My guess is the NRA has good stats about how many people have saved themselves or how many may have been saved by a CWL. In fact I think every monthly issue has stories about people who have defended themselves recently, you know...its typically like a housewife that buried some scumbag who broke through her kitchen door.
As for the talk of bans, that whole prohibition thing worked out well. Only helped cement organized crime in the USA, along with establish some huge criminal empires, including the Kennedy clan. And how about marijuana? Thats been illegal forever, and countless numbers have filled our prisons because of it, yet it was probably cheaper and easier to get 5 years ago than it is today in a "legal" state.
A gun can be produced in a basement or garage with just simple skills and materials. If some backwoods pakistani tribesman can make sophisticated copies of AKs using crude materials and tools, dont you think that just banning them will only make some criminal enterprises a LOT of money, and in the end, like they say, only the criminals will have them, and they will still be as easy to get as an ounce of weed.
Right now, as is always the case right after a tragedy, the government is looking to overreact. Preying on peoples raw emotions of the moment, instead of waiting, just like a gun purchase cooling off period, until cooler heads can prevail, and we can use our rational brains to solve our problems, instead of our backlash emotions. Like Rahm Emanuel said "never waste a good crisis"
