Guns Save Lives
[Reprinted from Issues & Views Summer/Fall 1999]
You would think that a man who saved three people's lives, at considerable
risk to his own, would be recognized as a hero. But his story would be
politically incorrect, so it has received virtually no media attention and his
name remains unknown.
It all started when a gunman took three hostages at a San Mateo, California,
shooting range. He had left a note announcing his intention to kill hostages
and then himself, so this was worse than even the usual hostage situation. At
this point, an anonymous employee of the shooting range took one of the guns on
the premises and shot the gunman, freeing the hostages.
This happened on July 6th, but have you seen the story anywhere? People get
more media attention than this for recycling aluminum cans. It is politically
incorrect to let it be known that guns in the hands of law-abiding private
citizens can save lives as well as cost lives. Yet this has happened any number
of times. There have even been cases of a policeman under fire being rescued by
a private citizen with a gun. One year, more criminals were reported killed by
private citizens than by the police. But it wasn't reported very widely.
People who have been wringing their hands asking, "What can we do to
stop shootings at schools?" have apparently not been told that a couple of
these shooting were in fact brought to a halt by an armed adult on the scene.
Fox News Network has the slogan, "We report. You Decide." That
clearly is not the watchword at most major media outlets. They decide what you
ought to believe and then tell you only what they want you to know, so that you
will believe it.
The media present gun-control issues solely from the perspective of a battle
of the good guys who want to get rid of dangerous weapons versus the National
Rifle Association that wants to keep guns around. Most mainstream journalists
have an almost total lack of interest in either the facts or the fates of a
quarter of a billion Americans who do not belong to either the anti-gun lobby
or the NRA.
Every story about a child killed by a gun is front page news. Stories about
lives saved by guns are lucky to appear in the second section of the newspaper
and can just about forget it as far as appearing on CBS, ABC, NBC or CNN.
Like everything else, guns have pluses and minuses. Accidental deaths have
to be weighed in the balance against the lives saved both by armed
interventions and by the deterrence created when an intended victim turns out
to have a gun. Just the knowledge that many citizens in a particular community
are authorized to carry concealed weapons takes a lot of the fun out of being a
burglar or a mugger.
It is a matter of plain fact--no matter how much these facts are ignored in
the media--that violent crimes have declined immediately and dramatically in
virtually every case where local gun-control laws were modified to allow
law-abiding citizens to readily obtain permits to carry concealed weapons. The
statistics are available in a book titled More Guns, Less Crime, written by
John Lott, who teaches at the University of Chicago Law School.
This book is the most massive and careful study of the subject ever
written--but it remains as unknown in the media as the hero who saved three
lives in San Mateo. Both the book and the California hero are politically
incorrect, so the mainstream media treat both as if they were non-existent.
The issue is not one of fairness. The issue is one of life and death. If you
are not going to be serious about life and death, when are you going to be
serious? It matters whether more lives will be lost with one policy than with
another. It matters far more than the anti-gun lobby or the NRA matter.
If the media will report, we the citizens and voters can decide. But the
media remain wedded to one side of this issue--the gun-control side--and wedded
still moreso to presenting news as one interest group versus another, rather
than informing the public about the facts, regardless of which side it helps or
hurts.
Blind opposition to guns in anybody's hands reached a new level of
irresponsibility in San Francisco, when the school board declared that
policemen who come on school grounds should not be armed. Fortunately, outcries
from both the public and city officials forced this silly policy to be
repealed. What will it take to bring some sense of responsibility to the media?
-- Thomas Sowell is an economist and author of many books, including
Preferential Policies: An International Perspective (Morrow), Inside
American Education: The Decline, The Deception, The Dogmas (Free
Press/Macmillan), Migrations and Cultures: A World View (Basic Books)
and The Quest For Cosmic Justice (Free Press/Macmillan).
Copyright ©1999
Creators Syndicate, Inc.
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Poster campaign of the California Rifle and Pistol Association,
Fullerton, CA; (800) 305-2772; http://www.crpa.org
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