The following ABC News crime video is about a nonprofit that has been created by Kyle Copeland, a grad student at the University of Houston. He has started the Armed Citizen Project. The organization’s goal is to give away free guns for providing people with a means of self-defense. The plan is to provide guns to single women and those who have a special need, such as residents living in a high-crime area. This video was added to the ABC website on February 23, 2013.
The Armed Citizen Project was inspired by a paper that Kyle Copeland wrote in grad school. His passion is in public-policy research, and he either thinks or wants to find out (it wasn’t totally clear from this interview) whether increasing the amount of guns in society for self-defense can actually decrease the crime rate.
I doubt that his Armed Citizen Project would ever raise enough money to give away more than a few hundred guns. Copeland certainly isn’t going to be able to do any meaningful research on any results derived from his statistically small study.
As to whether this is a good idea, all I can say is you may actually be providing criminals with a gun instead of people who want one for self-defense. How do you decide who deserves a gun and who doesn’t? The program might have admirable goals but is fraught with potential problems? Is he going to require training for those who receive a free gun? I certainly hope so. Is he going to provide a free gun to women who say they are scared of their ex or something? How does he know the woman isn’t trying to get the gun so she can get revenge on an ex, making it look like self-defense? If people want a gun for self-defense, then it seems they need to find their own way to get one.
Let’s ask Pistorius about what a terribly lethal concoction fear+gun makes?