Source:
The president of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, announced an authorization this weekend that allows civilians to carry and use guns amid surging crime in the country.
Reuters noted that crime has reached a point where it is hard to curtail, and Lasso hopes to find some degree of respite in allowing citizens to be armed for self-defense.
Lasso—a political conservative—announced the new policy, saying, “We have a common enemy: petty crime, drug trafficking, and organized crime.”
“We’ve modified the decree that allows the possession and carrying of guns,” he continued. “In other words, in general terms … the possession and carrying of guns for civilian use in personal defense is authorized, in accordance with the requirements of law and regulations.”
We’re obviously not against this. And you might say that America needs or even has something similar to this. But that’s not the direction I wanted to take. I was thinking about this the other day, and others have mentioned it. What if the government news outlets in America, let’s not even say breathlessly but matter-of-factly, reported the thousands of self-defense gun uses in America every month?
Yes, thousands of times every month, somebody uses a firearm for self-defense in the United States. This includes everything from showing a firearm to a would-be assailant to brandishing or muzzling and, least often but sadly, actually having to shoot an assailant.
We applaud the move by Mr. Lasso in Ecuador, but the president there should also direct the daily and weekly stats to be aggressively released to the public and broadcast along with any footage of justified self-defense. Once criminals see the effective use of guns in self-defense, crime will plummet.
America’s problem isn’t so much of a crime problem in most states. The U.S. problem is the government narrative that denies guns’ utility and constantly promotes restrictions and confiscations despite the majority of states requiring nothing but the attainment of age to carry and use a handgun in self-defense. If the U.S. government wanted to actually lower crime, they would broadcast every self-defense use and encourage people to report self-defense uses to be included in official releases and broadcasts.
