The Bias Against Guns Quotes

“In 1996, Britain banned handguns. Prior to that time, over 54,000 Britons owned handguns.70 The ban was so tight that even shooters training for the Olympics were forced to travel to Switzerland or other countries to practice. Four years have elapsed since the ban was introduced, and gun crimes have risen by an astounding 40 percent.”
― John R. Lott, The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“But there is another side, one rarely mentioned in the media. Concealed weapons in the hands of good people can be used to save lives and stop attacks. The prospect of a criminal encountering a victim who may be armed will deter some attacks in the first place.5 Carrying a gun is also the safest course of action when one is confronted by a criminal.6”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“While higher arrest and conviction rates, longer prison sentences, and the death penalty all reduce murders generally, none of these measures had a consistent impact on mass public shootings. Nor did any of the restrictive gun laws. Only one single policy was found to effectively reduce these attacks: the passage of right-to-carry laws, which permit law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns.”
― John R. Lott, The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“Homeowners who defend themselves make burglars wary of breaking into homes in general. This protects others in the neighborhood from more break-ins. Such spillover effects are frequently referred to as “third-party effects” or “external benefits.” Non–gun owners in some sense are “free riders”—another economic term—on the defensive efforts provided by their gun-owning neighbors.”
― John R. Lott, The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“In fact, because many Americans keep guns in their homes, burglars in the United States spend more time than burgulars in other countries “casing” a house to ensure that nobody is home. As a result, countries with high gun ownership rates experience dramatically fewer break-ins during periods when the residents are at home.22”
― John R. Lott, The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“Over time, I have come to believe that the ultimate objective of most gun control advocates is to gradually eliminate the private ownership of guns.10 Pete Shields, the founder of Handgun Control, Inc., is well known for his statement that: “The first problem is to slow down the number of handguns being produced and sold in this country. The second problem is to get handguns registered. The final problem is to make possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition—except for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors—totally illegal.”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“The puzzle is why dramatic cases in which people use guns to save lives are virtually never covered. Some of the difference in treatment is understandable. Dead bodies are more newsworthy than mere brandishings that cause criminals to run away. Dead bodies of innocent victims are probably also more newsworthy than dead bodies of criminals, but it is suspicious when the media are already covering a story and leaves out how the crimes were stopped.”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“The likelihood that one or more potential victims or bystanders are armed would be very large even though the probability that any particular individual is armed is very low.16 This suggests a testable hypothesis: A right-to-carry law will have a bigger deterrent effect on shooting sprees in public places than on more conventional crimes.”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“And contrary to a popular misconception, permit holders are virtually never involved in the commission of any crime, let alone murder.8 Just as one can find examples of public shootings that support the desirability of more gun control, one can find other examples that support the desirability of less gun control.”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“When the bullets started flying at the Seafood Market disco in Tel Aviv, shoe salesman William Hazan’s first instinct was to duck under a table. His second was to open his wife’s purse and grab a gun to confront the attacker—a move that probably saved many lives. “I didn’t lose my cool,” Hazan told Israel Radio from his hospital bed a few hours after the violence. “Thank God I had my pistol with me.” Hazan and his wife were eating with friends at the nightclub when a Palestinian suicide shooter opened fire with an automatic rifle. After Hazan pulled out the gun he’s been carrying around for years, he crawled under the tables toward the exit and dashed outside. There, he saw a tall man hitting a shorter man with a knife and jumped to conclusions. “I thought the small man was the terrorist,” Hazan said. “I was going to hit him with the butt of my pistol, but then I got a knife in my belly,” he said. “I realized I was looking at the wrong man, so I turned my gun and shot the other one.” Because of his quick action, the killer—who had already shot dead three people and wounded more than two dozen others—never got the chance to detonate the explosives strapped to his body. Uri Dan, “Hero Grabs Pistol from Wife’s Purse and Guns
Down Terrorist,” New York Post, Tuesday, March 5, 20021”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“This antigun climate is relatively new. Until 1969 virtually every public high school—even in New York City—had a shooting club. High school students in New York City carried their guns to school on the subways in the morning, turned them over to their homeroom teacher or the gym coach during the day, and retrieved them after school for target practice. Club members were given their rifles and ammunition by the federal government. Students regularly competed in citywide shooting contests for university scholarships. As late as 1968, it was possible for children to walk into a hardware store—virtually anywhere in the United States—and buy a rifle. Few states even had age restrictions for buying handguns. Buying a rifle through the mail was easy.”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“Jeff Miron at Boston University recently examined homicide rates across forty-four countries and found that the countries with the strictest gun control laws also had the highest homicide rates,”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“Even in free countries, with little risk of a totalitarian regime, gun bans all but invariably result in higher crime. In the U.S., the states with the highest gun ownership rates also have by far the lowest violent crime rates. And similarly, over time, states with the largest increases in gun ownership have experienced the biggest drops in violent crime.”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“Many countries today already totally ban private gun ownership, with Rwanda and Sierra Leone as two notable examples. With more than a million people hacked to death with knives and cleavers over the last seven years, were the citizens of Rwanda and Sierra Leone better off without guns to defend themselves?”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“All three European killing sprees share one thing in common: They took place in so-called gun-free “safe zones.” That criminals are attracted to gun-free zones is hardly surprising. Guns surely make it easier to kill people, but guns also make it much easier for people to defend themselves.”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“Yet, the three very worst public shootings during 2001 and the first half of 2002 all occurred in Europe. Around the world, from Australia to England, countries that have recently strengthened gun control laws have seen violent crime soar. Ironically, the gun laws are passed because politicians promise they will reduce these types of crime.”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“Statistics from 1996 to 2000 show that only 0.008 percent of assaults on police resulted in them being killed with their own weapon.”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“In 2000, 47 police officers were killed with a gun, out of which 33 cases involved a handgun, and only one of these firearm deaths involved the police officer’s gun.53”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“Only one single policy was found to effectively reduce these attacks: the passage of right-to-carry laws, which permit law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns. But the Times never mentioned concealed handgun laws in their series, despite having knowledge of this research.”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“Tracy Bridges, one of the Appalachian Law School heroes.13 Tracy related how “shocked” he had been by the news coverage. While Tracy had carefully described to over fifty reporters what had happened, discussing how he had to point his gun at Peter and yell at Peter to drop his gun, the media had consistently reported that the incident had ended by the students tackling the killer. When I relayed what the Washington Post had reported, Tracy quickly mentioned that he had spent a considerable amount of time talking about what actually happened, face-to-face, with Maria Glod of the Post. He sounded stunned that the Post would report the events the way it did.14”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“The media have a natural inclination to report only dramatic events, which are “news,” while ignoring potentially tragic events, which are “not news.”
― John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“[...]occurred at a [crowded venue in] Jerusalem some weeks before the California McDonald’s massacre: three terrorists who attempted to machine-gun the throng managed to kill only one victim before being shot down by handgun-carrying Israelis. Presented to the press the next day, the surviving terrorist complained that his group had not realized that Israeli civilians were armed. The terrorists had planned to machine-gun a succession of crowded spots, thinking that they would be able to escape before the police or army could arrive to deal with them.”
― John R. Lott, The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“The dangers of children getting into guns pale in comparison to many other risks. Over 1,260 children under ten died as a result of motor vehicles in 1999, and almost another 370 died as pedestrians killed by cars.101 Accidents involving residential fires took 484 children’s lives in 1999. Bicycles are also much more likely to result in accidental deaths than guns.102 Ninety-three children under ten drowned in bathtubs; another thirty-six children under age five drowned in five-gallon plastic water buckets.103 More children under five drown in this one type of water bucket than children under ten die from any type of accidental gunshot. Strangely, none of our doctors asked questions about whether we kept our buckets stored away or our bathroom doors locked.”
― John R. Lott, The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“African-Americans living in high crime urban areas benefit the most from either carrying or owning a gun for protection. For example, while allowing people to carry concealed handguns reduces violent crime rates across the board, the annual drop in violent crime is 4 percentage points faster in the counties that are 40 percent African-American than in counties that are only 5 percent African-American. The drop in murder rates for the heavily African-American counties was eight times larger than in the counties with few African-Americans.”
― John R. Lott, The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“An additional woman carrying a concealed handgun in a given population reduces the murder rate for women by about three to four times more than an additional man carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for men. The bottom line: Those who are most likely to be the victims of crime or those who are relatively weaker physically benefit the most from being able to protect themselves. It’s important for women to carry a gun because attackers are almost always males, and there is a large strength differential. It is still important for men to carry a gun because men are generally more likely to be victims of crime than women.”
― John R. Lott, The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“The typical advice in the media—to behave passively—could have gotten the Bremerton man killed or seriously injured. Indeed, passive behavior is not usually the safest course of action. Men who behave passively are 1.4 times more likely to end up seriously injured than men who have a gun. For women, passive behavior is even more dangerous, making them 2.5 times more likely to wind up seriously injured than if they resist with a gun.”
― John R. Lott, The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“Compare this scenario to a recent case in Bremerton, a city in western Washington State. An African-American man, waiting for his girlfriend to get off work, was “insulted and challenged” by three drunk young white men who “used racial epithets.” One of the young men ordered his pit bull to attack. The African-American “pulled a handgun from his car” and fired it to defend himself against the dog. “By the time deputies arrived, things had calmed down, the black man was found to have a permit to carry the gun,” and he declined to press charges against his attackers. Fortunately, no one was injured.81 Without a gun, it is not obvious what else the African-American man could have done. He was outnumbered three to one and attacked by a pit bull, and there were no police nearby to help.”
― John R. Lott, The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“Australia also passed severe gun restrictions in 1996, banning most guns and making it a crime to use a gun defensively. In the next four years, armed robberies there rose by 51 percent, unarmed robberies by 37 percent, assaults by 24 percent, and kidnappings by 43 percent.76 While murders fell by 3 percent, manslaughter rose by 16 percent.”
― John R. Lott, The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“Jeff Miron at Boston University recently examined homicide rates across forty-four countries and found that the countries with the strictest gun control laws also had the highest homicide rates, though the higher rate was only statistically significant in half of his estimates.”
― John R. Lott, The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

“In the U.S., the states with the highest gun ownership rates also have by far the lowest violent crime rates. And similarly, over time, states with the largest increases in gun ownership have experienced the biggest drops in violent crime.”
― John R. Lott, The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You'Ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong