When will we see this sort of article in our local papers?
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Friday, November 8, 2002

When guns save lives
Nov. 8, 2002 Orange County Register Editorial

One of the biggest fallacies of gun-control supporters is their idea that guns in and of themselves are an evil that needs to be wiped out. That idea motivates gun controllers to support any number of limitations and regulations geared toward reducing the raw number of guns in the public’s hands.

But an attack in Laguna Hills recently shows how beneficial gun use can be, when used by potential victims protecting themselves against an armed attacker.

Dana Kiefer and her 10-year-old daughter, Hana, were at Ms. Kiefer’s parents’ house when Dana’s ex-husband Eric Kiefer broke into the home wielding a hatchet. Mr. Kiefer had a history of drug abuse and of abusing Ms. Kiefer during their marriage. He had a restraining order placed on him to stay away from her.

The court decree didn’t stop him from assaulting his ex-wife, and it certainly didn’t stop him from breaking into his ex-in-laws’ house, grabbing his daughter, then trying to force her to drink some form of caustic liquid, according to news reports.

Fortunately, Ms. Kiefer’s boyfriend fatally shot Mr. Kiefer with a shotgun, thus ending a confrontation that could have cost five people their lives. It’s the latest example of what John R. Lott Jr. calls the underreported story of citizens who use guns to protect themselves from criminals.

“When was the last time that you heard the national evening news reporting about a citizen using a gun to save lives?” Mr. Lott, author of “More Guns, Less Crime,” wrote in a newspaper article. “Few realize that people use guns defensively to stop about 2 million crimes a year, according to national surveys.”

That’s an astounding statistic. In a sense, gun-controllers use a utopian argument for banning or limiting guns. They assume that if guns were eliminated, then people who would no longer be able to use them for evil. Therefore, there wouldn’t be any need for average citizens to have guns to protect themselves and their families.

But guns will always be with us. There are millions of guns in the United States, so it’s hard to imagine eliminating them all, especially from criminals.

Mr. Kiefer was attacking his ex-wife and daughter with a hatchet. Without guns, the attacker with the biggest knife or strongest physique would succeed. Guns are a great equalizer – which is why even some feminists are coming around to the pro-gun rights argument.

An Orange County judge told the Register that the Laguna Hills incident shows that some people who violate restraining orders need to be held in custody until a judge can evaluate their mental health.

That’s a good point. But it’s not enough. Innocent people shouldn’t have to risk their lives and the lives of their loved ones by going unarmed and hoping the justice system will get its act together.

Guns can save lives. If you doubt that, think about what might have happened to Dana and Hana Kiefer had their household been unarmed.