The certainties we can expect are life, death, weather patterns, Michael Moore eating 37 times per day, and the old media always exploiting a tragedy involving a firearm into a call for gun control.
To wit, two days after the Tucson tragedy, The Washington Post ran an editorial with this headline: “Gun control: It's not a political impossibility.”
Yet the Left’s gofers in the press never highlight the many times over that guns have saved lives. Like the life of Gary Wroblewski of Orlando, Fla. He’s a wheelchair-bound gentleman who used his weapon to prevent his home from being burglarized. “He [the intruder] hit the door and I went tumbling over and just pulled the gun up and started firing,” Wroblewski told the local paper.
That was the last breath the impending robber took. His ass was killed.
Does the old media’s reluctance to underscore incidents such as Wroblewski’s demonstrate a bias against guns? John Lott Jr. thinks so. In fact, it’s the title of the economist's book.
“When was the last time you watched the national evening news and heard a story about somebody using his gun to protect himself or protect someone else?” Lott rhetorically asked in our exclusive sit-down with him.
“If you only hear about the bad things that happen and never hear anything about the benefits, it can’t do anything but affect people’s perception about the costs and benefits of guns,” he added. “And that affects whether they want others to own guns or not.”
As Lott explained, more than 25 percent of all public school shootings were prevented by citizens with guns before a law enforcement officer was able to arrive on the scene. A figure virtually unknown to the public (thank you, old media!), but a stat which nonetheless confirms his argument that there’s a direct correlation between more guns and less crime.
Or how about the fact that murder rates in Washington, D.C., for instance, have fallen by 36 percent in the two years since the Supreme Court struck down the District’s ban on handgun possession.
“[That’s] a huge drop,” said Lott.
And that’s just locally.
Lott’s panoramic scope includes gun control laws worldwide, noting that he “can’t find a place from around the world, [from which] we have crime data before and after the ban, where murder rates fell.”
“Shouldn’t you at least see a few places where murder rates fall after bans have gone into effect?” he concluded.
Editor’s note: Check out Part 1 of our interview with John Lott, “What The Media Must Ask Gun Control Advocates.”
