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Grand Junction, Colo.: On his way home from work, a contractor picked up three young hitchhikers. He fixed them a steak dinner at his house and was preparing to offer them jobs. Two of the men grabbed his kitchen knives and started stabbing him in the back, head and hands. The attackers stopped only when he told them that he could give them money. Instead of money, the contractor grabbed a pistol and shot one of the attackers. The contractor said, "If I'd had a trigger lock, I'd be dead." Columbia Falls, Mont.: An ex-boyfriend is accused of entering a woman's home and sexually assaulting her. She got away long enough to get her handgun and hold her attacker at gunpoint until police arrived. Salt Lake City: Two robbers began firing their guns as soon as they entered a pawn shop. The owner and his son returned fire. One of the robbers was shot in the arm; both were later arrested. The shop owner's statement said it all: "If we did not have our guns, we would have had several people dead here." Baton Rouge, La.: At 5:45 a.m., a crack addict kicked in the back door of a house and entered. The attacker was fatally shot as he charged toward the homeowner. What advice would gun control advocates have given these victims? Should they have behaved passively? Unfortunately, by making it difficult for law-abiding people to get the most effective tool to defend themselves, gun control often puts victims' lives in jeopardy. On the other side of the coin, gun control has proved deadly, as is the case in England where under the Firearms Act of 1997 all handguns and most rifles were outlawed and confiscated. Wrote Richard Poe in his best-selling book, "The Seven Myths of Gun Control": "What happened next is something most Americans know nothing about because the press has not reported it in this country. A terrifying crime wave swept England. Stripped of the ability to defend themselves, Britons were left helpless against criminal attacks. And the criminals knew it. Their attacks grew bolder, as well as more frequent." To prove how true is the old adage "If guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns," Poe reports that "Between April and September 2000, street crime in London rose 32 percent over the same period in 1999." Lies and Progaganda Aside from keeping such vital information from their fellow Americans, the mainstream U.S. media have shamefully promoted anti-gun propaganda and lies. Take, for example, Professor Michael Bellesiles' book in which the author claims that the idea of a well-armed America in revolutionary times and afterward was a myth. As NewsMax reported at the time: "Frenzied anti-self-defense zealots hailed his book as proof that colonial Americans owned few guns and that the idea of a nation of well-armed citizens was a myth, and he won a prestigious award for his rooting out the truth about guns in early America. But new research indicates that in many instances historian Michael A. Bellesiles simply twisted the facts to fit his own agenda. "In a blockbuster exposé published in the Boston Globe, much of Bellesiles' book ''Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture'' was called into question. "According to Bellesiles, he examined more than 11,000 probate records of more than 1,200 counties, counting the number of guns listed in probate inventories. He wrote that he learned that between 1765 and 1821, no more than 17 percent of the inventories listed guns. He claimed that the rate of gun ownership was even lower in the 1760-1795 period – a mere 14 percent, he said. "[O]ver half of these guns were listed as broken. ... " According to a Dec. 9 story in the New York Times, "Emory University professor Michael Bellesiles, whose book 'Arming America: The Origins of the National Gun Culture' caused a sensation with Second Amendment foes last year with its claims that gun ownership in the U.S. was 'an invented tradition,'" may have perpetrated what the Times described as "one of the worst academic scandals in years." According to the Times, scholars who examined Bellesiles' data were unable to substantiate his claim that 11,000-plus probate records from 40 counties in colonial America showed that fewer than 7 percent actually owned working guns. Those scholars who tried to corroborate the book's sensational findings were stunned by "an astonishing number of serious errors," the Times reported, "almost all of them intended to support [Bellesiles'] thesis." "In some cases his numbers were off by a factor of two or three or more," Randolph Roth, a history professor at Ohio State University, told the Times. "The number and scope of the errors in Bellesiles' work are extraordinary," Roth told the Times, saying they include "misinterpretation of militia returns, literary documents and data from many other sources." The academics who studied Bellesiles' contentions found that his book was filled with blatant misrepresentations. For example, Bellesiles told one critic that he'd managed to obtain detailed probate records from the 1850s from the San Francisco Superior Court. But the courthouse said all probate data from that decade had been destroyed in the great earthquake of 1906. "[The San Francisco records] were not available in two other Bay area libraries, either," the Times said. "Mr. Bellesiles now says he must have done the research somewhere else and cannot remember where." "Arming America" won Columbia University's prestigious Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy. Before the book's rampant errors were discovered, legal scholars had said Bellesiles' work could impact on several court challenges to Second Amendment protections. Despite this obvious fraud, the U.S media have failed to apologize for initially giving the book such wide publicity and praise. The Second Amendment Finally, the gun control nuts and their socialist allies in the media have sought to distort the meaning of the Second Amendment's provisions which guarantee the right of the citizens to bear arms, even though the intent of those who wrote the Bill of Rights is crystal clear. Wrote Patrick Henry, for example, "The great object is that every man be armed. ..." Then there was Richard Henry Lee, who said, "To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." In his book, Richard Poe cited a speech in the House during the debates concerning adoption of the Bill of Rights that sets out the clear meaning of the Second Amendment: "As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must occasionally be raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms." Poe explores the history of the militia concept, showing how it applied, for example, in the case of the Minutemen, armed citizens who formed the backbone of the colonial forces who won our liberty. After the American Revolution it was understood that the militia – specifically consisting of men between the ages of 16 and 60 – constituted the force that would prevent the new government from becoming a tyranny. Said Noah Webster, "The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword because the body of the people are armed. ..." During the debates about the adoption of the Bill of Rights, delegate members of the Anti-Federalist forces demanded that the 10 amendments include one that would guarantee the right, as Patrick Henry put it, "that every man be armed. ..." The result was the Second Amendment, and its meaning was as clear as a bell: All Americans have the right to keep and bear arms. All Americans! We live in dangerous times. The threats we face are more numerous than merely those posed by al-Qaeda and other terrorists groups. We live in a society where hordes of conscienceless criminals are armed. Not a single gun control measure has changed that fact. They have instead restricted gun ownership by honest Americans. In short, these laws have allowed the outlaws to have guns while depriving honest Americans of their Second Amendment right of self-defense. Sure, there are dangers inherent in widespread gun ownership. Accidents will happen. Some people will do stupid things with their guns. Some people are simply unfit to own weapons. There are dangers inherent in widespread ownership of automobiles. Accidents will happen. Some people will do stupid things behind the wheels of their cars. Some people are unfit to own cars. Let's ban autos. After all, they kill tens of thousands of Americans every year – far more than are killed in firearms accidents. Citizen gun ownership is a feature of a free society. We are either fit to be free or we are not. *** Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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