terça-feira, 23 de setembro de 2003

Direito à defesa

In 1995, Gary Kleck published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology of Northwestern Law School his now-famous paper, “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun.” Among its unchallenged assertions:

Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals 2.5 million times a year or about 6,850 times every day.

Of these 2.5 million self-defense uses of guns, more than 200,000 are by women defending themselves against sexual abuse. Often, a Saturday Night Special is a girl’s best friend.

11 out of every 12 times citizens use their guns in self-defense, they merely brandish them or fire a warning shot.
When citizens do fire, they shoot and kill twice as many criminals as do cops every year. But, while 2 percent of civilian shootings are of people mistaken for criminals, that is true of 11 percent of police shootings.

...

After the horrific L.A. riots of 1992, gun sales soared, as did citizen demands for a right to carry concealed weapons. Thirty-five states have now enacted such laws, and the crime rate has correspondingly fallen, as has the incidence of “rampage killings” in these states. It is a provable fact: the better armed the citizenry, the fewer predator crimes they will endure.

Sem comentários:

Enviar um comentário