Understanding who stops criminals is one of the most important things to figure out when you get into a discussion about how to reduce violent crime.
Those on the anti-2A side of the firearms issue say that law enforcement is the who is best equipped to handle (and who should be the ones dealing with) criminal behavior.
Those on the pro-2A side of things reply that when seconds count, police are minutes away.
And that’s by no means intended to be a criticism of police officers. The fact of the matter is that police officers simply cannot be everywhere all of the time.
But we don’t want to just go with opinions. We want to get the actual truth about who stops active shooters so that we can make informed policy decisions (or, at least, vote for people who make informed policy decisions).
Fortunately, someone has looked into exactly that for us. Amy Swearer and Amanda Badalamenti write,
Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to the most recent report on the subject by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the issue concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.
Now, it’s possible that law enforcement officers engage in the lion’s share of the legal gun use to stop a criminal.
But that doesn’t mean that civilian gun use for protection purposes isn’t incredibly important. So, it’s absolutely possible that civilian defensive gun uses may outnumber law enforcement firearm uses over a year.
Regardless of whether that is the case or not, there’s no question that civilian defensive gun uses happen far more often than anti-2A crusaders care to mention.
And that’s yet another reason to train diligently with your firearm and to carry it daily.
