the flawed research done by the CDC was shown to be biased against gun ownership.

Since it has been ten years since the CDC lost it’s funding for this program, why is there suddenly renewed interest in this type of research?

Some of us, (myself included) see this as yet another backdoor ploy by the “gun grabbers” in Congress and the Obama administration for yet another attack on the Second Amendment.

They will tout the implementation of stricter gun control laws as a means of reducing health care costs, due to the reduction in violent crime that would be the result of additional restrictions on firearms ownership.

They will attempt to make their case by presenting statistics showing that gun violence causes health care resources to be spent in ways that could be better utilized in other areas.

Of course, many of the American public will fall for this gibberish, not realizing that it is simply another ploy by the Obama administration to drum up support for an increasingly unpopular health care reform bill, while having the added bonus of being an assault on Second Amendment rights as well.

However, anyone who, rather than simply believe what they are told, would take the time to study the relationship between gun ownership and it’s resulting effect on health care costs would find quite a different answer than what they would assume to be the case.
Anyone holding the opinion that less gun ownership would result in less violent crime and therefore less of a strain on health care resources would learn that just the opposite is the case.

There is a direct correlation between an increase in firearms ownership and a decrease in violent crime.

Several countries that have enacted some of the strictest gun control laws in the world have seen their rates of violent crime increase.

Great Britain, after enacting laws banning the private ownership of handguns, saw their rates of violent crimes more than double.

Australia, after banning the private ownership of nearly all types of firearms, has seen their rates of violent crimes increasing by an average of nearly thirty percent per year.

Turning closer to home, the story is much the same here in the United States.

A study done by the Institute For Legislative Action, a division of the National Rifle Association shows that a 2008 study, using statistics from research done by the BATFE, the FBI and other agencies shows that increases in gun ownership lead to reductions in violent crime.

For those of you who feel that a report from the NRA is bound to be biased towards gun ownership, take a look at this synopsis of a study done by Harvard University explaing how, when it comes to restrictions on firearms ownership leading to less violent crime, and therfore reduced health care costs, the Harvard study comes to the conclusion that Gun Control Is Counterproductive.

Along with a link to the original Harvard University study, this report also mentions the overturning of the ban on firearms ownership in our nation’s capitol, Washington D.C., an area that, in spite of some of the strictest gun control laws in America, also had one of the highest rates of violent crime.

Yet everyone promoting health care reform will claim the fewer firearms will result in less violent crime, and thus treatment funds will be saved.

When all of the evidence is to the contrary.

Oh well, when has lying ever bothered anyone in the Obama administration?

To them, it comes as naturally as breathing.