Are guns an effective crime-fighting tool, when held by law-abiding citizens? Are victims better off submitting to an attacker? Are you more likely to be injured or killed if you resist a criminal – probably by having your own gun used against you?
Several academics have argued that Americans successfully use firearms many times per year – up to 2.5 million times, according to criminologist Gary Kleck – to protect themselves, their family, and their property against criminals.
Interestingly, the most recent study on the subject shows that Kleck's research may actually have significantly underestimated the number of annual defensive gun uses in the United States.
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And people who use guns to protect themselves are far less likely to be injured by an attacker.
Even more interesting is that this study came at the order of the Obama White House.
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The report, titled Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence, was just published by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). It reveals some startling facts.
For example, gun-use skeptics, anti-gun activists and politicians, and many in the media, have long relied on the questionable figure of 108,000 defensive gun uses per year when discussing the topic – if they consider it worth discussing at all. Kleck's research on the subject, despite winning criminology's prestigious Michael J. Hindelang Award, is largely ignored or dismissed.
According to the NAS, however, “almost all” the data supports the position that “defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million times per year.” [Emphasis mine]
In scientific terms, that's a slam dunk.
Another piece of information revealed by the NAS study is that the “defensive use of guns, however numerous or rare they may be, are effective in preventing injury to the gun wielding crime victim.” Moreover, “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns...have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self protective strategies.” [Emphasis mine]
Meaning you're better off protecting yourself with a gun than any other option studied.
Those who advocate “rape whistles”, submission, and the like, have some serious explaining to do.
A typical citizen is most certainly capable of using a gun to defend self, family, or property, and it happens hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of times every single year in the United States. In an overwhelming percentage of these cases – over 98% – a shot is never fired; the assailant flees or surrenders, which makes gun-owners remarkably level-headed in such circumstances.
In the hands of private citizens, guns are undoubtedly an effective tool for fighting crime.
