Nevertheless, these errors have crept into and now permeate the lay press, the electronic media, and particularly, the public health literature and the medical journals, where they remain uncorrected and are repeated time and again and perpetuated. These errors need to be corrected to regain the loss of credibility of public health in this area of gun and violence research. 9 Prof. Kleck found that the defensive uses of firearms by citizens amount to 2.5 million uses per year and dwarf the offensive gun uses by criminals. Between 25-75 lives are saved by a gun for every life lost to a gun. Medical costs saved by guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens are 15 times greater than costs incurred by criminal uses of firearms.
Guns also prevent injuries to good people and protect billions of dollars of property every year.
Yet, despite these major detractions, the health advocacy establishment clings to the erroneous figures and extrapolations of Dr. Kellermann and other public health researchers, and use these erroneous figures in propounding health and gun control policies, to the detriment of public policy. To catch up with the lost ground on the gun and violence research that has been accumulating in the criminologic and sociologic body of literature in the last couple of years, we have to look not only to the data collected by Prof. Gary Kleck and Dr. Edgar Suter, but also other prominent investigators. Allowing people to carry concealed weapons deters violent crime without any apparent increase in accidental death. Prof. Lott found that when concealed carry laws went into effect in a given county, murders fell by 8 percent, rapes by 5 percent, and aggravated assaults by 7 percent. For each additional year concealed carry gun laws have been in effect, the murder rate declines by 3 percent, robberies by over 2 percent, and rape by 1 percent.