Data Shoots Holes in Bloomberg's Billboard Campaign, Says CCRKBA

BELLEVUE, Wash., Feb. 17, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- While anti-gun New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is sending a moving billboard truck around the country claiming that 34 Americans are "murdered with guns every day," the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms says the mayor is selectively ignoring the hundreds of lives saved every day because firearms are there when needed.

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, citing research that places the number of lives saved annually with firearms at between 800,000 and 2.5 million – frequently without even a shot being fired – said that translates to "lives saved that Bloomberg chooses to ignore."

"If you take the estimates and divide them by 365," Gottlieb observed, "you realize that between 2,100 and 6,800 people successfully defend themselves every day of the year with firearms in the United States. The majority of those incidents result in nobody being injured or killed. In some cases where shots are fired by armed citizens, several lives are saved. Bloomberg and his cronies at Mayors Against Illegal Guns evidently don't think their lives are valuable enough to notice."

Gottlieb co-authored America Fights Back: Armed Self-Defense in a Violent Age. That book detailed scores of cases in which legally-armed citizens successfully defended themselves from violent attack.

"What Mayor Bloomberg is not telling you with his roving billboard," Gottlieb noted, "is that violent crime has declined during the same period when gun ownership in this country has skyrocketed, and the number of Americans legally licensed to carry concealed handguns has risen dramatically. Today, more than 6.2 million private citizens are legally carrying in more than 40 states, and yet according to FBI data, violent crime has decreased."

"If Bloomberg was really interested in public safety rather than publicity," Gottlieb concluded, "he would park that truck and take all the money he's spending on the billboard and the fuel, and give it to local gun clubs for firearms safety training and education."

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.

SOURCE Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms