By Andrew Scott
Tucson, AZ -(AmmoLand.com)-
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been called “paranoid” for carrying a gun or defending the 2nd Amendment I most certainly wouldn’t be driving around my beater of a truck.
This seems to be the fallback for anti-gun zealots, an accusation they feel is so self-evident that they don’t feel the need to back it up with evidence (which is good for them, because there’s no evidence to back it up).
Interestingly enough, this point always seems to be brought up when anti-gunners talk about their fear of the pro-gun community.
Take, for example, this recent blog post by Huffington Post writer Carter Gaddis that went viral, in which a father describes his instant fear and apprehension at seeing an NRA decal. Or there’s the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence encouraging their followers to (criminally) call the police on anyone they see with a firearm, whether open or concealed carry, to “protect the safety of your loved ones.”
It seems to me as though we’re not the paranoid ones – they are.
But just to be sure, I decided to run some numbers. What are the odds that their worst fear, a law-abiding gun owner snaps and decides to start murdering people, happens? How do those odds stack up against the odds that we may one day be the victims of a violent crime, a possible situation that is at the forefront of many gun carrier’s minds?
Since we don’t have a national gun registry (thank God!), we don’t have nationwide numbers on the crime rates of citizens who legally own firearms. However, Texas does keep track of the crime rates of concealed carriers, and since we know for a fact that these individuals have passed a background check and kept a clean record, it provides us with an adequate benchmark.
That’s a rate of roughly .565/100,000.
But keep in mind, that’s the ratio of CHL holders who committed a murder. That is not the murder rate of Texans committed by CHL holders.
This is where it gets really interesting.
In 2013 Texas had 26,448,193 citizens. Of those, 4 people were murdered by a CHL holder. That puts the probability of being murdered in Texas by a CHL holder at a mind-blowing –
.0151/100,000
The national homicide rate (or probability of getting murdered)? 4.3/100,000. Only a 28,000% difference.
And we’re the ones you’re worried about?
Just for fun I decided to extrapolate those numbers for the average lifetime of a U.S. citizen, 78.74 years. The odds of being murdered by a CHL holder in Texas during a whole lifetime of living in Texas?
1 in 83,973
Just to put some perspective on that, according to a CNN article the average person today has about a 1 in 12,000 chance of getting struck by lightning during their lifetime. Yes, you’re 7 times more likely to get struck by lightning than get murdered by a CHL holder while living in Texas.
What if you played the Powerball every single week for your entire life? Well, the odds of winning on a single ticket is 1 in 175,223,510, and if you played that every week you’d buy 4,094 tickets. Your odds of winning once? 1 in 42,800, nearly twice as likely as getting murdered by a CHL holder in Texas.
Now you might think I just cherry-picked the best year for Texas CHL holders when I got my numbers rather than just using the most recent numbers available. So I decided to look back a bit. 2012 saw 2 murders by CHL holders in TX, 2011 saw 4 plus 3 manslaughters, and 2010 – well, I don’t know, I got bored of looking at consistently low numbers.
So, what are the odds of being a victim of violent crime? In 1987 the New York Times ran a headline titled “83% TO BE VICTIMS OF CRIME VIOLENCE.” That figure was arrived at by the “Government’s National Crime Survey” from 1975-1984, but violent crime has reduced dramatically since then. When I ran some (quick, not very scientific) numbers, I arrived at a roughly 25% chance of being a victim of violent crime in modern lifetimes. Now of course, crime isn’t totally random, so I’ll use the demographic figures from this article from Crime In America, which states that males have an 18.4% chance to be a victim of violence and white people a 15.8% chance, or roughly 1 in 6 between the two. These numbers seem very conservative, but they’ll do just fine to illustrate the point.
I arm myself, so I can potentially protect myself, my loved ones, friends, family, and even innocent bystanders from violent people. The odds that just I, myself, will at some point be the victim of violence, according to Crime In America, is about 1 in 6. That’s the likelihood that my fear will come true.
Once again, the odds that the anti-gunners fear of one of us “gun-toting psychos” snapping and murdering them? 1 in 83,973.
That means they’re 14,000 times more paranoid than we are. And that’s just math.
*Writer’s Note: I’ve obviously taken some liberty with these numbers due to the limited amount of information regarding gun owners nationwide. Most of these figures assume that the murder rate seen in Texas by CHL holders is indicative of legal gun carriers nationwide. I’m sure these numbers would shift given accurate nationwide data, but I believe that they would remain consistent enough to where the message would still be applicable.
About A&A Ammunition:
A&A Ammunition was founded with a single goal in mind: To help shooters be able to train by offering them high-quality, affordable ammunition.
Sincerely,
Andrew Scott
A&A Ammunition, CEO
Andrew Scott is the Founder and CEO of A&A Ammunition, an ammunition manufacturing and sales company located in Tucson, AZ, that specializes in reloading high-quality training ammo. He is also a Veteran currently serving in the Arizona Air National Guard and has previously worked in numerous industries ranging from food prep to stock trading.
For more of his writings, visit the A&A Ammunition website at www.TrainHardAmmo.com/blog
Amazing article,Thank you.
Now you might think I just cherry-picked the best year for Texas CHL holders when I got my numbers, rather than just using the most recent numbers available. So I decided to look back a bit. 2012 saw 2 murders by CHL holders in TX, 2011 saw 4 plus 3 manslaughters, 2010 – well I don’t know, I got bored of looking at consistently low numbers.Good article,keep it up.
I think the statistics support the paranoid verdict. Most crime happens in the big urban centres, but most gun-carrying folk are in the sticks. In other words, the people carrying guns are extremely unlikely to ever need to use them, which suggests to me that they have an irrational fear (ie, paranoia) of gun crime. Which is ironic. This debate is not about whether to ban guns or not. It’s about whether we can make sure that people who exercise their right to own a firearm do so responsibly and are competent. What kind of sensible gun owner thinks that… Read more »
I’ve been a CCL holder for 4 years. Unlike the vast majority of my detractors, I passed a background check and unlike many of them, could still pass it. My firearms has yet to leap from my waistband and shoot anyone (or anything!). I am generally a level-headed person, but much more so when armed. No matter how great the provocation, I know that I cannot be seen as the aggressor by any reasonable person. When I am not armed, I can join in an argument at the top of my voice if I so choose. Armed, I have to… Read more »
Constitutional Conservatives like myself who supports our Consitution as a whole plus the Second Amendment, including many of you who posted herein, must realize that the majority of any good cause is loosing to the left-wing, liberal “mob” mentality; the squeaky wheel gets the grease, just like in SC with the Confederate Flag representing more than history alone but those soldiers who died fighting for States’ Rights above all else, who were later deemed United States Military “veterans” by an Act of Congress.
Let’s not go too far about brains. Have you looked at MA gun laws? Many of the guns such as Glocks can only be purchased if they’re about 20 years old. Fortunately, a Gen 1 Glock will still fire, even in MA.
I don’t intend to be a victim.
I agree with the author with one exception. I believe crime is on an upswing. Violent crime is up 26% and property crimes 11% in Los Angeles this year. “After remaining relatively flat for much of the year, the number of people killed in Los Angeles surged in August, leaving police scrambling to rein in the violence.”
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-violent-crime-los-angeles-20150324-story.html
https://homicide.latimes.com/
What concerns me is the simple fact that the more people have guns, the more likely they are to fall into hands that should not have them. How many violent crimes were perpetrated with legally registered weapons period (regardless of who committed the crime)? Statistics on that would be much more relevant to the question of overall safety in society. I don’t have the numbers on that, but I suspect that if there were no guns in private ownership, there would be less chance of someone getting their hands on a gun to commit crimes that require you to defend… Read more »
I think Florida tracks their concealed carrier crime stats as well, but it is a little bit more involved getting those numbers. Not nearly as straightforward as the numbers from Texas.