CNN's Don Lemon: Without Guns 'Are We Setting Ourselves Up to Be Sitting Ducks'?

CNN's Don Lemon: Without Guns 'Are We Setting Ourselves Up to Be Sitting Ducks'?

As a guest on the Tom Joyner radio show, CNN host Don Lemon said he has come to see that guns are not necessarily a problem but being unarmed is. While communicating this position, he asked rhetorically, “[Without guns] are we setting ourselves up to be sitting ducks?”

Lemon said that looking at hard numbers and reading gun studies has helped him see “that most gun violence, and most crime in the country, [is] not worse, but is going down,” even as news outlets increase their focus on mass shootings. 

He said data shows “you have a better chance of getting shot walking down your street, getting into an altercation, or getting robbed in cities like New Orleans, Baltimore, Miami, D.C., Atlanta, or Cleveland than you do in getting shot or killed in a mass shooting.”

Lemon says street crime in many big cities is an “epidemic,” and for that reason remaining unarmed may not be the smartest route to take: “Armed with just our cellphones, our fists and our wits, are we setting ourselves up to be sitting ducks, defenseless in the face of a sane, or an insane person, armed to the teeth and bent on killing?”

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins.

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