The Anti-Gun Myth:
There's No "Good Guy with a Gun"

A 2023 Pew Research Center poll on gun ownership and public safety in America indicated that the overwhelming majority of Democrat and Democratic-leaning adults (86%) felt the nation's gun laws should be even more strict. The same poll asked whether gun ownership did more to increase public safety by allowing law-abiding citizens to protect themselves, or tended to reduce safety by giving too many people access to firearms and increasing misuse. More than three out of four Democrats/Democratic leaners (78%) responded that gun ownership did more to decrease safety. According to this viewpoint, there are no "good guys with guns" – everyday gun owners are more likely to be seen as irresponsible, unsafe, or even Second Amendment-obsessed extremists.

To maintain this perception and rationalize laws that make it harder for responsible citizens to acquire and carry firearms for self-defense, the anti-gun lobby and their political allies have resorted to downplaying or distorting the evidence on how often armed, law-abiding citizens reduce or prevent crimes.

A recent op-ed by Dr. John Lott, Jr., the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) discusses how the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have been hiding data that support the deterrent effect of "good guys with guns."

For almost a decade, the CDC had "referenced a 2013 National Academies of Sciences report noting that people used guns to stop crime anywhere from about 64,000 to 3 million times a year." .....