Link Gun Control: AP Blames NRA for Violent Crime
Professor Fox’s personal site links to his Bureau of Justice Statistics page at the U.S. Department of Justice.[13] Using Fox’s own statistical compilation on justifiable homicide (JH), we find that law enforcement is rarely there to stop an attack on a citizen, but that most law enforcement officers’ (LEO) JH are due to criminal attacks on LEO, justifying self-defense. Between 1976 and 2002, only 2% of LEO JH occurred during a criminal attack on a citizen, while 49.8% occurred during attack on LEO. Fox’s statistics also show that 27.2% of citizen JH was self-defense; 61.5% came while disrupting crime, including defense of others at risk of forcible felonies, compared to 23.6% LEO JH disrupting crimes in progress.[14]
Fox’s own data supports concealed carry: using justifiable homicide as an indicator, citizens were more likely than police to be present to stop violent crimes in progress. Keep in mind that most defensive shootings are not fatal: Kleck and Gertz found that of all defensive gun uses, 8.3% wounded or killed the criminal attacker, and only 15.6% actually fired the gun.[15] This means that many more crimes were averted by an armed citizen that did not result in JH. The only way to change that fact is for government to put “more officers on the street” and disarm you in order to “control the spread of guns.”