Good Guys with Guns: Former Interpol Chief Ron Noble on the Westgate Mall Mass Shooting

By David B. Kopel David B. Kopel

One of the differences between moderate advocates of gun control and prohibitionists is in their attitudes toward self-defense. The former are willing to recognize that defensive arms in the right hands can be socially beneficial. The latter deny that firearms do in fact save lives. A good example is Katie Couric’s new TV special “Under the Gun.” In that program, Matt Lauer states: “There is a very common expression out there that ‘The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a good guy with a gun.’ ” Couric answers, “Most public health experts and gun safety experts say that it is just a specious argument.”

The unnamed “experts” on whom Couric relies are apparently not expert at reading newspapers. Literally, a good guy with a gun is not the “only” way that armed criminals are stopped. But it is an important way, including in mass shootings. As I detailed in a 2015 study for the Cato Institute:

Over the last 25 years, there have been at least 10 cases in which armed persons have stopped incipient mass murder: a Shoney’s restaurant in Alabama (1991); Pearl High School in Mississippi (1997); a …Read the Rest

Source:: Cato Institute