Anti-gunners talk about how bad firearms are. They contend that guns are the only things that allow criminals to commit horrific acts against their fellow citizens. They say no one in a “civilized” society needs a gun.
What they never acknowledge, however, is that among the most vulnerable people in society often need—and use—a firearm to protect themselves.
People on opposing sides of the gun-ownership aisle argue about how many defensive gun uses (DGUs) there are every year. And, truth be told, it is nearly impossible to come up with a hard number of such cases, partly because the parameters can fluctuate. Do you count just the cases in which an intruder or attacker is killed? Do you expand your search to include any gunshot injury? Or, do you even consider instances when a person uses a firearm to scare off a perpetrator before a crime is committed? The fluidity of the definition goes a long way to explain why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) can do nothing but generalize, estimating DGUs as occurring anywhere from 500,000 to 3 million times per year.
Arguments over the numbers aside, you never hear the anti-gunners talk about real-life situations in which a firearm leveled the playing field and kept a physically disadvantaged citizen from becoming the next homicide victim.
And there are plenty of such instances happening every day throughout our country. Here are some recent examples.
- A physically disabled Florida homeowner used an AR-15-style rifle to save himself in August after four burglars broke into his house. So when political candidates say they want to “take your AR-15s, we can only surmise they don’t care if the crime victim lives or dies in similar situation like the aforementioned case.
- A hearing-impaired woman shot and killed an intruder this month inside her Oklahoma residence, located in a rural area with ranches and farms. The woman “yelled at the man to get out of the house and shot him once when he moved toward her.” She said she'd never seen him before. Sgt. Terry Winn, an investigator from LeFlore County Sheriff, said the 31-year-old intruder, who had a criminal record, was shot in the chest by a large-caliber rifle. Sgt. Winn told America’s 1st Freedom that the homeowner was deaf and had a concealed-carry permit, which “was unnecessary because she was inside her home” during the shooting. “It is not uncommon for most farmers or ranchers carry to firearms for self-protection. It is a little out of the order for someone to enter onto the properties and into homes in this area because it is well known that people here will use a firearm to protect themselves. So we try to put the word out to the criminal element not do to these things,” he said.
- A Kansas man recovering from quadruple bypass held a bad guy at gunpoint recently to keep his daughter and himself safe during a home invasion.
Those who read the NRA’s Armed Citizen accounts can probably tick off dozens of other cases where the elderly or infirm have used a firearm to fend off someone who would have liked to do them harm.
Criminals prey upon the vulnerable.
They lack human decency. Their consciences do not prevent or stop them from attempting to harm a person with a physical disadvantage. Rather, illness, age and poor health can make some people look like an easy mark to most criminals—unless, unbeknownst to the hoodlum, that person has a firearm on hand.
If we look back at the Florida AR-15 case, a five-round magazine might not have been enough against four intruders.
Instead of recognizing the everyday reality that guns can be used—and often are—for protection, news-media outlets and some ambitious liberal politicians love to play up the gun-control political agenda.
Anti-gunners seek to limit the opportunity for these vulnerable people (and all Americans) to bear arms and stand up against the unsavory actors in this world.
Restrictions take many forms: maybe they want to limit the type of firearm you own; maybe they want to limit how much ammunition you can buy, or perhaps they’ll simply limit magazine capacity.
And they make each of those limitations sound so innocuous, saying you’ll still have a chance to protect yourself.
DGUs and the fact that a firearm can erase a physical disadvantage that a citizen might have against a criminal are vital aspects to protect our Second Amendment right.
As voters, we must let the liberal politicians who attack our Second Amendment know that we understand that when they limit our rights to keep and bear arms, they devalue our basic right to life.
And it is unforgivable that they have no qualms about taking away and restricting firearms and ammunition that provide life-saving ways for weaker members of our society to defend themselves from criminals.
