H. Sterling Burnett Quote

"Guns are used for self-defense somewhere between 800,000 and 3.6 million times per year .... Using firearm crime and defensive gun use figures most favorable to advocates for stricter gun control, ... the benefits from defensive gun uses exceed the cost of violent firearm crimes ... by between $90 million and $3.5 billion. Using the most credible estimate for defensive gun uses, the benefits range from $1 billion to $38 billion. Putting these dollar figures in more human terms: Guns save lives. The fact is that the best defense against violence is an armed response. For example, women faced with assault are 2.5 times less likely to suffer serious injury if they defend themselves with a gun rather than responding with other weapons or by offering no resistance. ... [P]ersons defending themselves with guns during an assault are injured only 12 percent of the time, compared to 25 percent for those using other weapons, 27 percent for those offering no resistance and nearly 26 percent of those who flee. ... [F]irearms are the safest, most effective way to protect oneself against criminal activity -- which is why American police officers carry guns rather than going unarmed or merely carrying knives."

by:	H. Sterling Burnett
Source:	Lawsuits Against Gun Industry Make Us Less Safe, SHIELD, p. 51 Summer 1999.(Policy Analyst for National Center for Policy Analysis)
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Categories:	Arms, Control, Crime, Defense, Guns, Police, Reason, Security, Violence
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I don't think I've ever heard a more pathetic and twisted justification for human beings owning guns. British police don't carry guns and UK gun crime is negligible compared to the US. There is only one purpose to a gun and that is to kill or main. To believe that it serves or encourages any other purpose than that is delusion on a grand scale. The moment a safety catch is flipped and an index finger is curled around the trigger is the moment a victim becomes the perpetrator. Wake up America Wyatt Earp is history.  -- Sibonakalo, Portsmouth, UK
The states in america with the most favorable gun laws are the safest......end of story......we should all be armed......guns are.for everyones.protection and will protect us against an out of control government such as we have now......Hitler took.everyones guns away......people kill people not guns .....  -- marge, indy
As sad as school shootings are, we must wake up to the fact that making them gun free zones only encourages psychotic killers. They are actually criminal safe zones. We should be looking at this the way the Israeli's do; Teachers and all school staff are armed and trained as they should at least "have the choice" to be in America. And please, never let us be turned into the neutered sheep that the English have become. England is going to be the first western nation to become a total dictatorship. They won't mind though...they're "subjects" (inventory) not individuals.  -- J Carlton, Calgary
That's a great response j Carlton. If only Canada would have joined us in 1776.  -- Cal, lewisville, TX
Sibonakalo, with lethal protection of life and property (both, not either or) being prosecuted by the UK so stringently, does that add to the gun violence that does exist? = most probably. Further, what is pathetic or twisted, are the facts or assertions incorrect? As marge indicated above, the freer the people, the safer they are. J Carlton said well. The inalienable right of being well armed, as addressed in the Constitution was not even alluded to in the above quote (only events demonstrating an effect of that inalienable right). As to police, the de jure natural law public body considered police departments to be, foreign from We The People standing armies who's sole purpose was to enforce tyranny's despotic rule. History has proven that fact to be absolutely correct. When a militia organizes to defend itself from a malignantly obtrusive government (as now exists in Amerika), it must be well armed (regulated). The only arms brought to the militia are those personally owned by the individual sovereign militiamen.  -- Mike, Norwalk
What a load of pathetic, delusional arguments. How could anyone with a scrap of sanity still still defend such criminally wreckless gun policies? Violence breeds violence; those that live by the sword shall die by the sword. Carlton, are you honestly suggesting that the solution to preventing future school shootings is to arm teachers and school staff? Are you listening to yourself? If you think gun control is so bad go back to your US and A and live in a society of fear and loathing.  -- L. Hanson, Edmonton, Canada
Hanson are you seriously suggesting that you can wave some sort of magic wand and all the guns will disappear? Get real! You whack job liberals are so far gone in LA LA Land that you actually believe your own garbage. You think that some ink on paper is going to stop criminals? ...what color is the sky on your planet? And thankfully the number of sane Canadians far outweighs you fantasy land freaks...so I'll be staying right where I am with my beautiful Canadian family...ready to defend them and Canada. (you coward)  -- J Carlton, Calgary
Our problem is the culture! When I was in high school in the 1950's, we would put our shotguns in our cars before going to school so we could go bird hunting afterwards on opening day of the season. Sometimes, if you had bought a different shotgun, the male teachers would go into the parking lot with you to admire it. Our problem today is the lack of censorship in the Videos, TV, and movies that destroy the sensitivity of right & wrong beginning with the young people in society today!  -- William, Texas
I think that people from other than the United States should Mind Their Own God Dam Business. And as for the School Shootings Here in the United States. We Pay Enough Taxes To Have Armed Guards At Each And Every School Too Prevent Things Like That From Happening. Maybe If The Politicians Would Stop Lining Their Pockets We Could Do Just That!  -- Nick, Methuen
L Hanson, another ad hominim advocate - long on pathetic and delusional while, severely lacking in any substantive arguments or understanding of human nature and historical events. Hanson, what do you think the chances of the loony getting past the principle or school shrink if they had been well trained and carrying (well armed) ? Hmm, he probably wouldn't have made it out of the office or to the class room. If shots had been fired in the office, do you think that would have alerted a bright young teacher that had also been trained and had sufficient fire power available? AND, does it raise anybody's curiosity when the first reports to the recent tragedy were that people saw 2 individuals (even describing where the 2nd individual went) with hundreds of shots being fired and now, we only hear of a loan gunman with 2 pistols ? Only if the one looney was an excellent marksman, well trained and all victims were subdued and not moving could such event occur as is now being reported (one bullet per person, he only had 2 pistols on him - a rifle in the trunk outside). Anywhere there is an armed military presence, weaponry will be available to criminals. One needs look no further than the President of Amerika's close association to Amerika's gun sell to criminals in another country.  -- Mike, Norwalk
It's interesting that the States with the most murders are also the States with the strictess gun control laws.  -- jim k, Austin, Tx      1
Nick, this is a Canadian website. If you want something to be exclusively American, feel free to start your own liberty site. Best, JC  -- J Carlton, Calgary
I live in NYC -- if I were 'caught' shooting an armed intruder, I could be sent away for a long time -- I suppose I should be dead, then? What the statists fail to realize is that man can no more be trusted with power because he is an 'official' than when he was just a 'civilian.' I thought the progressives were for peace? Is creating a police state peace? I thought they were against the military, but isn't making the civil power subservient to the police power that absolute opposite of what our state constitutions declare? The truth is statists are for the centralization of power into the elite's hands and the removal of almost ANY and EVERY independent power of the individual -- even with the guns gone self-defense in all its forms are being abolished further. We have merely the freedom to chose from the choices forced upon us. The denial of thievery, thuggery, rape, slavery, murder and every sordid evil in the world is the tool of the statist who merely subverts the power of the state to work for his own purposes. The progressive despises the independent and self-reliant and unwittingly funnel power into their own oppressors hands. Listen, the Drug War serves many purposes for the State, particularly the militarization of America. End prohibition and gun control, and watch gun crime plummet.  -- E Archer, NYC
I've read these comments from US citizens and it only serves to show how alienated they are from the rest of the world. For a start England is the United Kingdom which includes Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and for another I have visited the states a few times. How many of you have been to the UK? The only problem we have here is our fictitious relationship to your money empire backed by guns and we need to get away from you....quickly! . When China and Russia have their turn at running the world the USA will become a forgotten backwater of history just like the Greek, the Roman and the British empires. I reiterate. British police don't carry guns because they don't have to. We live in a far more tolerant society than the US with your religious nutcases and psychopathic money men and the sooner the whole rotten structure falls apart the safer the world will be.  -- Sibonakalo, Portsmouth, UK
Sibonakalo, the UK has become a toilet. Tolerant is not the right word for it. I have watched video of English policemen on the run from mobs of radical Muslims and there was nothing they could do but flee. So are you suggesting they have some ability to protect the public? They can't even protect themselves. The UK is a sad joke and it's values have been completely subverted. "pity, that"  -- J Carlton, Calgary
-- Roland, Bonner's Ferry

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