Guns Save Lives

This blog contains excerpts from the book “Fighting Back” from Eric Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America.

This statement of guns saving lives is one that happens far more often than the anti-gun left will admit. The unfortunate “see the light” moment usually occurs after a horrific gun-related incident.

To successfully argue against the anti-gun left, you need to present actual examples of how the use of a gun saved one or more lives. And you need to be ready to share those stories because the lame stream media will not. And if you are able to share a CCTV video of the incident, so much the better.

The reason the lame stream media will not share these stories is because it undermines their mantra that “guns are bad”. But if you effectively do your homework and cite real world examples, you could very easily have a mic-drop moment. When caught in their “guns are bad” lie with specific evidentiary examples of how guns saved lives, most of the left will simply change the subject. There is no alternative course of action when the proof is irrefutable.

So, in many cases they will then argue, “but what if gun control saved just one life?” There are two possible answers to this convoluted argument. The first is “if eliminating gun control saves just one life, wouldn’t it be worth it?” The other argument is that “when people are free to exercise their fundamental right, historical evidence suggests that many more lives will be saved.”

You need turn the anti-gun left’s logic against them. Do you remember when anti-gun Demonrats staged a sit in on the floor of Congress back in 2016. The CNN host covering this clown circus was Carol Costello. She posted an on-screen graphic with figures from the CDC of gun-related deaths in the U.S. At the time, she was interviewing Eric Pratt, executive vice president of Gun Owners of America. He countered by pointing out that CDC statistics actually show that Americans use guns more often to save lives than to take them…about 16 to 100 times more often.

Costello got flustered because Pratt was using her own authoritative source against her. She got upset. At the end of the day, Newsbusters said that Costello “got schooled” by Pratt during the interview.

So, if you end up arguing with an anti-gun liberal, come armed, so-to-speak. You need to cite specific examples of how guns save lives, because the left hates this and it puts them on the defensive. There are several ways to cite such examples.

First, discuss several recent examples of self-defense. Go to ConcealedNation.org if you need a good supply of stories. And visit this site frequently as it is updated often. Or if you are like me and live near a large city with soft-on-crime policies, like me living in the Philadelphia suburbs, stories abound.

Second, show that cops believe good guys with guns save lives, and use the following statistics:

• * 93% of law enforcement agree that any law-abiding citizen be able to purchase a firearm for self-defense.

• * 91% of law enforcement support concealed carry for law-abiding gun owners, and some law enforcement agencies even support Constitutional Carry.

• * 86% of law enforcement agencies state that the way to reduce casualties in mass shootings is to allow citizens to carry firearms concealed.

• * 81% of law enforcement agencies support arming teachers and school administrators as a way to prevent mass killers on campus.

Third, cite studies which demonstrate that defensive gun uses occur frequently.

To help you in your quest to shut down the anti-gun liberals, there are two (2) ground-breaking studies done during Democratic administrations.

The first of these studies was with the Clinton Justice Department in 1997. Anti-gun researchers conceded that guns are used 1.5 million time annually for self-defense.

The second of these studies was the Obama Centers for Disease Control in 2013. The CDC funded study found that anywhere from 500,000 to 3 million times a year, guns are being used in self-defense. Translated that means that guns are used 16 – 100 times more often to save a life than to take a life.

Fourth, debunk asinine scientific studies that supposedly discredit the number of self-defense cases in this country. The most well known of these bogus studies was by Arthur Kellerman in 1986. He came up with a bogus figure that a gun in the home was 43 times more likely to kill the homeowner than to help him. So how did he arrive at this bullshit statistic? He specifically excluded the overwhelming number of self-defense cases from his study. This exclusion omitted the majority, roughly 95% of the instances where the homeowners used a gun in self-defense merely by brandishing their guns or by firing a warning shot. Kellerman has since backed away

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