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Bang / Guns Title: The Ultimate Gun Rights Article In the wake of the tragic mass murder in Aurora, Colorado, some on the political left have used the occasion to further their assault on citizens’ Constitutional right to bear arms. The charge is being led by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who apparently believes that a disarmed populace is a safe populace. But safe from whom? The right to defend oneself and one’s property is inalienable and indisputable. However, the left is taking pot shots at Americans’ gun rights by claiming that gun control or even outright bans are necessary for our own safety. But an article written by Tracy W. Price and published in the Washington Times puts that myth to bed. “Anti-gun nonsense” lures the reader in before laying the hammer down. The first myth it dispels is that high-visibility, highly sensationalistic mass murder sprees used to justify gun control laws are less likely to happen in “gun free,” or as the author puts it, “defenseless” zones. That’s right before he points out the following, which is well beyond statistical naysaying: In fact, research by economist and author John Lott and Bill Landes shows that states that allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns enjoy a 60 percent decrease in multiple-victim public shootings and a 78 percent decrease in victims per attack. This is not to say the “debate is over,” since there can be nitpicking over statistical controls for urbanization, education, or other variables, like crack cocaine. But wait, even a critical paper published by the statist Brookings Institution admitted the following of John Lott’s work, while citing highly respected social scientist James Q. Wilson: [C]riminologist James Q. Wilson calls Lott’s book [More Guns, Less Crime] “the most scientific study ever done of these matters, using facts from 1977 through 1996 and controlling for just about every conceivable factor that might affect the criminal use of guns.” Wilson gives a ringing endorsement to Lott’s thesis: “Lott’s work convinces me that the decrease in murder and robbery in states with shall-issue laws, even after controlling statistically for every other cause of crime reduction, is real and significant. Of the many scholars who were given Lott’s data and did their own analyses, most agree with his conclusions. States that passed these laws experienced sharp drops in murder, rape, robbery, and assault, even after allowing for the effects of poverty, unemployment, police arrest rates, and the like. States that did not pass these laws did not show comparable declines. And these declines were not trivial—he is writing about as many as 1,000 fewer murders and rapes and 10,000 fewer robberies. Carrying concealed guns reduces—it does not increase—the rate of serious crime, and that reduction is vastly greater than the generally trivial effect of gun-carrying on accidental shootings.” Such overwhelmingly clear and positive evidence will not deter big government types like Michael Bloomberg from making the argument that Americans do not have the right to defend themselves (from other citizens or from the state). But the case for eliminating gun control laws is mounting and the counter-arguments are appearing increasingly spurious or trivial. Not only is the right to bear arms morally just, but it is also statistically proven that citizens who lawfully carry firearms are safer from other citizens and from their own government. Now who exactly would be against that?
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