Firearms improve safety
NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre asked Congress for “a national school security plan, including an appropriation from Congress for armed guards in every school.”While this is arguably a solution, it is not for Washington to fund and control. With every funding from Congress, states lose autonomy. Washington has a history of blackmailing states into following its will with threats to withhold money. Example: Seat belt laws.
LaPierre was correct when he doubted “that one more ban will protect us where 20,000 other laws have failed.” In a 1982 Senate report, Sen. Orrin Hatch presaged this sentiment when he stated, “Both federal and state levels ... establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime.”
Yale professor John Lott in his seminal work, More Guns, Less Crime: “Examined city, county and state level data from the entire U.S. and measured the impact of 11 different types of gun control laws on crime rates.” He concluded that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons steadily decreased violent crime and reasoned correctly that criminals are deterred because as more citizens become armed, the danger to the criminal increases.
In 1982, Kennesaw enacted mandatory gun ownership for heads of households. “After the law went into ... crime against persons plummeted 74 percent compared to 1981, and fell another 45 percent in 1983 compared to 1982.
“Kennesaw proves that the presence of firearms actually improves safety and security. This is not the message that the media wants us to hear. They want us to believe that guns are evil and are the cause of violence.”
The facts reveal a different picture.
Ken Schaefer, Sharpsburg
