Book review by Dr. Michael S. Brown
Sitting in a place of honor on my
bookshelf is a copy of The Best Defense,
written by Robert Waters in 1998. This classic describes fourteen cases where
ordinary citizens used guns to save their lives from violent attackers. I’ve
kept it around as a reminder to stay vigilant and to occasionally loan to
friends who don’t think guns are ever used for self-defense.
Waters’ new book is Guns and Self-Defense,
which he co-wrote with his son Sim Waters, who has a degree in criminology.
This time, he chronicles twenty-three dramatic tales of armed self-defense.
Like the now nearly extinct crime
reporters of the newspaper era, he combines information from police reports and
court records with victim interviews to tell the entire story in an engaging
short form. He always lists the types of guns involved, how many shots were
fired, how many scored hits and even where misses ended up.
Unlike the mainstream media I often
ridicule, Waters is not a prisoner of the 24-hour news cycle. The information
he collects, sometimes several years after the fact, has had plenty of time to
crystallize into an accurate record that includes trial results, prison terms
and the lasting effects on victims.
Waters does not have to add the drama.
The stories are so intense that he can stick to a matter-of-fact style and you
will still find yourself obsessively flipping the pages.
Only one of these twenty-three incidents
made it to the national media, it was one of two in the book that involved
armed citizens coming to the aid of police officers who were being beaten to
death by a crazed criminal.
Looking at the other twenty-one stories,
it’s easy to see patterns that might be of use to the average citizen
contemplating self-defense or to those involved in the gun control debate.
- Almost all of these attacks on unsuspecting
people involved substance abuse in some way. Either the attackers
were flying high on drugs like alcohol, cocaine and meth, or they were
trying to get money to buy drugs.
- Criminals can be extremely vicious and care nothing
about the damage they inflict on others. Many of the victims
suffered life-altering injuries as well as lasting emotional trauma.
- Violent criminals, much like predators in the animal
world, prefer easy prey. Most of these victims were women, elderly
or physically handicapped people at home. The few who were not
tended to work in convenience stores or high value targets like stores
dealing in jewels and precious metals.
- All guns involved were handguns, except for a shotgun
wielded by a woman home alone.
- Many of the handguns used for effective defense were
cheap weapons that are accessible to low wage earners and have sometimes
been targets of gun control efforts.
- Since most of the assailants were drug-enhanced and
were only shot with handguns, they often had to be shot more than
once. So if you have time, reach for a long gun.
- Few of the defenders had much training, if any. Yet
they all survived, and did not shoot any innocent bystanders.
- None of the guns used for defense were locked up. Due
to the speed, shock and ferocity of the attacks, the victims would have
been unable to deal with locks.
- Violent predators often work together in armed gangs
that may require defenders to fire many shots to end the attack.
- All but one of the attackers had a long criminal
history marked by repeated prison terms with early release. Some
were on parole or on bail awaiting trial at the time.
- The underlying explanation for these violent assaults
is that society does not deal effectively with the three main
causes: drugs, gangs and mental illness.
- Criminals choose the time and place of their attack
both to achieve surprise and avoid law enforcement, so prudent citizens
must be prepared to defend themselves anytime, anywhere.
Anyone who is interested in keeping a
gun for protection would do well to read this book while keeping some things in
mind.
The commonly accepted theory is that
most criminals will flee at the sight of a gun, but Waters understandably
selected only incidents in which victims actually shot their attackers and
lived through the experience. While this doesn’t give a statistically accurate
picture, it serves as an excellent reminder that you had better be mentally
prepared in advance to shoot to save yourself and your loved ones. Just
displaying a gun is not always enough.
Another thought is that criminals who
actually need to be shot are likely the most unhinged and violent examples of
the species and will probably need to be shot more than once. Some of the
most dangerous hunt in packs. Owning a gun with a large magazine seems like a
common sense choice and owning more than one if you can afford it is probably a
good idea.
It almost goes without saying that you
should make a household emergency plan, practice with your firearm(s) and seek
training if possible.
After reading Guns and
Self-Defense, the wise reader will likely wonder why compelling and
inspiring stories like this so rarely make it into the national news stream. I
believe they are suppressed because they belie the standard media narrative
that ordinary people have no need for defensive firearms.
Why else would such riveting, life-and-death
dramas be ignored? Almost any of them could be easily turned into a profitable
made-for-TV movie or at least a 60 Minutes segment if our media
were not so biased and agenda-driven.
After reading this book, I discovered
another in this series published just a few months earlier titled: Guns Save Lives that
includes 22 events. If you follow defensive gun use news on the internet,
you know there is an inexhaustible supply of such stories.
Dr. Michael S. Brown is a pragmatic
Libertarian environmentalist who has been studying the gun debate for three
decades and considers it a fascinating way to learn about human nature and
politics.
This article originally appeared at drgo.us
and is reprinted here with permission.
