Ten to One

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Source: Oleg Volk to Responsible Citizens of California

We’d all applaud a self defense technique that reduced rape and battery by 90 percent. That technique exists, and our actions can make the difference between fending off a violent attack or becoming a victim. So here is the secret. Evidence shows that 90 percent of assaults and rapes are prevented when victims defend themselves with a firearm. In contrast, law enforcement works very hard to achieve a 5 to 10 percent reduction in crime year to year. Let’s put those results into perspective. When they outlaw armed self defense, they make the victim 10 times more likely to be raped and injured. While this isn’t making headlines, the harm to the victims is very real. The real news is the armed citizen, and the harm caused by gun control. So why wasn’t this reported in the media?

Of course it makes news when some young cab driver is stabbed with a knife during a robbery. It is NOT news when the pizza delivery driver comes home unharmed because he has his concealed carry permit. They forget to put that story in the paper for a simple reason; there is no body, so there is no story. No fresh blood, so no printers ink.

The TV news doesn’t run the story about the old woman who lives down the street. She simply picks up her groceries and continues home after someone tries to rob her. She didn’t have to shoot anyone to keep herself safe. There wasn’t a body for the paramedics; not hers, not her attackers. Grandma is shaken, and over a cup of hot tea she says she’s glad she brought the small pistol her husband purchased for her long ago.

Sure, you read the sad story about the college co-ed who was sexually assaulted in the campus parking garage. You did not read about the two girls who walked from the store to their off-campus apartment. Their story is different. Their assailant stopped when he faced the barrel of a gun. Of course the young girls have a description of their assailant. She said, “I was handing him my purse, but you should have seen him run when he saw Cindy’s gun.” They laugh about it now. The difference is that the two girls were armed, and the college co-ed had been disarmed.

Being armed makes the difference between being injured, and an attempted attack where we escape injury or rape. The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, U.S. Department of Justice, wrote a report back in 1979 titled “Rape Victimization in 26 American Cities”. They found that an armed woman who resist her attacker was 10 times less likely to be raped than a woman who is unarmed. I’ll say it again; a gun can’t stop the attempt, but defending yourself with a gun makes it much less likely that the attempted attack ends in rape or injury. The statistics for assault are similar both here in the US and overseas. Even the British Home Office admits that an armed person is 10 times less likely to be injured in an attempted assault than someone who is unarmed. The target of a criminal attack was even less likely to be hurt if they were armed, trained, and had practiced the skills they were taught. The victims in these statistics are no different than you or I, no matter where they live or when they take the crime data. Why are we so vulnerable some places in the United States?

We cannot defend ourselves if we’ve been disarmed by our county sheriff, by our chief of police, by our campus administrator, or by our employer. These officials will never be charged with a crime, but their decisions have put many of us in jeopardy. Their decisions left us vulnerable and changed the way we live.

Your county administrator might not allow grandma to be armed when she visits her friends in the senior citizen center. Now grandma is a victim on her way home late at night. She was easy prey because she was disarmed. 10 times easier. Now grandma is afraid to travel after dark.

Some of us are disarmed out in our rural homes. The new sheriff might deny concealed carry permits to his county, and criminals quickly find those who are easily robbed. Now the pizza delivery drivers can’t carry legally. More of the disarmed drivers are now robbed and injured. The drivers change their habits to accept the fact that they’re more vulnerable. One of the delivery drivers is a single mom. Since she can’t defend herself, she won’t make deliveries late at night anymore. She has to live with a smaller paycheck..because the new sheriff doesn’t like armed citizens and news stories about “gun violence” in his county.

We’re disarmed in our cities when the new chief of police decides that no one needs a weapon for self defense. Some of the cab drivers take other jobs because they know the work is dangerous. Some of the drivers won’t work late at night anymore. It isn’t a gun crime when an immigrant cabbie is robbed at knifepoint. It isn’t a gun crime when his cab is stolen. The story is buried in the back of the newspaper, but now you know what really happened. The police chief left the cabby disarmed and alone.

Sometimes the story is closer to home. You’ve watched your neighbor’s daughter grow up, and she is a responsible young woman. She took the tests and got her permit to carry concealed. But that wasn’t enough to keep her safe. She was robbed after work as she walked back to her car. The thieves took her purse and her backpack. They cleaned out her checking account, and she lost the laptop computer that was in her backpack. You see, she needed that job. She was working after school to earn money for gas and tuition, so now she has to drop out of school in the middle of the semester. She says she’ll go back to school next semester at another campus. The computer can be replaced, but she can’t get this semester back. At least she’s alive and wasn’t injured. Not this time. Why wasn’t she armed and able to defend herself?

She was disarmed because she had to leave her handgun at home. Obviously she was victimized by the thieves who robbed her. She was also victimized by her employer. Even with her permit to carry a concealed weapon, her employer wouldn’t let her bring her gun to work. The president of her college wouldn’t let her bring a gun on campus even though she is legally allowed to carry almost everywhere else. Both the college president and the employer were interested in public relations and “loss prevention”. They were the ones who matched a disarmed young woman against two grown thugs. What the college president and the employer did wasn’t fair, whatever their motives might be.

Now you know the story. You don’t want someone you care about to be in the news, but now you see the disarmed victim in every crime story on TV. Now you hear the disarmed truth behind every “gun control” press release they read on the radio. I’m asking you to keep listening and not turn away. Please listen to the news and the stories of people we left disarmed against criminals. Their story is real. It is up to us, responsible gun owners, to make sure their story is heard.