More Guns Prevent Crime | Letters | Salt Lake City Weekly

More Guns Prevent Crime 

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There is nothing more frustrating than trying to reason with someone who has made up their mind and is also convinced of their own moral superiority. Nonetheless, I will try to present a few facts and logic.

In the Jan. 17 issue of City Weekly, a so-called parody by D.P. Sorensen [“Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?”] makes fun of the last two groups of people we are allowed to mock (i.e., white men and those who have a weight problem). No other group could be criticized the way Mr. Sorensen does them. Now, let’s get on with some information.

Professor R.J. Rummel documents that more than 200 million civilians were murdered by agents of their own government during the 20th century. The only common denominator was that they had all been disarmed by their government. Of course, these people didn’t believe that their government would murder them—just as most German Jews could not imagine that the same country that had produced the likes of Beethoven would kill 12 million people.

More than 20 scholarly studies have been produced that say that firearms prevent approximately 2.6 million violent crimes a year when firearm owners indicate to would-be perpetrators that they are armed. This is a far greater number than the estimated half-million violent crimes committed with the same weapons.

Criminologist Gary Kleck, in his seminal book Armed, makes some powerful arguments that banning law-abiding citizens from firearms ownership would actually lead to a rise in violent crime for the reason mentioned above. Economist John Lott, in his book More Guns, Less Crime, has demonstrated through statistical methods that concealed-carry laws lower the violent-crime rate significantly (and is the only proven factor). He also shows that far more children die in bathtubs, from 5-gallon plastic pails filled with water, and bicycles than from guns.

No one seriously thinks we should ban bathtubs, because they see the utility, but few understand the utility of responsible citizens owning firearms—mainly because the media rarely print stories about the use of guns to save lives. There are several examples of this, but space prevents me from listing them here.

JOHN WANGSGAARD
Salt Lake City

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