I wonder why the Obama administration and Joe “Double Barrels to the Sky” Biden aren’t touting this recent study done by the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, under the directive of the Centers for Disease Control?

Oh, could it because it actually contains facts and actually many of those facts contained in the report are actually positive reasons for gun ownership?!

The study was done as part of the Executive Orders signed by President Obama earlier this year in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings.

The full study can be found online here:

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=18319&page=R1

Let’s look at some highlights, shall we?

1. Most gun deaths in the US are due to suicide, not violent crimes with guns or accidental shootings. This is a sad statistic, but again, this goes back to mental healthcare, not guns.

“Between the years 2000-2010, firearm-related suicides significantly outnumbered homicides for all age groups, annually accounting for 61 percent of the more than 335,600 people who died from firearms related violence in the United States.” [Source]

2. Mass shootings account for a negligible amount of crime in the US. In fact, mass shootings are one of the rarest forms of violent crime in the country.

“The number of public mass shootings of the type that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School accounted for a very small fraction of all firearm-related deaths. Specifically, since 1983 there have been 78 events in which 4 or more individuals were killed by a single perpetrator in a day in the United States, resulting in 547 victims and 476 injured persons.” [Source]

3. This one is probably our favorite. The study admits that self defense is a common occurrence and happens at least as much violent crimes involving guns. This is a direct busted myth to the anti gun argument that guns are almost never used for self defense.

“Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence […]. Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.” [Source]

4. Furthermore, on self defense, if you carry a gun and fight back against a violent assailant, you are less likely to be killed or harmed than someone who decided to fight back and employ another self defense tactic or weapon.

“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns […] have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.” [Source]

The study isn’t completely pro-gun, as you wouldn’t expect a truly unbiased study to be and does include some statistics and postulations theorizing different ways gun ownership could be a bad thing.

Overall, the results of this study are surprising, considering who ordered it. Make sure to share this one.