Gun Myths Page 3

---

Surely passing tougher gun laws is the best way to deal with armed criminals ?

No amount of legislation will stop criminals arming themselves with illegal weapons and using them to kill and injure innocent, law-abiding people.

The reason for this is because criminals don't obey laws, that's what makes them criminals in the first place. The fact that they routinely ignore the law also means that they don't obey gun laws, no matter how strict they are.

This is why supporting a ban on legal gun ownership in the hope that this will reduce crime is a pointless waste of time and effort.

Laws governing the use of guns are pointless, because not one of them will protect you from people that don't obey the law. These laws cost millions of pounds of taxpayers money to enforce, they take up a huge amount of police time and ultimately do little to deal with the underlying problem which is criminals, not the tools they use.

Britain's draconian gun laws are nothing more than a feel-good measure, designed to give you a false sense of security.  As you can see from watching the news, they do nothing to disarm criminals or stop them from aquiring guns illegally.

When these laws are passed, they are used in such a way that they trick you into thinking you are being kept safe, when in reality you are now completely defenceless against criminals that get around the ban by simply ignoring it and carrying dangerous weapons anyway.

Furthermore some people seem to think that an armed criminal will be deterred by the prospect of 5 or 10 years in prison for a gun possession conviction when they would face many more years behind bars for murder, wounding, armed robbery etc.

This baffles me, and quite frankly it's something I simply can�t get my mind around.

There is now a huge underworld market for guns with the police estimating that there are in excess of 4 million illegal guns in British criminal's hands.

Criminals make huge profits from the illegal gun trade and this is just the type of opportunity that they love, as it's another way of making easy money.

 

The police'll protect us. We really don't need guns in England, do we ?

Ask yourself what you would do if you were suddenly attacked by a vicious criminal (or a group of criminals) who have every intention of raping you or doing you serious harm and would feel no remorse for killing you and leaving your family devastated. The fact is that we've all seen this on a daily basis in the newspapers.

If you're a man, you may say that you would try to fight them off but given that you're unarmed and possibly outnumbered, and you're attacker is probably carrying a knife or other weapon, your chances are slim at best.

If you're a woman, what on earth would you do ? It's bad enough for a man, but what chance does a woman have in such a desperate situation.

Ask yourself what your mother, sister, wife or grandmother would do when faced with this situation ?

Man or woman, old or young, there is only thing that can even up the score against an armed criminal or multiple attackers and that is a handgun, plain and simple, like it or not.

Please try and put yourself into the minds of victims of such violent crime, those who have lost loved ones to sadistic and violent thugs who enjoy preying on the innocent.

There is no doubt you'd be angry if a loved one was seriously injured or killed by sadistic scum that are probably laughing and joking about it with their friends, but wouldn't you be even angrier knowing that your loved one may have had a chance if they'd have been able to defend themselves ?

There are many people who would benefit tremendously from UK gun laws being relaxed, particularly people who do not have the physical strength to fight with their fists or run away from an attacker. Amongst these people are the elderly and infirm, those with disabilities, pregnant women, people (especially those with children) living in high crime areas and women travelling alone.

Guns "equalise" unequals and give all of the above mentioned people the only effective means of self-defence. They are also the only way they can fight back and protect themselves against a determined criminal who is going to be younger, faster and far more experienced in close fighting.

All these people have the right to be able to protect themselves in the best way possible.

 

How can a gun protect me from criminals ?

In the United States, guns are used around 2,500,000 times each year in self-defence.

Of these instances, 15% of the people using a firearm defensively stated that they "almost certainly" saved their lives by doing so.

Even if the figures are exaggerated, and only 500,000 people actually defend themselves with guns each year, this still amounts to more than 75,000 lives saved annually, which is more than 6 times the amount of murders committed each year using guns.

The US has around 12,000 gun murders each year, most of which are gang and drug related.

In 83% of these successful gun defences, the attacker either threatened or used force first, proving that guns are very well suited for self-defence.

Of the 2,500,000 times citizens use guns to defend themselves, 92% merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers.

Less than 8% of the time does a citizen wound his or her attacker, and in less than one in a 1000 instances is the attacker killed.

Firearms are actually used much more often to save lives than to take lives.

(Source - Media Bias Against Guns - John R Lott Jr ) (PDF File)

(Source - National Self Defense Survey - Florida State University)