Peaceable armed citizens?

October 23, 8:19 AMGun Rights ExaminerDavid Codrea

It sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it, a peaceable armed citizen? If they like peace so much, what are they doing armed? After all, aren't we told the only purpose of a gun is to kill people?

If that's true, though, America's pea...y'know, this is getting unwieldy.  Let's just agree for the rest of this column to call 'em PACs.  Anyway, if that's true, you couldn't tell it by the PACs--they have pretty much been utter failures at slaughtering their fellow human beings. So I  have to wonder about that--especially since I know people who have an encyclopedic knowledge of guns and their workings, people who design and build them, hunt with them, target shoot with them, carry them for defense, and even (GASP!) train with them with the intent of being "well regulated" (hey, there's another future column). And none of them go around killing people. How is it these experts and aficionados have been so spectacularly incompetent at getting their firearms to accomplish their "only purpose"? 

Don B. Kates is well known and highly regarded in Second Amendment legal and academic circles, having been a constitutional law professor, a criminologist and a prolific author of scholarly works. "Do guns cause crime?"  is a question he's explored in great detail, including analyzing "100+ years of homicide studies." His conclusions?

[F]ar from being ordinary people, 'the vast majority of persons involved in life-threatening violence have a long criminal record with many prior contacts with the justice system.'...it cannot be true that possession of firearms causes ordinary people to murder -- for murderers are virtually never ordinary, but rather are extreme aberrants with life histories of crime, psychopathology and/or substance abuse.

One thing we almost never hear when the major media and other anti-gun special interests talk about the "costs" of guns are their benefits.  The reality is, guns in private hands save lives, most of the time without a shot being fired, because PACs are, after all,  peaceable.  Their possession of arms actually discourages violence, as demonstrated in studies by people like professors John Lott and Gary Kleck, and even the National Institute of Justice (which, while producing far lower results than the Kleck surveys, still estimated "about 108,000 [defensive gun uses] per year").

One of the buzz terms adopted by the gun grabbers to mask their true intent is "common sense gun laws," as if making it harder for us to defend ourselves against predators unaffected by PAC disarmament edicts is sensible.  So I'd ask you here to forget statistics and studies for a moment, and invoke your common sense.

Estimates are, the current membership of the NRA stands at around 4 million.  Can we agree that they are probably one of the most heavily-armed civilian populations on the planet? How many drive-by shootings do you think were committed last year by NRA members?  How many liquor store robberies, home invasions, campus shoot-ups...?  How about over the past 10 years?  The past 20...?

You see where I'm going with this.  Frequently put down by their political opponents as blood-thirsty, trigger-happy yahoos, this demographic of armed-to-the-teeth gun enthusiasts is one of the most peaceable on the planet, far more so than, say, the disarmed populaces of England or Japan. How is that possible if the only purpose of their millions of guns is to kill?

Hey, I just noticed something: PACs...pax...I wonder if that's just a coincidence?

Tomorrow I'm going to tie up the thoughts we've explored over the past few days--and tell you about my plan to discourage the police from harassing PACs who choose to lawfully open-carry. 

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Do you have friends or family who aren't quite sure about this Second Amendment business?  Of course you do, we all do.
My friend Aaron Zelman at Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership has produced a wonderful video that is one of the best presentations on the right to keep and bear arms I've come across, and I've come across my share.  You can read my review here.

But more importantly, watch it yourself--it's a free download.  Then go out and share this great educational tool with those close to you.  Let's all help spread the word.