History, Common Sense, and the Constitution  by Tom Reynolds

The leftist politicians’ rabid outrage at the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision on NYSRPA v Bruen consistently says people will be less safe after SCOTUS’ decision.

N.Y. Governor Hochul said the decision was “sending us backwards in our efforts to protect families and prevent gun violence” and “could place millions of New Yorkers in harm’s way...This decision isn't just reckless. It's reprehensible.”

President Joe Biden also called the decision disappointing, and one that "contradicts both common sense and the Constitution."

N.Y. City Mayor Eric Adams' statement: “Put simply, this Supreme Court ruling will put New Yorkers at further risk of gun violence.” 

In response to the SCOTUS decision, Governor Kathy Hochul expects to call an extraordinary session of the state Legislature to tweak the state's gun laws.

Perhaps they should all stop reading Democrat talking points off the teleprompter and, instead, read some scientific studies on what firearms really cause: People use firearms in personal defense many more times than people are killed. Firearms in law abiding citizens’ hands make people safer.  

A 1994 survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that Americans use guns to frighten away intruders who are breaking into their homes about 498,000 times per year.

The following abstract from the CDC survey gives both the methodology and the results:

Estimating intruder-related firearm retrievals in U.S. households, 1994

R M Ikeda ¹, L L Dahlberg, J J Sacks, J A Mercy, K E Powell

Affiliations expand

• PMID: 9591354

Abstract

To estimate the frequency of firearm retrieval because of a known or presumed intruder, the authors analyzed data from a 1994 national random digit dialing telephone survey (n = 5,238 interviews).

Three mutually exclusive definitions of firearm retrieval were constructed:

(1) retrieved a firearm because there might be an intruder,

(2) retrieved a firearm and saw an intruder, and

(3) retrieved a firearm, saw an intruder, and believed the intruder was frightened away by the gun.

Of 1,678 (34%) households with firearms, 105 (6%) retrieved a firearm in the previous 12 months because of an intruder. National projections based on these self-reports reveal an estimated

1,896,842 (95% CI [confidence interval] = 1,480,647-2,313,035) incidents in which a firearm was retrieved, but no intruder was seen;

503,481 (95% CI = 305,093-701,870) incidents occurred in which an intruder was seen, and

497,646 (95% CI = 266,060-729,231) incidents occurred in which the intruder was seen and reportedly scared away by the firearm.

Estimates of the protective use of firearms are sensitive to the definitions used. Researchers should carefully consider both how these events are defined and the study methods used.

And if Hochul, Biden and Adams need more:

In 2013, President Obama ordered the Department of Health and Human Services and CDC to “conduct or sponsor research into the causes of gun violence and the ways to prevent it.” In response, the CDC asked the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council to “convene a committee of experts to develop a potential research agenda focusing on the public health aspects of firearm-related violence...” This committee** studied the issue of defensive gun use and reported:

• ·      “Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact number remains disputed…”

• ·      “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million…”

• ·      “[S]ome scholars point to a radically lower estimate of only 108,000 annual defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey,” but this “estimate of 108,000 is difficult to interpret because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.”

• ·      “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies…”

Could it be that the Founding Fathers and SCOTUS got it right and that Hochul, Biden and Adams are, once again, on the wrong side of history, common sense and the Constitution?

**Contributor(s): National Research Council; Institute of Medicine; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Executive Office, Institute of Medicine; Committee on Priorities for a Public Health Research Agenda to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence; Committee on Law and Justice; Alan I. Leshner, Bruce M. Altevogt, Arlene F. Lee, Margaret A. McCoy, and Patrick W. Kelley, Editors