Great story from the Cato Institute:

On the Right Side of the Bullet

by Clayton E. Cramer

This article appeared in Washington Times on February 9, 2012

Every so often, a local news story about a victim of crime goes national. Most recently, it was Sarah McKinley, 18, home alone with her 3-month-old son, a few days after Sarah’s husband had died of lung cancer. Two men apparently looking to steal pain medicine prescribed for the husband broke in. Sarah grabbed a shotgun and a pistol and killed Justin Martin as he forced entry into her home.

How often do such incidents happen? While the results from studies vary, the numbers are large. The National Crime Victimization Survey, for various procedural reasons, is at the low end, showing 108,000 such cases a year (although this was some years back, when crime rates were higher than now). The widely reported Kleck/Gertz study, which has its own set of problems, showed a range of 830,000 to 2.45 million defensive gun uses per year. Other studies have fallen solidly in the middle, with hundreds of thousands of defensive gun uses per year.

Our study examines a variety of incident types: concealed-weapon permit holders (285 accounts); home invasions (1,227 incidents); residential burglaries (488). There are categories that we would never have thought were all that common: 172 incidents where people defended themselves from animal attacks (some wild, some dogs gone wild); 34 were incidents where pizza delivery drivers defended themselves from robbery.

Startled? You might think from how rarely stories like this go national that defensive gun use is relatively rare in America. Why don’t we see these stories more often, if victims are using guns in self-defense so often? Keep in mind that the vast majority of defensive gun uses never receive even local news coverage. “Homeowner scares away burglar, no shots fired” is not exactly a major news story, unless you live in a very small town.

Nonetheless, from 2003 through 2011, when I collaborated in an effort to gather local news stories and official reports of civilians using guns in self-defense here in the United States, I was astonished by how many such incidents there were, the vast majority of which never received national attention. Over a period of more than seven years, we compiled almost 5,000 such accounts. Most ended happily, with a burglar, carjacker or robber held for police. Some ended in bloodshed, as in the case of Sarah McKinley. Very few ended with the victim injured or killed.

Some of the news stories that did receive national attention are unsurprising, such as that of Matthew Murray, a mentally ill young man, who walked into New Life Church in Colorado Springs in 2007, carrying two handguns, an assault rifle and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. Murray had already murdered four people in the previous 12 hours, two of them in the church’s parking lot. Jeanne Assam, who was licensed to carry a concealed weapon, drew her weapon and shot Murray, preventing what could have been the most lethal mass murder in U.S. history.

Some of the news stories that stayed local, however, were dramatic stories of life and death, good and evil, that seem like the dictionary definition of “human interest story.” On May 4, 2009, two masked men with guns burst into a home in College Park, Ga., while a birthday party was in progress. Ten people, some of them college students, were inside the apartment. The intruders separated the men from the women. One of the intruders started counting his bullets; the other asked how many bullets he had. “Enough,” he said. It does not take much imagination to figure out that there would be no survivors. At this point, one of the students managed to reach into his backpack, pull out a gun and shoot one of the intruders, who then fled the apartment wounded. The armed student then caught the other intruder in the act of raping one of the women in the other room. The student shot the rapist as he jumped out the window.

Do law-abiding adults responsibly use guns in self-defense? The evidence we have amassed says yes, and frequently.

Related posts: 

Yesterday I got to hear Mike Anderson on 103.7 the buzz. Mike is really firing up the fans and I think he will be a great coach, but not in the first year. People all around me are jumping to conclusions. They tell me that we are going to the final four for sure next year.

Take a look at North Carolina and the success that Roy Williams has had. However, how did the Tarhills do last year with all that young talent? They had a losing record!!! It takes time and I think (unless you bring in 4 of the top 20 players in the country every year like Calipari does) then you have to get your young players some experience. Look at how good the Tarhills were this year with 4 underclassmen starting (only two freshmen though).

Anderson will be fine but not in the first year. I expect records of 19-14 the first year and 26-5 in the second year. You heard it here first.

Just a few weeks ago I got to hear Scotty Thurman speak at the First Baptist Church Sports Zone Luncheon and he did a great job. We all got a thrill when that video clip of him making the three against Duke was shown. Harry King mentioned it too in his latest article. We are ready for the good ole days to return.

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Earlier both John Brummett and Max Brantley have made it clear that they support gun control. However, in today’s article Brummett states:

Several years ago, owing to our gun-addicted culture and to our insistence on being ruled by our fears, our Legislature gave us a law by which a competent and law-abiding person could take a little training course and get a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

It was, while lamentable in a general way, fine by me specifically. I have more concern about a person who seeks and holds no permit for the gun he conceals.

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I think that person who “holds no permit for the gun he conceals” also concerns me. However, unlike Brummett I do not pretend to think that there is any amount of laws that will keep that criminal from getting a gun. The honest people are the only ones actually restricted by gun control laws.

I got this story from youtube and below is the story of Suzanna Gratia Hupp:

On October 16, 1991, Hennard drove his 1987 Ford Ranger pickup truck through the front window of a Luby’s Cafeteria at 1705 East Central Texas Expressway in Killeen, yelled “This is what Bell County has done to me!”, then opened fire on the restaurant’s patrons and staff with a Glock 17 pistol and later a Ruger P89. About 80 people were in the restaurant at the time. He stalked, shot, and killed 23 people and wounded another 20 before committing suicide. During the shooting, he approached Suzanna Gratia Hupp and her parents. Hupp had actually brought a handgun to the Luby’s Cafeteria that day, but had left it in her vehicle due to the laws in force at the time, forbidding citizens from carrying firearms. According to her later testimony in favor of Missouri’s HB-1720 bill[1] and in general, after she realized that her firearm was not in her purse, but “a hundred feet away in [her] car”, her father charged at Hennard in an attempt to subdue him, only to be gunned down; a short time later, her mother was also shot and killed. (Hupp later expressed regret for abiding by the law in question by leaving her firearm in her car, rather than keeping it on her person. One patron, Tommy Vaughn, threw himself through a plate-glass window to allow others to escape. Hennard allowed a mother and her four-year-old child to leave. He reloaded several times and still had ammunition remaining when he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head after being cornered and wounded by police.

Reacting to the massacre, in 1995 the Texas Legislature passed a shall-issue gun law allowing Texas citizens with the required permit to carry concealed weapons. The law had been campaigned for by Suzanna Hupp, who was present at the Luby’s massacre and both of whose parents were shot and killed. Hupp testified across the country in support of concealed-handgun laws, and was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1996. The law was signed by then-Governor George W. Bush and became part of a broad movement to allow U.S. citizens to easily obtain permits to carry concealed weapons.