BELLEVUE, WA – In The month following the tragic Newtown school shooting, more than 65,000 people used firearms in self-defense, yet the national news media has virtually ignored this important aspect of gun ownership, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“Based on the most conservative estimates, tens of thousands of legally-armed private citizens have used firearms defensively, including one 15-year-old teenager in Texas who protected his home and sister with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “But the press virtually ignored these incidents, instead concentrating on getting a juicy sound bite from anti-gun Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy about how many people have been victims of violent crime.

“This ignores the positive side of private gun ownership,” he added, “and presents a biased view of guns in society. We need to recognize the number of lives that have been saved, and the number of crimes thwarted because a citizen had a gun.”

“We all deplore the senseless loss of life,” Gottlieb observed. “But Rep. McCarthy and other gun grabbers like to ignore the usefulness of firearms in the right hands. Anti-gunners assume that if you only tell half a story, it becomes the story.”