Vice President Kamala Harris just announced her selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate in the Nov. 5 presidential election.
As governor, Walz routinely touts his gun ownership and affinity for duck hunting as a reason why people should take his opinions in favor of more gun control seriously.
He completely misses the point.
The Second Amendment isn’t primarily about hunting, and the constitutional right to keep and bear arms isn’t premised on ensuring the ability to shoot ducks for food or sport.
It is, rather, centered on the unalienable right of self-defense. And it’s fundamentally concerned with securing the rights and liberties of a free people living in a free state.
As it turns out, that fundamental concern is just as important to the safety and security of ordinary Americans today as it was in 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified.
Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to a 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the issue concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.
For this reason, The Daily Signal publishes a monthly article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read other accounts from past years here.)
The examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use during crimes that we found in July. You may explore more using The Heritage Foundation’s interactive Defensive Gun Use Database.
- July 1, Tulsa, Oklahoma: In violation of a protective order, a man confronted his estranged wife and a group of her friends at a gas station and threatened them with a gun, police said. One of the woman’s friends drew his or her own gun and told the man to “step back and put his gun down.” Instead, he appeared to raise his gun at the friend, who then shot the man several times, killing him.
- July 2, Bullhead City, Arizona: Police said Mayor Steve D’Amico heard someone banging on his front door and “messing with” the doorknob in the middle of the night, so he armed himself for a potential confrontation. While still in his underwear, the mayor opened the door, located the would-be intruder (who’d somehow gotten past a locked gate), and detained him at gunpoint until police arrived. The suspect faced charges for trespassing and disorderly conduct. Speaking to reporters, D’Amico said it was “a wake-up call that anything can happen to anybody” whether “you’re in a good neighborhood [or] a bad neighborhood.”
- July 7, Memphis, Tennessee: A gas station’s security cameras captured the moments when an armed victim defended himself from a rifle-wielding carjacker, police said. The two engaged in a brief shootout before the would-be carjacker fled in a vehicle with two others. It’s not clear from the security video whether anyone was hurt; police didn’t release more details.
- July 8, California Valley Village, California: Police said two intruders broke into what they believed was an unoccupied residence and came face-to-face with an armed homeowner. After a “scuffle” in which one intruder used pepper spray against him, the homeowner opened fire, hitting one intruder and sending the other fleeing with an accomplice waiting in a getaway car. The wounded suspect was identified as a repeat offender recently released on probation; his extensive criminal record included arrests for burglary, robbery, and illegal gun possession.
- July 9, Ashland, Pennsylvania: Police said a man who apparently suffered from delusions that people were shooting at him jumped through a window of a home, armed himself with kitchen knives, and tried to hide behind an oven. The homeowner—who happened to be an off-duty police officer—saw the shattered glass and held the intruder at gunpoint until on-duty colleagues arrived to take him into custody. The suspect, who was ordered to take a mental health evaluation, faced criminal charges.
- July 12, Cincinnati: A driver acted in self-defense when she shot and wounded two women who approached her vehicle and assaulted her with rocks, police said. The severity of the attack was suggested by the vehicle’s flat tires and broken back and side windows.
- July 17, Orion Township, Michigan: A man whose firearms had been confiscated by police under the state’s red flag law broke into a residence where his ex-girlfriend lived with her stepson, police said. The man then tried to kill her using a gun he’d stolen from his ex-wife. Fortunately, her stepson was also home and fatally shot the man after he forced his way into the bedroom where the stepson and the ex-girlfriend had barricaded themselves.
- July 18, Towns County, Georgia: Police said an armed homeowner helped end a dayslong search for an escaped prisoner who walked away from an off-site work detail. The homeowner ordered him to the ground and held him at gunpoint until police arrived. The homeowner’s dog had alerted him to an intruder on the property; when the homeowner investigated, he saw the man in an orange prison jumpsuit. The escapee had been at a county detention center awaiting a court appearance on charges including two counts of burglary, drug offenses, and violating his probation.
- July 22, Ogden, Utah: Police said a pair of pit bulls attacked two neighbors, who shot the dogs to avoid being bitten. The growling dogs had hemmed in one neighbor, who shot and killed one dog when they went after him; the other neighbor shot and wounded the second dog when it charged. The dogs had a history of biting, police said.
- July 28, North Vernon, Indiana: An intruder entered a house through an unlocked door, helped himself to food, went into the room of a female resident, and chased her around the property, police said. The homeowner armed himself and held the intruder at gunpoint until police arrived. The suspect faced charges of burglary and unlawful residential entry.
- July 30, Chicago: A concealed carry permit holder returned fire with someone who approached his car, fatally shooting him. Neither the permit holder nor the four other occupants of his car—three described as “younger”—were injured, police said.
As these examples so clearly demonstrate, the core purpose of the right to keep and bear arms isn’t to put food on the table but to give ordinary Americans the practical ability to defend themselves so that they make it home for dinner.
It’s a shame that we keep having to remind certain anti-gun politicians that we’re not particularly worried about “deer in Kevlar vests.”
No, we’re worried—just as the nation’s founding generation was—about armed criminals who wear masks and tyrants who enforce at bayonet point the egregious laws they dictated through pen strokes.
And a politician’s affinity for hunting doesn’t make his support for restrictive gun control measures any less of an affront to the purpose of the Second Amendment.
