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Letter: Gun statistics questionable

The Columbian
Published: January 15, 2012, 4:00pm

After reading the Jan. 12 letter “Another tragedy for anti-gun rally,” I was startled. Gary Smith claims “statistics are available that show many more crimes are prevented by armed people than are committed by criminals.”

I did a quick Google search and found some interesting statistics about lower crime rates. The only hard numbers I found were on a website http://www.armedcitizenslivefree.com that said “more than 3,000 times every day, an American citizen deters a crime with a gun.” I then Googled how many crimes are committed in the U.S. and found that in 2007, 11,251,828 crimes were committed each day, with 1,408,337 of them considered violent. By my math, that is less than 1 percent of violent crimes committed daily that were prevented.

Smith ends his letter with “Guns gave us liberty.” Did guns give us liberty, or did the brave heroes who used them give us liberty?

What about all the brave heroes who have never picked up a gun, but spoke out publicly? Or voted? Or any other activity that has helps us toward liberty in this country?

Smith needs to make up his mind on who is responsible, the gun or the person behind the gun, because his views in his letter contradict each other.

Jacy LaPlante

Vancouver

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