Now We Know There are Armed Good Guys on Our Streets

The mainstream news media sells shock and revulsion to keep us watching through their many advertisements. Politicians lie to us so we will vote for them. Both have told us that guns are frighteningly dangerous and that we’d be safer if more honest citizens were disarmed. We’re tempted to believe them if that is all we know. Now, we have data that calls their story into question. We confirmed something we’d long suspected about good men and women who legally carry personal firearms in public. Now we know that concealed carry and armed defense are common.

The mainstream media tells us about crime all the time. What the news media seldom bother to tell us are the many stories where good guys stop crime with a personal firearm. We don’t see that news article even though armed defense happens several times for each time a criminal uses a gun during a crime. (Criminals only use a firearm in about 8% of violent crimes.) In contrast, our neighbors use a firearm for self-defense about as often as criminals commit any violent crime, either with or without a gun in the criminals’ hands.

One claim that the media and anti-gun advocates use is that good guys don’t carry a firearm in public. They claim that if armed defense happens at all, then it is extremely rare. That would be odd because we already know there are more than 20 million of us who have a license to carry a concealed firearm.

That doesn’t mean that 20 million of us necessarily carry every day. Until now, we didn’t have solid proof that honest citizens with a license to carry concealed in public leave their homes with a gun at all. In many states, you can carry concealed in public and the license is optional.