It should be painfully obvious to anyone paying attention that the Biden administration does not trust armed civilians and repeatedly tries to whitewash the truth to protect untenable positions. But for those who are happily living their lives unaware of the Biden administration's hostility toward gun owners, the Biden administration has once again demonstrated that hostility in clear terms.
Earlier this month, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Safety made a quiet mistake in believing that the only government you can truly trust with firearms is the government, even if the government in question is notoriously corrupt. I said it out loud.
Fortunately, the agency's new export controls, while problematic in many ways, do not affect the Second Amendment rights of U.S. citizens. But they unfairly accuse legally armed civilians of gun-trafficking crimes and articulate U.N.-backed arguments that guns are safest when in the hands of government officials. We are promoting it.
Even if we forget the atrocities committed against largely unarmed civilians at the hands of well-armed governments in the 20th century, this reasoning would still conflict with natural law. Natural law asserts that all people have inherent and inalienable rights to themselves. -defense.
The reality is that it is impossible for the government to be present everywhere and at all times to protect us from crime, and we do not want to live in a police state where the government has such terrifying powers.
Furthermore, when armed Americans are given the choice to possess the tools necessary to protect themselves, their loved ones, and their communities from harm, they must always demonstrate the ability to do so in a responsible manner. There is.
According to a 2013 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly every major study finds that Americans use guns for self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times a year. In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on this issue concluded that approximately 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States each year.
That's why The Daily Signal features some of the many news stories from the past month about defensive gun use that you may have missed or that may not have received national attention in the first place. are published every month. (Read other records from the past few years here.)
The examples below are just a few of the news stories about defensive gun use that we discovered in April. You can find out more using the Heritage Foundation's interactive Defensive Gun Use Database. (Heritage he founded The Daily Signal in 2014.)
- April 1st, Norway, Maine: Police said a man heard the sound of glass breaking in a neighbor's house, then armed himself and went outside to investigate. He spots a would-be robber trying to break in and holds her at gunpoint until her police arrive. The woman was charged with attempted robbery and criminal mischief.
- April 3rd, Murray, Utah: According to police, a man with an illegal firearm approached a woman who had just come out of the gym and demanded her keys at gunpoint. The woman was carrying her concealed carry permit, and she got into a gunfight with a would-be car burglar, hitting him once. The injured assailant fled, but was later arrested along with the getaway driver and charged with federal crimes. The woman was treated at a hospital for unknown injuries.
- April 6th, St. Louis: Police said the woman shot and killed her ex-boyfriend after he acted as if he had a gun, threatened to kill him, and then chased him around the block while her young son watched from her car. Investigators say the man has a history of domestic violence arrests and has threatened her with a firearm in the past.
- April 10th, Hialeah, Florida: The woman's ex-boyfriend showed up at her home and assaulted her after watching her male friend leave. Her friend pulled out a legally concealed gun and shot the assailant, police said. The deceased man's long criminal history included stalking, harassment and assaulting his ex-girlfriend.
- April 12th, Coos Bay, Oregon: A resident was injured when an intruder opened fire on his home after midnight armed with a golf club, police said.
- April 15th, Chicago: When a gunman opened fire on people sitting outside a downtown Greyhound bus stop, a concealed carry permit holder pulled out his own gun and fired back. Police said the suspect appears to have fled the scene, and neither permit holders nor bystanders were injured.
- April 17th, Georgetown County, South Carolina: According to police, the man shot and killed the woman's ex-girlfriend in the apartment where she was staying in self-defense. The ex-boyfriend arrived at the apartment, threatened to shoot the man, and reached into his pocket for a gun. The man pulled out his own gun and shot the would-be attacker first. Police are investigating the accomplice on suspicion of attempted murder.
- April 20th, Terre Haute, Indiana: When the man arrived at his home, he parked his car in the driveway and noticed a truck following him. Police said when residents got out of the vehicle, the truck driver “continued to scream and accelerate.” He pounced squarely on a resident who tried to jump out of the way. When the truck hit him and his car, the resident pulled out a gun and fired “approximately 10 shots” to protect himself, police said. Police said the truck driver was naked and had a gunshot wound, but he climbed out the window and fled. Police arrested him after a chase in a stolen car. The resident suffered injuries including two broken bones in his lower legs.
- April 25th, San Antonio: Within hours, two armed residents shot and killed three robbers in two separate incidents, police said. In the first incident, a resident shot and killed an intruder who had broken into his home. In the second incident, a resident caught and shot two robbers who were stealing roofing material from a driveway.
- April 29th, Houston: When an intruder broke into the home of a prominent criminal lawyer and attacked him with a metal object, one of the homeowner's relatives shot and killed him, police said. The intruder fled, but the homeowners caught him and held him on the street until police arrived and arrested him.
The Biden administration may believe that civilians are less capable of responsibly owning guns than government officials, but these defensive gun uses demonstrate that civilians are less able to own guns responsibly than government officials. has good reason to push back against such baseless claims.
Armed civilians like the ones featured here emphasize time and time again why the right to keep and bear arms is so important to a free society. Unlike the United States, ordinary civilians retain an inalienable natural right to self-defense, even in countries that fail to protect such important individual rights.
We must correct the false notion that armed civilians are inherently bad and that government monopoly over the means of lethal force is good, and we must challenge authoritarian policies regarding international gun control. You shouldn't dig into the concept.
