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Guns Save Lives: True Stories of Americans Defending Their Lives With Firearms

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"Fate reversal.
ItÕs what could have happened that didnÕt happen."

Robert A. WatersÕ new book, Guns Save Lives is about reversal of fate. Not everyone believes in fate, but that doesnÕt make WatersÕ book (subtitled True Stories of Americans Defending Their Lives With Firearms) any less compelling. The intended victims in this book took charge of their own fate. They made their own luck. They turned the tables on their attackers. However you say it, it comes down to the same basic concept: The strong survive.

In Guns Save Lives, Robert Waters tells you about the criminals who take what they want from the weak and unarmed. He gives you detailed accounts of their sociopathic rampages, and how they inevitably come to an end when confronted with a greater force in the form of an armed citizen.

It is difficult to stop reading this book. I read it from cover to cover, only putting it down once. Waters puts you in the time and place of the attack, and puts you in the mindset of the intended victims. You feel the hatred and rage of the attackers, and marvel at the bravery of the people who take responsibility for their own safety, even when theyÕre nearly scared stiff.

YouÕve never read self defense stories this detailed, this personal. Waters makes you feel like you are there. If your heart rate doesnÕt spike while reading Guns Save Lives, youÕre not paying attention.

The American mainstream media completely ignores cases of armed self defense. They are controlled by corporate and special interest groups that donÕt want stories like the ones in Guns Save Lives to gain publicity. Thankfully, Robert Waters shines the light of truth on these "guns are evil" groups and establishes once again that "guns are tools;" and that evil resides only in the hearts of men, not in inanimate objects.

When the idea of tying armed self defense stories to the Right to Keep and Bear Arms was first tested, anti-freedom fanatics immediately dismissed them as "anecdotal." Once again, Robert Waters silences their shrill cries by citing the details of dozens of examples of armed self defense. In addition, in the Afterword, Waters introduces the reader to "Operation Self Defense," an online compilation of thousands of self defense stories archived and available for research. The antis can no longer call such incidents merely anecdotal.

In a chapter entitled "Concealed Carry," Waters relates six separate incidents in which a legally armed citizen defended their life, and the lives of others, from violent criminals. After reading this chapter, you will be amazed that there are still six states that forbid their citizens the right to carry firearms for self defense.

Guns Save Lives is the book that will make your "fence sitting" friends jump to the Liberty side of the fence.

Sue Gay lives in South Bend, Indiana, and she is alive today-thanks to her 11-year-old grandson. When Tony "Casper" Murry held a box cutter to Sue's neck one night this February, the fifth grade boy had to think quickly. He ran to an upstairs bedroom to grab a gun and then flew back down the stairs with a .45 in hand. The boy shot one round and hit Murry, 27, in the chest, even though the man was shielding himself with the grandmother.

I remember watching this story unfold in my home town. Every day, good hard-working Americans are saved by guns. Ordinary people who intervene to save themselves from those who place a very low value on human life.

Lets face it: If gun locks where such a great idea, we'd see officers using them on their beats. "If I'm a bad guy, I'm always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You pull the trigger with a lock on, and I'll pull the trigger. We'll see who wins," Sammy "the Bull" Gravano (an infamous gangster-turned-informant) says.

In Guns Save Lives, we see several true stories (without the drama, without the glorification) about people who are alive today because of guns. What the gun control advocates aren't telling you about are the countless lives that are saved every day by citizens who put guns to use for good.

Whether your a card-carrying member of The NRA or a hardened anti-gun advocate, you should read this book and hear the stories told by those who lived them.

Everyone should read this book. I read this and the other Robert Waters book in 2 or 3 days. They are spellbinding and frightening and hard to put down. Even anti-gun people should read this book, even if they don't change their minds. They will get a feel for the suddenness, viciousness, and speed with which normal people can find themselves in a true life and death crime situation. Maybe they will get a dog or check their door locks! There are many messages in these books that have nothing to do with guns, including a deeply flawed criminal justice system that puts violent offenders repeatedly back on the streets, endangering innocent people; the fallout from a severe drug problem, whatever your proposed solutions; the unbelievable irrationality of people on drugs, seemingly oblivious to people complying with their demands; the inability of police to respond fast enough to "protect" people under atack or threat of attack. One reviewer comments on the apparent rascist slant, i.e. whites defending against black criminals. Read both books -- nothing could be further from the truth. The reviewer is reading things into the text that are not there; he is the rascist. He also feels the stories are repetitive. Only in the sense that crime seems out of control; the situations are all strikingly different, and anyone can see themselves clearly in at least some of the victims' situations.

For people who keep firearms for home protection, there are many, many lessons to be learned in these books, including caliber selection, capabilities of senior citizens to defend themselves, the relative ineffectiveness of handguns to quickly stop violent behavior, the problems with trigger locks, and the many benefits that accrued to people who at least mentally, and often physically, prepared for a day they hoped would never come.

Author Robert A. WATERS points out that every year thousands of US citizens defend their life, their families and their property against violent criminals with firearms (which of course does not necessarily include the discharge of the weapon, let alone shoot to kill). In this compilation the reader is introduced to about a dozen true stories where people used their guns for personal defense. It has to be pointed out that all of these people were ordinary law-abiding citizens - housewives, shop owners, teachers, elderly men and women. None of these persons was a gun fetishist, militant survivalist or psycho. They were people like you and me.
Firstly it has to be mentioned that GUNS SAVE LIVES is not recommended for the squeamish. The harrowing graphic description of violent crimes is often quite shocking.
I have to admit that as true crime buff I read the book mainly for entertainment purposes. However there are undoubtedly some lessons to be learnt about guns, self-protection and crime from this book:

* It really shocked me how brutal and vicious the criminals were. Most of the attacks were completely unprovoked. A teenage boy who all of a sudden killed his mother with a baseball bat and a kitchen knife, before embarking on a killing spree in his highschool, shooting dead two pupils and seriously wounding seven others (until the vice principal stopped him with his .45 calibre handgun). A psycho who stabbed a gun shop owner repeatedly in his chest and abdomen with a samurai sword. The shop owner managed to shoot him with his concealed carry weapon.
A drug addict so desparate in need of some dollars for a fix that he almost choked and severely injured a 91 year old man with a hunting knife. Thankfully the old man was able to use his gun to save his life. A trio of young criminals, who robbed three drugstores on one day in order to get money for the lawyer of one of the trio, who awaited a trial for drug charges, shooting dead a female shop assistant and severely wounding another one. This woman would be dead, hadn't she shot back with a .38 calibre revolver. A psycho who unprovokedly stabbed a mother of three in her house. The woman lost one of her eyes and one of her sons was injured, but she was finally able to use her handgun against the intruder.
These criminals showed little respect for the lives of their victims. Almost all of them had a long history of arrests and convictions.

* Not surprisingly, almost all stories took place in the Southern states of the USA, where more liveral gun laws enable citizens to use a firearm for self-defense and thus, as is convincingly shown, increase their chance to survive an attack from a violent criminal.

* Also not surprisingly many criminals benefitted from an overly lenient justice system. One of the cases that struck me most was the accomplice of a robber, who plea-bargained and was sentenced to only 50 hours of community service (!).

* All of the people in the stories who defended themselves with a gun knew how to use it: two were gunshop owners, one was a seasoned hunter, one was a former soldier, others attended instruction courses, were shown the proper use of a gun by their husbands, or went to the shooting range on a regular basis.

* All of the victims (with one exeption) had their guns ready (on the nightstand, under the pillow or the bed, in their car) and did not use gun locks or stored their firearms in safes.

* Some of the victims were better armed than their assaulters.

* It appears that sometimes one gun is not enough as the case of a gun shop owner shows, who was overpowered by two attackers. They tried to shoot him with his own handgun, however the man was able to use a backup gun against his assailants.

I agree with most of what the author wrote, however I am aware that GUNS SAVE LIVES is not flawless. I don't buy it that no one ever ran into legal troubles when using a firearm for selfdefense. I feel that the author did not elaborate on the risks of armed selfdefense. Is it really out of the question that somebody who defends himself with a gun isn't mistaken for the criminal by intervening police? Or that an attempted trial of armed self-defense prompts a criminal to respond violently and thus results in an escalating situation? In my view the book is often a bit simplistic.
I also think that some of the quoted dialogue is more fitting for a B-movie than appropriate for a serious book on guns and self-defense, like e.g. "That dope fiend took one bullet but he didn't take a penny of my money." (p.55)

This is a detailed examination of case after case after case, where armed citizens refused to be victims, thereby saving not only their own lives, but the lives of others as well.

The National Rifle Association has been running a dozen such stories every month in their publications for years, under the headline The Armed Citizen, but their cases are taken from daily newspapers with little other information. Robert Waters has done more; he has personally interviewed many people involved in such incidents, and this book is the result.

As Waters points out, a problem exists which results in many people rejecting the concept of self-defense with a firearm, and that is the fact that the elite media in this country (and elsewhere) typically are anti-firearm. That is, being preponderantly politically liberal, they do not believe or accept that the public should be armed for its own defense, as the Bill of Rights states. In fact, because the Second Amendment states that "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," they assert that it is the government's right to bear arms that is protected, rather than the right of the people--thinking that the militia is an arm of the government. They ignore the plain fact that all citizens are part of the militia, and that the National Guard is NOT a militia, but an arm of the government.

The elite media do slant the news to fit their own view, with the result that these incidents are not national news and are only found in local dailiesand on the local TV news. Only the criminal shootings make it to the national news, with the result that the public gets a distorted view. There are far more unreported cases of firearms being used for defense than reported cases of guns being used for criminal purposes.

In fact, Waters says, the Bill of Rights is all about protecting the people from the government, and not the other way around.

Like many others, I personally believe that the requirement that a citizen of the United States have a permit to carry concealed is unconstitutional on its face, since such a license costs money--sometimes a significant amount of money--and that is clearly an infringement on an inalienable right. But, because it is an uphill battle against "city hall," I, like many others, paid my money and got the permit.

Oddly, in the state of Oregon, where I reside, no permit is required to carry a pistol openly in a holster, but a permit is required to carry concealed! I submit that carrying openly is an implied threat which makes others uneasy--especially in cities where the inhabitants are typically ignorant where firearms are concerned; whereas no one feels threatened by the carry of a concealed weapon since they do not know of its existence.

The whole thing is exactly backwards, and yet even the NRA and other constitutionalists are going along with it.

Some of Waters interviewees make the same point.

The best point that Waters makes in this book is his refutation of the old liberal saw that private gun ownership is dangerous, when as he points out so well, exactly the opposite is true, as he says in his title. Guns SAVE lives; thousands of lives.

He details one five day period with 12 local newspaper stories of incidents where people saved their own lives and the lives of others through the use of their privately owned firearms to stop predators. They not only saved their own lives, as he points out, but also the lives that those same predators would likely have taken in the future had they not been stopped in their tracks. Many of the people they saved who would have been future victims are no doubt political liberals and advocates of banning the private ownership of firearms themselves, who have no idea of the debt they owe.

This is certainly a valuable book.

Joseph Pierre
editor, George Tooley's Beginners Book on How to Handle Firearms Safely
author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books

This book was hard to put down. A must read for anyone who wants to know what REALLY happens outhere in the real world. You always think it happens to someone else, until you are someone else. It sheds light on the truth. You only hear the horror stories about guns. Not how they save countless lives. Keep in mind responsible gun use must be practiced. None the less you shouldn't be discouraged from owning a firearm for self-protection. This book gives you a view of what has happened to ordinary people, just like you and me. It doesn't tell of every circumstance possible, but does shed light on what happens in the real world. It was worth the reasonible price aked.

As someone from the US I have to laugh when someone from the UK (where people have been blowing each other up en mass instead of shooting them for years) has the audacity to be condescending about the gun violence in this country. At least with a gun you have a fighting chance to defend yourself. Thankfully, we are very unlike the UK where crowded buses or department stores are routinely blown up, just to make a point, something that rarely happens in the US. Thank the founding fathers, we still have the right to defend ourselves with honest weapons. The world is full of crazies, whether guns are outlawed in that particular spot on the globe or not. All those cameras on every street corner in Great Britain haven't kept their populace safe, any more than our police force can keep all of us safe. Guns Save Lives demonstrates exactly how informed and even slightly trained citizens can make a difference in the random violence that can intrude on their otherwise peaceful lives. If someone is in doubt that it could happen to them, let them take a walk through these pages. It does happen. Check out the site of this book's publisher Loompanics for a real eye opener. Or call 8003802230

This book contains 12 long stories of ordinary Americans attacked or invaded by gun-wielding strangers, who defended themselves with guns. A thirteenth chapter contains a number of shorter stories.

Several things come out of these stories. One is that if gun restrictions had been in effect, such a trigger locks, these innocent people would be dead. Another is that police tend to blame the victim first, before investigating. But after investigation, the victims are usually freed. Sometimes this blame even takes precedence over giving the victims medical attention. Another is that mainstream newspapers only carry negative stories about guns, they don't carry all the stories in which people save their own lives with guns.

Books like this are needed to counter the one-sided picture being painted by the mainstream press. Give a copy to everyone you know who is against guns.

Gun control is only one of the threats facing America today, but it does play an important role in that threat. To learn more about the other threats, read While America Sleeps: How Islam, Immigration and Indoctrination are Destroying America from Within.

With all social books, I bought and read this with an open mind. It turned out to be an excellent book highlighting and discussing various stories of people defending themselves and their loved ones with the proper use of a handgun. These very newsworthy stories are what scare the hateful media and liberal anti-Americans. It shows that there are people out there who use guns to defend themselves. Why the anti-gun crowd don't see or understand this if beyond me and all the rest of the freedom loving folks in this great country. Really though, what I see is that they don't want the people who they want to subjugate to have the means to resist a takeover of the country. The U.S. is on a slippery slope towards a total elimination of our freedom and rights to where the elites will have complete control of the country but I digress since that is another conversation.
This book should be a learning lesson to those who are straddling the fence on the legitimacy of handgun usage. I dare anyone to ask themselves whether they would just "peacefully" not resist to being murdered, raped, robbed or whatever (like the anti-gun crowd want you to do) or would you rabidly and vehemently defend yourself. If you decide to defend yourself, wouldn't you want to have the best means to do so in your hands? Not all of us are athletically inclined to be expert martial artists and be able to physically deter most types of attacks (then again not all martial artists are invulnerable either) which leaves us with to find other means of defending ourselves. These means include a handgun. Whether you agree with owning a handgun or not, it does not give a person the right to deny that right to others.
To speak from personal experience, my mother does not like guns nor will own a gun but she will not deny ME the right to own or use one. Something to think about for you anti-American, anti-freedom, hateful people out there.

This deeply flawed book is written to promoted expanded gun rights and to counter certain arguments made by gun control advocates. Unfortunately, it is such a poor book that it is unlikely to convince anyone who isn't already on the pro-guns side.

The fundamental problem is that Waters is not a good writer. His numerous stories get tiresome and redundant after a while, and even before then, he is not a great wordsmith. There are also various spelling errors, but this admittedly may be a publisher's issue.

Beyond that, some of the arguments he uses are flaky at best. Trying to prove a case by anecdote is very difficult, and his references to statistics are vague; he has great numbers, but rarely cites the sources. Considering how often the gun rights people dismiss stories that defy their arguments, argument by anecdote is not really valid.

There are plenty of other problems. When commenting on a particular judge, Waters has to throw in some digs about the judge's extramarital affairs as if it somehow makes his judicial decisions weaker; this sort of attack is known as fallacious by any debate student. Further, there are cases where he distorts or alters facts, such as when he ascribes thoughts to particular individuals which he would have no way of knowing.

The world Waters describes has criminals lurking in every shadow. Although he is very careful about not indicating the race of the criminals, he leaves enough hints to imply that they are predominantly black. The victims, on the other hand (especially all the ones pictured) are predominantly white. Thus he feeds into racial paranoia as well.

This is a bad book; not only will it not win any converts, but the gun rights people should be embarassed if this is as good as they can do to argue their side; in fact, it does nothing but make them look like rabid paranoids, an image I'm sure they don't want to have.