While the Left is constantly clamoring for more gun control, the Second Amendment is used by American citizens to protect themselves and their neighbors from crimes all the time. The Heritage Foundation’s Amy Swearer recently put together data that demonstrates not only how often this happens, but cites thirteen particular instances in the month of February.
“Studies routinely indicate that every year, Americans use their firearms in defense of themselves or others between 500,000 and 2 million times,” Swearer writes at The Daily Signal. “Very few of these defensive gun uses receive national publicity—if they receive publicity at all.”
We’ve highlighted just a handful of the many times during the month of February that law-abiding Americans demonstrated the importance of the Second Amendment. https://t.co/Yxf827o2n3
— FEE (@feeonline) March 12, 2019
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February Crimes Stopped
Swearer lists 13 instances last month where law-abiding citizens helped thwart crimes through firearm use. Here are a few:
- Feb. 2: A restaurant owner in Akron, Ohio, scared off a masked man who attempted to rob him with a knife. The man fled, and police believe he successfully robbed a different restaurant just hours later.
- Feb. 5: A Nashville, Tennessee, woman was attacked from behind by a would-be purse thief, who proceeded to repeatedly slam the woman’s head into a wall when she resisted him. The woman’s husband heard her cries for help and came to her defense, firing his gun at the thief and causing him to flee.
- Feb. 9: When three armed men attempted to rob a Little Caesars restaurant in North Fort Myers, Florida, a patron inside pulled his own firearm to defend other customers. One suspect was shot and the other two fled.
- Feb. 12: A homeowner in Jackson County, Georgia, heard someone trying to break into her house through a window. She found a man standing outside and warned him not to come into the house. Nevertheless, the man broke the glass window, so the armed homeowner shot him.
- Feb. 13: Sullivan County, Tennessee, Sheriff Jeff Cassidy praised the actions of a concealed carry permit holder who ended a deadly domestic violence incident at a dentist’s office. The armed citizen shot and detained an active shooter who killed his wife and may have planned to harm others in the office.
- Feb. 14: An Evans, Georgia, mother shot and killed her boyfriend after he began violently assaulting the woman’s 15-year-old son during an argument…
We’ll stop at Valentine’s Day, but Swearer lists at least seven more examples in February that you can find here.
While it is always a tragedy when mass shootings happen, these stories capture the nation’s attention in ways much smaller incidents do not. We are also far more certain to hear about guns taking lives than guns saving them.
Just how important is the right to keep and bear arms to the security of individual liberty? Very. Here, we highlight just a few of the times in February that armed citizens defended their inalienable rights by exercising their Second Amendment rights.https://t.co/i52am3iE4J
— Amy Swearer (@AmySwearer) March 8, 2019
The Second Amendment exists for a reason, and it’s not just hunting. “We don’t make law-abiding citizens safer by disarming them or making them less capable of fighting back against criminals,” Swearer writes. “We only make them easier targets.”
Americans should never become targets, no matter how bad the Left would love to see that become a reality.