SELF-DEFENSE & RIGHT-TO-CARRY (RTC)

Anti-gun groups openly oppose the use of firearms for protection and claim that self-defense is not a right under the Constitution. However, the federal and 44 state constitutions, and the laws of every state, recognize the right to arms for defensive purposes.

RTC states have lower violent crime rates on average: 22% lower total violent crime, 30% lower murder, 46% lower robbery, and 12% lower aggravated assault. People who carry legally are by far more law-abiding than the rest of the public.

Survey research by award-winning criminologist Gary Kleck found as many as 2.5 million protective uses of guns each year in the U.S. “[T]he best available evidence indicates that guns were used about three to five times as often for defensive purposes as for criminal purposes,” Kleck concluded. Analyzing National Crime Victimization Survey data, he found, “robbery and assault victims who used a gun to resist were less likely to be attacked or to suffer an injury than those who used any other methods of self-protection or those who did not resist at all.” In most defensive gun uses, the gun is not fired. In only 1% of instances are criminals wounded, and in only 0.1% are criminals killed.

A Dept. of Justice survey (1986) found that 40% of felons chose not to commit at least some crimes for fear their victims were armed; 34% admitted having been scared off or shot at by armed victims. Forty states now have RTC laws providing for law-abiding citizens to carry guns for protection. Twenty-nine states have adopted RTC laws since 1987. Two-thirds of Americans live in RTC states. Only Wisconsin and Illinois flatly refuse to recognize the right of law-abiding citizens to carry firearms for self-protection against criminal attack.

John R. Lott, Jr., and David B. Mustard, in the most comprehensive study to date of RTC laws, concluded, “When state concealed-handgun laws went into effect in a county, murders fell about 8%, rapes fell by 5%, and aggravated assaults fell by 7%.” (1998)