USA – -(Ammoland.com)- Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership (DRGO) is your organization. Our leadership and regular blog contributors have no monopoly on saying smart things about important subjects. Our members, supporters and readers of these articles also have a great deal to bring to the idea table.
In this case, a reader named Gary sent us the following email in which he likens the benefit to social order of firearm ownership and the right to carry to the use of antibiotics and sanitizers on personal and public health.
We couldn’t agree with him more.
Gary writes:
Dear DRGO:
I am now retired, but have worked in healthcare and human services during most of my career.
DRGO is doing a good job. I know (and have known) physicians, nurses and dentists who hunt, carry for defense, target shoot. Great folks. One friend of mine chased off an armed attacker who accosted a pair of docs headed into a medical conference by just drawing his weapon.
I liken the decrease in crime and increase in firearm ownership to the increase in sanitation and antibiotics in health care and the decrease in mortality.
For those who say no legal carry or ownership by the law abiding citizen, then how about no antibiotics and sanitary practices for their living and healthcare circumstances!:-(
Makes about the same sense.
Keep up the good work of telling it like it is.
Gary
Opponents of the inherent human right to defense, as exercised through responsible firearm ownership, seek to characterize the irresponsible and criminal use of firearms as typical of and inherent to firearms ownership in general. That notion, then, serves as a stepping stone to their argument that guns and their ownership are the causative factor, the etiology, of social ills.
That is a textbook exercise in sophistry. The evidence, it turns out, not only proves them wrong. It flips the script on their narrative.
As it turns out, neither gun ownership nor guns themselves, but crime and a criminals are the perpetual social ill. This intrinsic shortcoming of humanity can be cured in countless individual cases and mitigated on a societal level by the unfettered and responsible exercise of Second Amendment rights by the populace.
As Robert Heinlein once said: “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” In other words: to an extent, guns aren’t the disease, they’re the cure.
The landmark, U.S. Department of Justice-funded Wright-Rossi study beautifully illustrates the meaning of Heinlein’s statement (and, thus, the notion of firearms ownership as a social sanitizer). The survey questioned over 1,800 incarcerated felons and demonstrated that broad firearms ownership constitutes a clear and significant deterrent to crime. Specifically, the participants, (all felons, serving time in prisons across the nation) indicated the following (h/t Ten Myths About Gun Control):
- 74% felt that burglars avoided occupied dwellings for fear of being shot.
- 80% of “handgun predators” had encountered armed citizens.
- 40% did not commit a specific crime for fear that the victim was armed.
- 34% of “handgun predators” were scared off or shot at by armed victims.
- 57% felt that the typical criminal feared being shot by citizens more than he feared being shot by police.
Additional, and voluminous work, has been done by Professor John R. Lott and is covered in depth in his book: “More Guns, Less Crime“.
Returning to the sanitizer analogy, it must be made clear that no amount of soap and sanitizer will ever create a perfectly sterile world. And here we come to the distinction between “sterile” and “sanitary”. The former means “totally devoid of living microorganisms”, while the latter means “hygienic and clean”. The distinction is not a nuanced one and it goes to emphasize the point that it is more practically achievable (and, thus, preferable from a social and political perspective) to strive for sanitation – i.e. keeping the germs at bay.
Firearms ownership is a social sanitizer because it demonstrably keeps certain evils at bay. That’s because it is impossible to “sterilize” the world and eradicate all evil since there are inherent flaws and failings of human nature which we never could and never will be able to eradicate.
Yet gun prohibitionists want us to accept that they can cure certain social ills by stripping good people of the ability to defend themselves.
If a lie, repeated enough times, becomes perceived as the truth, then how many times must the truth be repeated before it’s acknowledged as such?
How many people for how long must exercise a right for it to be unassailable? I don’t know… How much soap and sanitizer are needed to keep a family healthy?
The exact minimum effective amount escapes me at the moment, but I’m glad that soap and hand sanitizer are sold in bulk quantities.
— Arthur Z Przebinda is an imaging specialist in Southern California. He advocates for the Second Amendment in his state and nationally and serves as DRGO’s Social Media Editor.
Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a project of the Second Amendment Foundation. www.drgo.us