On July 6, Gabby Giffords’ gun control group retweeted NPR criticism of the “good guy with a gun” scenario and described claims of armed citizens defending themselves as a “myth.”
Giffords’ group minced no words:
The “good guy with a gun” narrative is a myth meant to scare people into buying guns for self-defense.
The truth? People rarely use guns for self-defense. Read more: https://t.co/JiRK3zkvkl
— Giffords (@GiffordsCourage) July 6, 2018
Ironically, Giffords’ group tweeted their message on the very day that Milwaukee police publicly released video of a man attacking a female restaurant employee, only to be stopped by another female employee who pulled a gun and pointed it at him.
Here’s the surveillance video from Milwaukee:
Moreover, Giffords’ group’s tweet came just two days after a mother in Dallas shot a would-be carjacker to save her two toddlers, who were sitting in the vehicle. Breitbart News reported that the suspect allegedly jumped in the mother’s car on July 4 and tried to drive off, leaving her no option but to shoot him in the head.
She shot him and he had to be rushed to the hospital, but the two toddlers sustained no injuries.
On June 26, 2018, Breitbart News reported that a 56-year-old Akron, Ohio, mother called 911 to report an alleged home intruder. While she was on the phone, the intruder allegedly tried to push his way into the home. The mother’s son shot and killed the suspect.
On June 25, 2018, Breitbart News reported on a man who allegedly traveled all the way from New Zealand to meet up with a 14-year-old girl in Virginia. The catch–she did not want to see him. The man allegedly arrived at the home with pepper spray, duct tape, and a knife. The girl’s mother shot him in the neck.
On June 24, 2018, Breitbart News reported that a home invasion suspect refused to leave a Geneva County, Alabama, home and was shot dead by the female homeowner.
And the list of armed citizens using guns to stop crime and defend their lives goes on and on, yet Giffords’ group says such incidents “rarely” happen. They try to justify their claim by pointing to an April 13, 2018, NPR article that questions Gary Kleck’s academic finding of hundreds of thousands of defensive gun uses a year.
The NPR article, in turn, relies on gun control researcher David Hemenway, who claims Kleck’s numbers cannot be correct because there are not enough hospital visits by gunshot victims to support Kleck’s defensive gun usage claims. Hemenway failed to note the point Kleck makes over and over, namely, that a defensive gun usage does not always require the trigger to be pulled. In many instances, just drawing the weapon is enough to cause the assailant to flee. (We saw an example of this in the above video of the Milwaukee restaurant attack.)
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
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