Ammo Against Gun Control


Want to know more?


Defensive Gun Use Statistics


According to the National Self Defense Survey conducted by Florida State University criminologists in 1994, the rate of Defensive Gun Uses can be projected nationwide to approximately 2.5 million per year -- one Defensive Gun Use every 13 seconds.

Among 15.7% of gun defenders interviewed nationwide during The National Self Defense Survey, the defender believed that someone "almost certainly" would have died had the gun not been used for protection -- a life saved by a privately held gun about once every 1.3 minutes. (In another 14.2% cases, the defender believed someone "probably" would have died if the gun hadn't been used in defense.)

In 83.5% of these successful gun defenses, the attacker either threatened or used force first -- disproving the myth that having a gun available for defense wouldn't make any difference.

In 91.7% of these incidents the defensive use of a gun did not wound or kill the criminal attacker (and the gun defense wouldn't be called "newsworthy" by newspaper or TV news editors). In 64.2% of these gun-defense cases, the police learned of the defense, which means that the media could also find out and report on them if they chose to.

In 73.4% of these gun-defense incidents, the attacker was a stranger to the intended victim. (Defenses against a family member or intimate were rare -- well under 10%.) This disproves the myth that a gun kept for defense will most likely be used against a family member or someone you love.

In over half of these gun defense incidents, the defender was facing two or more attackers -- and three or more attackers in over a quarter of these cases. (No means of defense other than a firearm -- martial arts, pepper spray, or stun guns -- gives a potential victim a decent chance of getting away uninjured when facing multiple attackers.)

In 79.7% of these gun defenses, the defender used a concealable handgun. A quarter of the gun defenses occured in places away from the defender's home.

Source: "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun," by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, in The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, Volume 86, Number 1, Fall, 1995


Defensive Gun Use Statistics: Peer Review


Marvin Wolfgang, the late Director of the Sellin Center for Studies in Criminology and Criminal Law at the University of Pennsylvania, considered by many to be the foremost criminologist in the country, wrote in The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, Volume 86, Number 1, Fall, 1995:

"I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country. If I were Mustapha Mond of Brave New World, I would eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police ... What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. ["Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun," by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, published in that same issue of The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology] The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator. ...I have to admit my admiration for the care and caution expressed in this article and this research. Can it be true that about two million instances occur each year in which a gun was used as a defensive measure against crime? It is hard to believe. Yet, it is hard to challenge the data collected. We do not have contrary evidence. The National Crime Victim Survey does not directly contravene this latest survey, nor do the Mauser and Hart Studies. ... the methodological soundness of the current Kleck and Gertz study is clear. I cannot further debate it. ... The Kleck and Gertz study impresses me for the caution the authors exercise and the elaborate nuances they examine methodologically. I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology. They have tried earnestly to meet all objections in advance and have done exceedingly well."

So this data has been peer-reviewed by a top criminologist in this country who was prejudiced in advance against its results, and even he found the scientific evidence overwhelmingly convincing.


Could it be...?


Criminal attacks stopped by guns this year:

Gun control activists were unhappy with the National Self Defense Survey's results, which show that "Every 13 seconds an American gun owner uses a firearm in defense against a criminal."

In a 1994 TV news taping, Handgun Control, Inc.?s, spokesman, Sandy Cooney, called the National Self Defense Survey ?obscene? and threw ad hominem slurs at its lead researcher, professor of criminology, Dr. Gary Kleck. Since Kleck is an impartial social scientist with no links to gun advocates or manufacturers ? in fact he?s a liberal Democrat ? it appears that Kleck?s only sin was doing research which produced results that challenged the gun-control agenda of Handgun Control, Inc., the "Million" Moms, and similar organizations.

So, to refute the results of the National Self Defense Survey, two pro-gun-control researchers, Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig, were given funding by the Clinton administration's Department of Justice to do their own survey of Defensive Gun Uses, to attempt to prove that the National Self Defense Survey's estimate was too high.

Unfortunately for advocates of gun control, the Cook-Ludwig survey produced results about the same as the National Self Defense Survey and -- in one remarkable paragraph -- suggested that their methodology was too conservative and that the Defensive Gun Use figure could even be doubled:

"Because respondents were asked to describe only their most recent defensive gun use, our comparisons are conservative, as they assume only one defensive gun use per defender. ...Inclusion of multiple DGUs reported by half of the 19 NSPOF respondents increases the estimate to 4.7 million DGUs[emphasis added]."

Source: The National Institute of Justice, in its survey Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms by Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig.

The Defensive Gun Use figure shown under the heading "Could It Be...?" is not intended to replace the more-accepted estimate from the National Self Defense Survey, which is 2.5 million Defensive Gun Uses per year -- one every 13 seconds. Instead, it is intended to show that the researchers who did the National Defense Survey were extremely careful in their methodology and conservative in their statements regarding its results.

Gun-control activists are always speculating, without any data, that increasing the availability of firearms will lead to gunfights at every traffic accident. The purpose of showing the higher figure of Defensive Gun Uses drawn from the Cook-Ludwig Survey is to show that even gun-control advocates produce research which show that Defensive Gun Uses are far more common than any tragedies correlated to easy gun availability.


By comparison


A fatal accident involving a firearm occurs in the United States only about once every 6 hours. For victims age 14 or under, it's fewer than one a day -- but still enough for the news media to have a case to tell you about in every day's edition.

Source: National Safety Council

A criminal homicide involving a firearm occurs in the United States about once every half hour -- but two-thirds of the fatalities are not completely innocent victims but themselves have criminal records.

Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports and Murder Analysis by the Chicago Police Department


Kids and Guns?


Here's what a 1995 federal study investigating juvenile crime found after looking at 20,000 randomly selected households:

Relationship between type of gun owned and
percent committing street, drug and gun crimes.

Illegal gun:
Street crimes = 74%
Drug use = 41%
Gun crimes = 21%

No gun:
Street crimes = 24%
Drug use = 15%
Gun crimes = 1%

Legal Gun:
Street crimes = 14%
Drug use = 13%
Gun crimes = 0%

"The socialization into gun ownership is also vastly different for legal and illegal gunowners. Those who own legal guns have fathers who own guns for sport and hunting. On the other hand, those who own illegal guns have friends who own illegal guns and are far more likely to be gang members. For legal gunowners, socialization appears to take place in the family; for illegal gunowners, it appears to take place 'on the street.'"

"Boys who own legal firearms have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use and are even slightly less delinquent than nonowners of guns."

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, NCJ-143454, "Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse," August 1995.


Concealed weapons?


Making it legally possible for civilians to carry concealed weapons does not make society more violent or result in shootouts at traffic accidents.

The rate of criminal misuse of firearms by the hundreds of thousands of persons licensed to carry concealed firearms in Florida is so low as to be statistically zero. In fact, homicide, assault, rape, and robbery are dramatically lower in areas of the United States where the public is allowed easy access to carrying concealed firearms in public.

Sources: Florida Department of State, Concealed Weapons/ Firearms License Statistical Report and "Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns," by John R. Lott, Olin Fellow in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School and David B. Mustard, graduate student, Department of Economics, Journal of Legal Studies, January 1997.


Guns and Suicide?


Making guns less available does not reduce suicide but merely causes the person seeking death to use another means.

While gun-related suicides were reduced by Canada's gun control legislation of 1978, the overall suicide rate did not go down at all: the gun-related suicides were replaced 100% by an increase in other types of suicide -- mostly jumping off bridges.
"The authors describe suicide rates in Toronto and Ontario and methods used for suicide in Toronto for 5 years before and after enactment of Canadian gun control legislation in 1978. They also present data from San Diego, Calif., where state laws attempt to limit access to guns by certain psychiatric patients. Both sets of data indicate that gun control legislation may have led to decreased use of guns by suicidal men, but the difference was apparently offset by an increase in suicide by leaping. In the case of men using guns for suicide, these data support a hypothesis of substitution of suicide method."

Source: "Guns and suicide: possible effects of some specific legislation," Rich, Young, Fowler, Wagner, and Black, The American Journal of Psychiatry March, 1990


Assault Weapons?


Here is the actual text, written in 1988, by Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center, outlining how they intended to manipulate the media and deceive the American public into confusing semi-auto handguns and rifles with machine guns, making it possible to ban them:

"Assault weapons?just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms?are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons?anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun? can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons."

"Assault Weapons and Accessories in America"--Conclusion, Violence Policy Center Study


Surprised by these facts?


Maybe it's because the TV networks are deliberately not telling you about them.

According to a January 5, 2000 special report by Geoffrey Dickens, Senior Media Analyst of the Media Research Center, "In 1997, criminologist Gary Kleck estimated that over 2.5 million people a year defend themselves from an assailant or burglar by exercising their constitutional right to bear arms. Yet how many times did television networks report such acts? In the past two years, out of 653 gun policy stories, exactly 12 times. By making a blockbuster story out of several school shootings?while leaving out the millions of times citizens use guns to stop crime each year?they presented a very misleading picture to the average viewer that firearm use brings more harm than good, and thus should be limited or even banned."

The study further went on to document that instead of reporting on firearms in anything approaching an objective manner, "In 653 gun policy stories, those advocating more gun control outnumbered stories opposing gun control by 357 to 36, or a ratio of almost 10 to 1, while 260 were categorized as neutral. Anti-gun soundbites were twice as frequent as pro-gun ones?412 to 209?while 471 soundbites were neutral. Gun control advocates appeared on the morning shows as guests on 82 occasions, compared to just 37 for gun-rights activists and 58 neutral spokesmen."

Read "Outgunned: How the Network News Media Are Spinning the Gun Control Debate, a January 5, 2000 Special Report by the Media Research Center.


A Petition to the News Divisions
of CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, et al
Report the news on Defensive Gun Uses

In all the discussions of the major media's responsibility for violence, the major television networks' distortion of the role firearms play with respect to crime and violence is hardly ever mentioned.

According to a January 5, 2000 special report by Geoffrey Dickens, Senior Media Analyst of the Media Research Center, "In 1997, criminologist Gary Kleck estimated that over 2.5 million people a year defend themselves from an assailant or burglar by exercising their constitutional right to bear arms. Yet how many times did television networks report such acts? In the past two years, out of 653 gun policy stories, exactly 12 times. By making a blockbuster story out of several school shootings?while leaving out the millions of times citizens use guns to stop crime each year?they presented a very misleading picture to the average viewer that firearm use brings more harm than good, and thus should be limited or even banned."

The study further went on to document that instead of reporting on firearms in anything approaching an objective manner, "In 653 gun policy stories, those advocating more gun control outnumbered stories opposing gun control by 357 to 36, or a ratio of almost 10 to 1, while 260 were categorized as neutral. Anti-gun soundbites were twice as frequent as pro-gun ones?412 to 209?while 471 soundbites were neutral. Gun control advocates appeared on the morning shows as guests on 82 occasions, compared to just 37 for gun-rights activists and 58 neutral spokesmen."

So long as the major news media distort reality to reflect their bias that the availability of legal firearms to law-abiding people causes tragedies, rather than the truth that far more often legal firearms in the right hands prevent tragedies, the political debates on gun restrictions are bound to be won by those favoring greater barriers to firearms availability, and propaganda discouraging their availability for defensive purposes.

The criminological data on defensive gun uses are to be found at The World Wide Web Gun Defense Clock, along with the sources for the data. Anyone in the news business can learn the facts, and verify the sources, in a few minutes.

We, the signers of this petition, demand of the producers, editors, and reporters at the news divisions of the major television networks, and their affiliates, that they educate themselves regarding the frequency of defensive firearms uses, and report the good that privately held firearms accomplish to properly reflect their effect on reducing crime and violence.


Want to know even more?


Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun
by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, from The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, Volume 86, Number 1, Fall, 1995

Gary Kleck's Afterword to J. Neil Schulman's Stopping Power: Why 70 Million Americans Own Guns

U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice, survey, Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms, NCJ 165476, May, 1997, by Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig. (Adobe Acrobat PDF file)

U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, NCJ-143454, Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse, August 1995. (Adobe Acrobat PDF file)

Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns, by John R. Lott, Olin Fellow in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School and David B. Mustard, graduate student, Department of Economics, Journal of Legal Studies, January 1997. (Adobe Acrobat PDF file)

U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Crime and Justice in the United States and in England and Wales, 1981-96, NCJ 169284, October 1998. by Patrick A. Langan, Ph.D., BJS Statistician and David P. Farrington, Ph.D., BJS Visiting Fellow, University of Cambridge (Adobe Acrobat PDF file)


Related Books

Targeting Guns : Firearms and Their Control (Social Institutions and Social Change)  by Gary Kleck More Guns, Less Crime : Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws (Studies in Law and Economics)  by John R. Lott, Jr. Stopping Power: Why 70 Million Americans Own Guns by J. Neil Schulman Self Control Not Gun Control by J. Neil Schulman
The Best Defense : True Stories of Intended Victims Who Defended Themselves With a Firearm by Robert A. Waters Armed and Female by Paxton Quigley The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy : Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies by David B. Kopel The Mitzvah by Aaron Zelman and L. Neil Smith


Webmasters: Link to the World Wide Web Gun Defense Clock



Webmasters: Add A Link to The World Wide Web Gun Defense Clock
from your WWW page
by adding this Icon to your page:

Simply copy the following HTML code to your page:

<A HREF="http://www.gunclock.org/">
<IMG SRC="http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/gunclock.gif"></A>



Snail Mail:
J. Neil Schulman, Webmaster
150 S. Highway 160, Suite C-8, #234
Pahrump, NV 89048

Internet: jneil@pulpless.com

Watch J. Neil Schulman's Music Video, "Tried by 12"!


Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 by J. Neil Schulman and Copyright © 2010 by the J. Neil Schulman Living Trust. All rights reserved.


This Page Last Updated January 1, 2010