Newspaper Gets it Right

Fact: Many of the countries with the strictest gun control have the highest rates of violent crime. Australia and England, which have virtually banned gun ownership, have the highest rates of robbery, sexual assault and assault with force of the top 17 industrialized countries.

Fact: Though the number of firearms owned by private citizens has been increasing steadily since 1970, the overall rate of homicides and suicides has not risen. There is no correlation between the availability of firearms and the rates of homicide and suicide in America.

Fact: Every year, people in the United States use guns to defend themselves against criminals an estimated 2.5 million times – more than 6,500 people a day, or once every 13 seconds. Of these instances, 15.6 percent of the people using firearms defensively stated that they “almost certainly” saved their lives by doing so