I just received the latest edition (Issue 22) of a monthly email newsletter from the National Rifle Association (NRA) called the NRA ARMED CITIZEN -- True stories of your right to self-defense in action.
The newsletter reported 14 incidents of individuals successfully using guns either at home, on the street, or in their place of business to thwart intruders, robbers, or burglars. The first of the incidents was dated August 30, 2013; the last one was dated October 9, 2013 -- a period of 41 days.
Unmentioned in the newsletter, however, was that during the same 41-day period, based on average numbers (source: www.bradycampaign.org), 3,444 Americans were killed by a gun (2,091 by suicide) and another 7,913 were wounded by one (410 by attempted suicide). That means for each “good” use of a gun during those 41 days, there were 811 “bad” uses of a gun.
Granted, the NRA might not have reported or been aware of all the “true stories of self-defense in action” that occurred during that 41-day period. Indeed, when I filed my report last month, it was suggested by a reader that it would be impractical for the NRA Armed Citizen newsletter to list all the “good” uses of a gun, although I’m not sure why.
After all, the NRA ARMED CITIZEN is an on-line newsletter, so they have unlimited space to list all the “good” uses of a gun they want. And they have a big staff and plenty of money, so it should be no big deal to assign someone the task of compiling such important information and get it into the newsletter each month. Plus, the N.R.A. states on its website that Americans use guns for self-defense as often as 2.5 million times a year.
That works out to over 200,000 “good” uses of a gun every month or 6,850 each day. So if that number is accurate, as they claim it is, they should have no problem compiling a mile-long list of “good” uses each month.
So here’s my suggestion for NRA members: Tell your organization you want the NRA ARMED CITIZEN newsletter to list all the confirmed “good” uses of a gun every month so that everyone can see how many there are compared to all those confirmed “bad” uses. If 200,000 “good” uses is too many for their staff to list, perhaps they can just list the top 100,000, or 50,000, or 10,000, or 1,000 or, say, maybe 250? Getting someone to list about 10 each day should be doable I’d think.
One more thing: Here are the monthly gun scores for the past two months:
August 2013
“Good” -- 17
“Bad” -- 9,418
Ratio: -- 1 “good” for every 554 “bad”
September 2013
“Good” -- 19
“Bad” -- 12,188
Ratio: -- 1 “good” for every 641 “bad”
Please help reduce this carnage. Call, write, email, or FAX your representatives in Washington, D.C. and tell them to support common sense gun control. Do it today. And do it again next week. And do it again every week after that until they get the message.
You’ll find contact information here:
www.contactingthecongress.org