Clearly, armed citizens represent a real threat to criminals, a threat with which large numbers are personally familiar, or familiar with through the shared experiences of their fellow outlaws. Other surveys, taken of law-abiding gun owners, suggest handguns are used for protection about 350,000 times each year in America. And it would appear from the survey data and police data that a criminal is much more likely to be driven off from a particular crime by an armed victim than to be imprisoned for it by the criminal justice system. The criminal's physical condition also favors the armed citizens' success in thwarting an attempted crime. Abuse of alcohol or drugs appears to be commonplace.
Drug abuse tends to increase along with the number of crimes committed.
About 80 percent of the most active predators are drug abusers, compared to just over half of the whole sample surveyed. The trumped-up charge that resistance is useless against criminal attack is proved to be unfounded based on criminals' expressed fear of the armed citizen and likelihood that the criminals' abilities and reflexes are dramatically impaired by substance abuse. The survey also refutes the oft-stated myth that criminals obtain firearms to commit crime through legitimate business channels, such as firearms dealers in general or pawnbrokers in particular. And the survey data thus show the absurdity of attempting to regulate criminal access to firearms by regulating legitimate channels. The average gun-wielding criminal studied expected to have no difficulty in obtaining a gun within a day after release from prison.