Gun-Control Activists Need a History
By 1977 — the time of the NRA coup — those numbers had surged to almost 19,000 and 57,000, respectively. Adjusting for population growth, the murder rate had almost doubled, and the rape rate had more than tripled. The overall violent crime rate tripled, and it kept going up, peaking at almost five times the 1960 rate:
.. If the NRA hadn’t reinvented itself, some other organization would have risen in its place.
.. America has come a long way since then. In 1980, the murder rate peaked at double the rate in 1960 — before falling in 2014 to a rate well below even 1960’s low number. In the meantime, the number of privately held firearms has surged, as has the number of Americans with a concealed-carry permit. It turns out that millions of law-abiding Americans can exercise their Second Amendment rights without turning the United States into a free-fire zone. More guns can indeed correlate with less crime.
.. The Right tells Americans that criminals are indeed worth fearing, but you can have confidence in yourself if you own a gun and know how to use it — that free citizens can and should take responsibility for defending themselves and their families.
.. The history of the “gun lobby” is the history of an American idea — indeed, of American culture — and selective retellings of that history cannot and will not erase the desire for independence and autonomy from the American heart.