Another Misrecorded Gun Violence Statistic

Just so you know: 

A guy in Texas yesterday heard gunshots and a crash downstairs. When he checked, he found a pair or intruders in the house, one of whom was in the kitchen beating his brother. He ran back upstairs, told his wife to call 911 and got his firearm. He went downstairs and put a non life-threatening bullet hole in the back of the intruder who was beating his brother and threatening him with a gun. The other intruder fled when faced with an armed homeowner.

This will be statistically documented by gun control advocates as an incident of gun violence in which the burglar is counted as the "victim" of gun violence. This will never appear anywhere as a successful defense of a home with a weapon and will be folded into the "incidences of gun violence" category along with suicides, drive-by shootings and domestic violence. It's a shame we don't keep good numbers on how many would-be burglars, rapists, and muggers ran away from armed people they sought to make victims of.

And just so you know what Paul Harvey used to call "The Rest of the Story," Texas's Castle Law defends the homeowner's right to shoot violent or threatening intruders without penalty to the homeowner. Your home is your castle, at least in Texas. AND in case anyone decides to take up burglary in Texas you should know this. Your mama won't be able to sue anyone because you got yourself shot climbing into someone's window and have to poop in a plastic bag for the rest of your life.

© 2016 by Tom King

Common Sense About Gun Rights Just Ain't So Common

My latest book - Give Guns a Chance

It happens again and again. Someone always posts a list of mass shootings and then rambles off about kids accidentally being shot and how it "just makes sense that if you just got rid of guns, that all these senseless killings would stop. 

Well, they wouldn't. It's never worked before.

First of all virtually all of the mass killings they cite were committed by either kids from liberal families (Democrats), registered Democrats or Muslims. Perhaps we should ban Democrats and Muslims from owning guns. I could live with that.

The stats on numbers of accidental deaths by guns, for instance, are far outstripped by the numbers of accidental deaths by falls, car wrecks, knives, fire and other such things. Should we ban climbing ladders, driving cars, using kitchen knives, matches or flammable liquids? Should we stop drunk driving by taking the cars away from people who don't drive drunk? After all, a car can kill a lot of people.

No one can debate with liberals, because they already have these self-evident truths of theirs and have ready-made "logical" conclusions based on false assumptions. That said, I'll argue with them anyway. Banning guns will NOT take them away from bad people. Yes, it will reduce the number of deaths by guns, but in every case where it's been tried, the murder rate has risen, not fallen because deaths by stabbing, strangulation, poisoning, bludgeoning, and other such delightful methods have increased to more than compensate for the fewer gun deaths. Part of that is because gun confiscation increases the number of potential easy victims and reduces the risk for criminals and terrorists.

And can you tell me how a 5'2" 120 pound woman can protect herself from a 6'4" 280 pound man intent on raping her? Even if she knows karate or some martial art, she's toast against someone that size who decides to break down her door and come after her. Ask a self defense instructor or mixed martial arts guy. With a gun, the odds are in her favor or at the very least equalized. Guns are the only fighting chance the weak have against the strong and criminal who would attack them.

And peeing on yourself as Liberal Representative Joe Salazar airily suggested would NOT prevent rape. Likely it would only intensify the attack.

Gun ownership was always intended as a bulwark against government overreach. Because a militia is necessary to the public defense, the founders recognized that an army or militia can also be used to coerce the citizenry. A heavily armed citizenry is a lot more difficult to coerce. Will there be accidents? Yes. My brother was accidentally shot in the chest by a friend who was playing with a shotgun. He died. He was 16. That doesn't mean I have a right to attempt to disarm every person in the country. It means, someone's parents should have been supervising them. If they don't care enough to keep their guns safely locked away, why would they take other safety measures? Kids are going to hurt themselves because they don't think about safety. The think they are immortal. Kids are going to jump off roofs with bedsheet parachutes, swim in ponds full of broken glass and shards of steel, and break their necks trying to ride railings on skateboards. That's not about guns. It's about supervision.

A disarmed population is a herd of sheep ready to be loaded into boxcars and carried to the gas ovens. The reason most of the 15 million people slaughtered by the Nazis in WWII didn't resist was because they were disarmed and it never occurred to them that they could resist. Americans think about that because we have a tradition of being armed and prepared to defend ourselves. The second amendment does that.

If you're a proponent of gun control, please check out the book I wrote on the subject. It should answer all those "common sense" questions of yours.


© 2016 by Tom King

More Gun Laws / Fewer Gun Deaths / Safer Criminals

Think of all the criminals whose lives we'll save.....

(c) 2013 by Tom King

Call it an on-the-job safety measure for working burglars

A Yahoo News story this morning sounded the initial trumpet for a study that shows the stricter gun laws mean fewer gun deaths.  This study will become the center of an artificial media firestorm in favor of gun control over the next few days.  The study will be cited endlessly as "proof".  Note, however, that the headline carefully states that gun laws mean fewer gun deaths, not fewer murders. And by the way, they count burglars, intruders, muggers and thugs who are shot by citizens in self-defense or by police as "gun deaths".

A similar study in England also found there were fewer "gun deaths" after they enacted gun laws.  What they didn't tell you was that deaths by poisoning, bludgeoning, knife attacks and other means went up sufficiently to more than compensate for reductions in death by guns.  There is actually evidence that the murder rate overall either climbed or did not change. In addition, crimes with handguns have doubled, gang-related gun crimes have exploded to the point that formerly unarmed British Bobbies are now carrying guns in self-defense.  Ironic in that under the British gun laws, self-defense is not considered a good reason for getting a gun license.

I suspect if the American study had compared the "gun death" rate to the overall murder rate they would have found either no change in the murder rate or that murder rates rose (especially in more dangerous places like Chicago). 

Murder is murder and, apparently, if you take away one weapon, people simply find other means to kill.  So instead of being shot, you get bludgeoned to death.  Is that somehow a better way to go? Oh, and by the way, you can't shoot back.  So, if your attacker is larger than you, you will soon have no way to equalize things since you can't legally defend yourself with a gun.  Gives the bad guys a sporting chance, what?

I have wondered how long it would take the anti-gun lobby to gin up this sort of study.

As Benjamin Disraeli once noted, "There are lies, damned lies and statistics."

I'll leave it to you to determine which category this latest "proof" belongs to.

I'm just sayin'

Tom King