by David Kopel

About the author: David Kopel is the research director for the Independence Institute in Golden, Colorado. He is the author of No More Wacos: What’s Wrong with Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix It.

Guns in the right hands make all good people safer—including people who don’t own guns. The higher the number of responsible people who have guns ready to be used for self-defense, the safer the public is. The tremendous degree to which widespread gun ownership makes American homes safer from home invaders is one of the great unreported stories of the American gun-control debate.

The United States suffers from a very high rate of violent crime, compared to most other industrial democracies. Despite improvement, the American crime rate is high for crimes that...