BROOKFIELD, Wis. (AP) - A gunman opened fire Saturday at a church service being held at a hotel, killing seven people before taking his own life, authorities said.
What is the single thread that runs through all these mass shootings, from Brookfield, Wisconsin to Tasmania, Australia, where a gunman killed 35 people in 1996? Nobody shot back. If just one other person in either of these or in any other shooting tragedy had been armed, the story might have been far different. There are approximately two million defensive gun uses (DGU's) per year in the United States by law abiding citizens. That was one of the findings in a national survey conducted by Gary Kleck, a Florida State University criminologist in 1993. Prior to Dr. Kleck's survey, 13 other surveys indicated a range of between 800,000 to 2.5 million DGU's annually. However these surveys each had their flaws, which prompted Dr. Kleck to conduct his own study specifically tailored to estimate the number of DGU's annually. Subsequent to Kleck's study, the Department of Justice sponsored a survey in 1994 titled, Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms. Using a smaller sample size than Kleck's, this survey estimated 1.5 million DGU's annually. Why don't we hear about any of these DGU's in the news? Well, for one thing, two million DGU's a year amounts to about 5,479 stories a day. Not even Headline News could cover all that. Actually, that's not quite true, because if a gun prevents a crime, the crime does not occur and there is no story to report. And then there's the liberal bias that would cause a journalist to bite off his tongue rather than report anything positive about guns. Defensive gun use does not mean jerking a weapon from a holster, standing splay-legged and screaming, "FREEZE, DIRTBAG!!!" More often than not, it means just casually pulling back a jacket to show a weapon, whereupon an evil doer who doesn't want to work that hard for his money, will quickly exit. In every, EVERY case in which law-abiding citizens are allowed to arm themselves, violent crime goes down about 24 percent over the following five years. In every, EVERY case in which the government takes away the human right for citizens to defend themselves, violent crime rises at a much greater speed and to a much higher level. Just look around. The cities and states with the strictist gun control also have the highest rates of violent crime. It is true across the board. The gun grabbers in Australia exploited the Tasmanian massacre to outlaw guns all across the country and violent crime has soared. The last time I checked, rape alone had gone up 45 percent. The same thing has happened in Canada. And in Britain, where the government forbids citizens to use ANY force to protect themselves from criminals, it's as though the country has been invaded again by the Saxons. Property crime has shot up 69 percent. This is one of those truths that is self-evident. More guns result in less crime. Yet liberals can't see it. They are totally blind to the facts and no matter how much evidence is laid at their feet, they stick their fingers in their ears, squeeze their eyes shut and scream. Sometimes they stamp their feet. If you want to educate yourself on the subject, read "More Guns Less Crime," by John Lott. It's a heavy read, presenting chart after chart, chapter after chapter, statistic after statistic to show that: 1. Gun control is racist. Blacks benefit more from gun ownership than whites. On average, black Americans live in worse neighborhoods with higher crime rates than white Americans. When laws permitting citizens to carry concealed firearms are introduced, crime rates fall more dramatically in those neighborhoods, and black Americans benefit disproportionately. 2. Gun control is sexist. Women benefit more from gun ownership than men. Women who carry concealed weapons lower the women's murder rate more than men's ownership decreases the men's rate. Women toting guns also significantly reduce the rape rate. 3. Gun control is a waste of government money: Private gun ownership is cheap law enforcement. Private gun ownership lowers more crime per dollar spent than almost any other crime reduction measure...and the gun owners bear virtually all of the cost. You are protected just by living in a state where concealed carry is legal. Criminals don't know who is carrying a gun and who is not, so even if you choose not to, you are protected by the suspicion that you might be packing. 4. Gun control is dishonest: Virtually everything the gun grabbers say, everything they do, everything they believe is a lie. But then, how's that unusual with liberals?
