Anti-Gun Cops in Seymour Should Be Seen More And Heard Less by Doug Wrenn

Anti-Gun Cops in Seymour Should Be Seen More And Heard Less - Continued

No, wearing a badge doesn't make necessarily them right. I know. I used to wear one, too. Radio commentator Paul Harvey made a career of ending his monologues with his trademark phrase, "Now you know the rest of the story." Consider the rest, or, the other side of this story, as compiled by two organizations of which I am a proud member, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and Gun Owners of America (GOA):

From The NRA-ILA (NRA Institute of Legislative Action) At www.nraila.org:

-Since 1930, the annual number of gun deaths shrunk by 80% while US population doubled, and gun ownership quintupled.

-Gun deaths among children have decreased since 1975.

-Gun deaths are now at an all time low, 0.2% per 100,000 people, down 94% since the all time high in 1904.

-The odds of a child dying from a gun is one million to one.

-Guns cause an average of 0.6% of accidental deaths annually, as compared to car crashes, which cause 39%. (Maybe the Seymour P.D. should consider getting off the lecture circuit, and hitting the streets with a lot more traffic enforcement!)

-Some anti-gunners claim that 14 children die from guns each day. Hillary Clinton has claimed 13 per day. Ted Kennedy and the folks at Brady, Inc. claim 12 per day. Actually, according to the folks at the Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan (HELP), the number is closer to 9 children per day, and many of the anti-gunners include "children" up to and including age 24 in their numbers.

-According to the Harborbview Injury Prevention and Research Center, in affiliation with HELP, in the 12 states that introduced "CAP," or Child Access Prevention Laws, child gun deaths began decreasing between 1989 and 1993. That study is allegedly flawed. The decrease began in the mid-1970's long before CAP was even implemented.

-Since 1988, the NRA's Eddie eagle Gun Safe Program, and its 51,000 NRA certified instructors have taught effective gun safety to 20 million children in 25,000 presentations given to schools, civic groups, and law enforcement agencies.

From GOA at www.gunowners.org:

-According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), in 1989 alone, police response for citizen calls for help to each of 168,881 violent crimes that occurred nationally was over one hour.

-According to Dr. Edgar Suter ("Guns In the Medical Literature - A Failure of Peer review," The Journal of the American Medical Association of Georgia, vol. 83, March, 1994, page 136), about 2.5 million crimes are thwarted by armed citizens annually, and in 90% of those cases, without the victim having to fire his or her gun.

-(Attention Lt. Satkowski:) The myth that a household member is three times more likely to be killed by his own gun is also allegedly wrong and flawed. That figure was reported by Dr. Arthur Kellerman, who for years, allegedly refused to show his data to support his findings. According to Donald B. Kates ("Guns And Public Health: Epidemic of Violence, or Pandemic or Propaganda? In Gary Kleck and Kates's "Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control," 2001, page 79), in fact, household members were killed by the gun of their intruder, and not by the gun they owned.

-Child gun deaths have decreased 50% in 25 years.

-In a 3-year study, more children were killed playing football at school than by guns.

-Children are 7 times more likely to drown than be killed by a gun.

-Children are 130 times more likely to die from choking on food than being killed by a gun.

-A study by the National Safety Council in 2000, and written in their "Injury Facts" of 2003, shows similar numbers with specific breakdowns to age and specific cause of death.

-On average, 200,000 women fend off sexual abuse with a gun.

-Citizens are twice as likely to shoot criminals as police, and while police average an 11% rate of accidentally shooting an innocent person who was mistakenly believed to be a criminal, among citizens, the error rate is only 2%.

-In 1982, the city of Kennesaw, Georgia enacted an ordinance requiring possession of a gun on premises. In the ten years that followed, the city of Kennesaw saw its burglary rate decrease by 72%-89%, with burglaries only decreasing by about 10.4% statewide in Georgia.

-According to the DOJ, 3 out of 5 felons surveyed said they avoid any potential victim they deem to be possibly armed.

-According to the DOJ, 74% of felons surveyed said they avoid burglarizing occupied homes out of fear of getting shot by the occupants.

-According to the DOJ, 57% of felons are more afraid of citizens than they are of the police.

-In the August 2, 2000 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Jens Ludwig, PhD, and Philip J. Cook, PhD, reported in their article, "Homicide And Suicide Rates Associated With Implementation Of The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act," that the Brady bill has not reduced homicide or suicide rates. (Attention, again: Lt. Satkowski).

-Infamous anti-gunner, former Maryland Parris Glendenning struggled for two solid minutes during a March 2000 training exercise to release a gunlock from a gun. Fortunately for Gov. Glendenning that was only a drill, and not a real life and death emergency.

Findings on both of these sites, as also cited by author and Economics Professor John Lott, an admitted one-time skeptic and later, convert to defending 2nd Amendment rights, show that both in the US and abroad, areas in which gun ownership, and/or the right to carry a firearm is more relaxed have reduced rates of violent crime, and areas with more stringent and Draconian gun controls, or outright handgun bans still have very high violent crime rates. Ironically, I was watching a taped interview with Ralph Nader on CSPAN last night. One woman called into the show, bemoaning gun voice in Washington DC, and how she recently attended the funeral of a 19 year old man who was shot. I say "ironically," because apparently unknown to the caller, Washington DC is one of those places where gun ownership is banned. Once again, the bad guy obviously didn't get that memo. Of the roughly 20,000 gun laws that exist in the US, adding more will accomplish nothing. In fact, during the Clinton administration, federal gun crime prosecution was drastically decreased so that Clinton could push his gun control agenda with artificially raised crime rates involving guns. Enforcement of current laws, stiff, uniform prosecution, and an armed, law-abiding citizenry to augment our outgunned police while serving as a Constitutionally intended check and balance to a free government is the true answer to gun violence. The bad guys will always get guns. Making law-abiding citizens human targets and vulnerable, potential victims won't change that stubborn fact.

Cops often tend to be fairly conservative, but regional demographic, partisan and ideological biases influence many people in a given region. Somehow, I seriously doubt that former Des Moines, Iowa Assistant Police Chief and former NRA President, Kayne Robinson agrees with the tripe peddled by Lt. Satkowski in Seymour, or by a certain small town yocal with equally wrong answers in the People's Socialist Republic of Massachusetts. My father-in-law, a (now semi-retired) dairy farmer in rural northwest Massachusetts was chased onto his tractor and barely got away unscathed one eventful day by a pack of coy dogs that set upon him in the middle of his field. He was alone, and remotely isolated on his vast land, off road, and well away from any semblance or hope of access to rescue if anyone even knew of his perilous plight. The next day, he went into town to ask his local police chief how he could obtain a gun. The kindly but blundering bureaucrat who headed this infinitesimal, semi-part time, rural, municipal constabulary, and whom my father-in-law knew personally and trusted, talked him out of purchasing a gun, saying that he might accidentally hurt himself with it. That story reminds me of the tragic day that most of my father-in-law's house burned down, just about at dawn on a winter Sunday morning. It took the equally well meaning, but all volunteer fire department a full 20 minutes to arrive on scene. Most of the house was lost, as my father-in-law desperately stood outside, utterly and helplessly tormented at watching his homestead of several generations being engulfed in flames, and wondering why nobody had arrived yet.

I don't at all doubt the good intentions of Mr. Stone and Lt. Satkowski, nor do I question the good intentions of the police chief in my father-in-law's community. But good intentions, like 911, are often grossly overrated, especially when lives are at risk and seconds, not minutes, count. Cops are human, just like all the rest of us, and thus subject to the same virtues and flaws, as well as the same biases and erroneous beliefs.

And wearing a badge doesn't make them right.

Doug Wrenn