Washington DC – -(Ammoland.com)- Concealed carry reduces crime, period–but especially violent crime.

And while mainstream news outlets like MSNBC justify pushing more gun control by seizing on one incident of violent crime–like the shooting of Christopher Lane in Oklahoma or the heinous crime at Sandy Hook Elementary–they overlook thousands of defensive uses of guns that take place every day.

Yes, thousands.

In his seminal work, “More Guns, Less Crime,” scholar John Lott brought together FBI crime stats to show not only that concealed carry lowers crime but that it it lowers violent crime especially.

During the early 1990s, as concealed carry laws were being instituted around the country, Lott observed the impact on crime at the county level:

“When state concealed-carry handgun laws went into effect in a county, murder fell by about 8 percent, rapes fell by 5 percent, and aggravated assaults fell by 7 percent.”

The crime savings was so great that Lott found that if all counties not subject to discretionary concealed carry laws had been “subject to state concealed carry handgun laws and had thus been forced to issue handgun permits, murder rates [in the U.S.] would have declined by about 1,400.”

In other words, guns are part of the solution to violence in this country.

One other point: Lott cites polls and studies from the mid-1990s which show that even at that time, when the popularity of concealed carry was much lower than today, “defensive uses of guns per year” were between 760,000 and 3.6 million.

Yet the mainstream media seizes on one criminal use of a gun to ban guns altogether?

As Breitbart News reported in January 2013–when the push to ban “assault weapons” was at its apex–FBI crime stats show more people are killed by hammers and clubs each year than by rifles.

Yet the mainstream media wants to ban AR-15s and AK-47s?

Guns are part of the solution to the very problem for which they are being blamed.

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins

About:

AWR Hawkins writes for all the BIG sites, for Pajamas Media, for RedCounty.com, for Townhall.com and now AmmoLand Shooting Sports News.

His southern drawl is frequently heard discussing his take on current events on radio shows like America's Morning News, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, the Ken Pittman Show, and the NRA's Cam & Company, among others. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (summer 2010), and he holds a PhD in military history from Texas Tech University.

If you have questions or comments, email him at [email protected] You can find him on facebook at www.facebook.com/awr.hawkins.