Déjà Vu, All Over Again: "More Guns, Less Crime"--Bradyites weep

The NRA-ILA reports what the criminals already know and what the gun grabbers refuse to know, that more armed citizens means less crime.

Paul Helmke and Dennis Henigan -- spokesmen for the beleaguered Brady Campaign these days -- are old enough to know what a phonograph record is, so for their benefit we'll put it this way:  At the risk of sounding like a "broken record," gun ownership has risen to an all-time high, and violent crime has fallen to a 35-year low.  Coinciding with a surge in gun purchases that began shortly before the 2008 elections, violent crime decreased six percent between 2008 and 2009, according to the FBI. This included an eight percent decrease in murder and a nine percent decrease in robbery. 

Since 1991, when total violent crime peaked, it has decreased 43 percent to a 35-year low. The murder rate, less than half what it was in 1980, is now at a 45-year low. Throughout, the number of guns that Americans own has risen by about four million a year, including record numbers of the two types of firearms that the Brady folks would most like to see banned -- handguns and the various firearms they call "assault weapons."

I'm certainly doing my part. My most recent N.C. Concealed Carry Handgun class was the biggest group I've had since I started teaching about a year ago, 12 people, and half of them were women. Plus it was about equal racially, half black and half white.

Crime knows no racial or sexual boundaries. As they used to say out West, "God created men, but Col. Colt made them equal."