I'm a responsible gun owner!, page-6

You can indeed have a secured gun and access it for self defence...at home that is

Carry permits give you protection outside the home

Hand gun safes biometrically accessed are open in a heartbeat....not sure why you think as you on on that

Regarding suicide...sure... any one-case comparison may prove your argument for you (such as your case) but looking at the stats...even without access to guns, folks in Oz commit suicide only a little less (~12per100k) than those in the US where theyre swimming in guns (~14per100k). My point seems clear. Suicides are gonna suicide

As for the stat on guns preventing crimes or harm
https://www.gunfacts.info/home/about-gun-facts/
https://fee.org/articles/guns-prevent-thousands-of-crimes-every-day-research-show/

Gun Effectiveness

I checked online and found some fascinating numbers. A good website with footnotes and references to authoritative sources isGunFacts.info. There I learned the following:

• Guns prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year, or 6,849 every day. Most often, the gun is never fired, and no blood (including the criminal’s) is shed.
• Every year, 400,000 life-threatening violent crimes are prevented using firearms.
• 60 percent of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they knew the victim was armed. Forty percent of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they thought the victim might be armed.
• Felons report that they avoid entering houses where people are at home because they fear being shot.
• Fewer than 1 percent of firearms are used in the commission of a crime.

If you doubt the objectivity of the site above, it’s worth pointing out that the Center for Disease Control, ina reportordered by President Obama in 2012 following the Sandy Hook Massacre, estimated that the number of crimes prevented by guns could be even higher—as many as 3 million annually, or some 8,200 every day.

Another excellent source of information on this topic (and many more current issues) is the Gun ControlpageatJustFacts.org. (Full disclosure: I serve on the board of directors of JustFacts because I believe in the organization’s objectiveness, accuracy, and integrity.)

Defensive Gun Use

In “Defensive Gun Use is More Than Shooting Bad Guys,” James Agresti, founder and president of JustFacts,providedoverwhelming evidence from multiple sources showing that defensive gun use is more common and effective than anti-gun fanatics likeThe New York Timessuggest or will admit. Agresti says that “people who use a gun for defense rarely harm (much less kill) criminals. This is because criminals often back off when they discover their targets are armed.”

John Lott, author of the book, “More Guns, Less Crime,” is president of theCrime Prevention Research Center, another outstanding source for info on this subject. Hewrites:

By 66 percent to 32 percent, economists and criminologists answer that gun-free zones are “more likely to attract criminals than they are to deter them.” A 60 percent to 40 percent margin thinks thatgunsin the home do not increase suicides. And a 62 percent to 35 percent spread says that guns are used in self-defense to stop crime more often than in the commission of crime.

This may explain why evenThe New York Timeshasn’t yet put a billboard up by its offices that screams, “This is a Gun-Free Zone. There are No Guns Here.”

If we can just confiscate the estimated 350 million guns in the country, you might ask, then won’t we eliminate theoffensiveuse of firearms, so we won’t need any of those manydefensiveuses? Good luck with that. Is there any reason to believe that such a war on guns would be any more successful than the government’s war on drugs? Even a fifth-grader could tell you that it would be largely the innocent who would be disarmed. Criminals would have no problem keeping their guns or getting replacements on a thriving black market.

So that leaves me with gratitude for the Ben McCoys of the world, the law-abiding gun owners who are every bit as important as the cops—and likely even more so—in the effort to keep the innocent safe and sound.