USA Today Says Guns Don’t Make You Safer at Home, but the Numbers Tell a Much Different Story

Colion Noir opened his latest video by pointing directly at a USA Today opinion headline that told readers they were wrong if they believed having a gun at home made them safer, and his response was not subtle. He said his first reaction was that many people do feel safer with a firearm because, in his view, there are people who have used guns in the exact moment when danger was no longer theoretical.

The USA Today opinion piece, as Noir described it, was written by Joel Burgess, a voices editor, and published on June 1. Noir said the piece argues that keeping a gun in the home does not improve safety, but instead makes a person more likely to die.

Noir did not dismiss the personal tragedy at the center of Burgess’ essay. He noted that Burgess wrote about his grandfather dying by suicide in 1958, when Burgess’ mother was 17, and Noir called that a real wound that should not be waved away.

But from there, Noir argued that USA Today moved from one painful family story into a much broader claim about guns, home defense, suicide, and public safety. In his view, that is where the article’s argument began to lose clarity.

Noir Says the Framing Matters

According to Noir, the first problem was not that Burgess had personal experience with tragedy, but that the article used that pain to frame a larger argument against gun ownership while presenting the author as someone who still “likes shooting.” Noir highlighted a portion in which Burgess said he had fired guns such as a .357 Magnum and an AR-15, then joked that calling an AR-15 a “big” gun showed a gap between casual exposure and real familiarity.

Noir’s criticism was that the article seemed to use that limited shooting experience as a kind of credibility marker before moving into an argument against having a gun at home. He said Burgess was “wearing it like a credential,” which is sharp language, but the point was clear: Noir believes the piece tried to sound balanced before landing on a conclusion that was still fundamentally anti-gun.

This is one of those parts of the debate where tone can matter almost as much as data. A person can have painful experience with firearms and still be honest about statistics, but readers also have a right to ask whether a personal story is being used to carry more weight than the evidence can support.

Noir’s broader argument was that gun-control commentary often leans on fear and social pressure more than a clean separation of facts. He said the goal is to make people feel like they are strange or reckless if they believe a firearm can help protect their family.

The Gun Death Numbers Need Context

Noir then turned to one of the most common arguments in the gun debate: the annual number of firearm deaths in America. He said that when people hear that tens of thousands of Americans die from guns each year, many picture a general wave of violence, but he argued that the categories matter.

In his breakdown, Noir said that in 2024, suicides made up roughly six in ten gun deaths, homicides made up about a third, and accidents accounted for roughly 1%. His complaint was that gun-control advocates often blend those categories into one large total because the combined number sounds more alarming than a separated discussion of suicide, homicide, and accidental death.

Noir’s point was not that suicide is unimportant. In fact, he conceded that firearms have a higher degree of finality in a suicidal moment than many other methods, and he said he would not pretend otherwise.

But he rejected the leap from that fact to the claim that ordinary people should not own guns at home. His position was that if mere gun ownership directly drove suicide rates in a simple one-to-one way, the United States would be at the very top of global suicide rankings because it has such high civilian gun ownership.

That part of the argument is worth treating carefully. Suicide risk is complex, and access to lethal means can matter, but Noir’s larger point was about oversimplification. He argued that USA Today’s framing made the gun itself the central actor, while removing the human decision and the wider mental health context from the story.

Defensive Gun Use Is Where Noir Says the Math Gets Blurry

The most detailed part of Noir’s criticism focused on the claim that guns are used defensively in only about 1% of personal and property crimes. He called that “the most dishonest line” in the article because, in his view, it used a denominator so broad that it made defensive gun use appear smaller than it really is.

Noir said Burgess linked to a 2024 paper in the American Journal of Public Health, but argued that the article did not clearly emphasize what that study still found. According to Noir, the study estimated between 61,000 and 65,000 defensive gun uses per year, which he described as the low end of the range.

His argument was that tens of thousands of defensive gun uses are not trivial, especially if those moments involve people stopping a threat without firing a shot. He also argued that measuring those defensive gun uses against all personal and property crimes, including categories like fraud, shoplifting, and stolen property, has the effect of burying the number inside a much larger pool of offenses where a gun would not usually be relevant.

This is an important distinction because a defensive gun use is not most meaningful when compared with every crime in America. It is most meaningful when compared with the situations where a person faces a physical threat, a break-in, a robbery, or another violent encounter where self-defense may actually be at issue.

Noir also said many defensive gun uses never show up in official counts because they do not always involve a shooting or a police report. In his example, if a homeowner racks a shotgun and an intruder leaves, that incident may never become part of any formal database.

Safe Storage and the Limits of the Argument

Noir gave Burgess credit on one point: guns can be more final in moments of self-harm, and safe storage is important, especially around children. But he argued that safe storage does not answer the adult suicide example Burgess used because an adult who owns the gun and knows the code can still access it.

That is where Noir said the article’s logic began to point beyond safe storage and toward not owning a firearm at all. He noted that Burgess wrote that he likes target shooting but does not keep a gun in the home where his two sons live, and Noir interpreted that as a personal choice being presented as a public lesson.

There is room here for a more measured view than either side sometimes allows. Safe storage is not meaningless; it can reduce risks for children, visitors, theft, and impulsive misuse by people who should not have access. But safe storage is also not the same thing as saying a firearm has no defensive value in the home.

Noir’s view is that the USA Today piece blurred that line. He said the headline tells people they are wrong to feel safer with a gun, while the article’s practical message seems to be that the safest gun is no gun at all.

A Gun Alone Is Not the Whole Answer

Near the end of his response, Noir made a distinction that is often missing from both sides of the debate. He said a gun sitting in a drawer does not automatically make a person safe.

In his view, the real argument is not “gun equals safety” in some magical sense. It is that a gun, combined with training, responsible storage, responsible carry, and the will to use it in a life-threatening moment, can make someone more capable of protecting themselves and their family.

That is a more serious argument than a bumper-sticker version of the debate. A firearm can be a tool, but a tool requires judgment, practice, and responsibility, and Noir’s criticism of the USA Today opinion piece was that it treated the tool mostly as a danger while minimizing its possible use in stopping danger.

He also framed the debate as one about language and numbers. If suicides, homicides, and accidents are blended together without explanation, readers may walk away with a distorted sense of what kind of risk is being discussed. If defensive gun use is reduced to a small percentage by comparing it with every kind of crime, readers may miss the real-world cases where a firearm did matter.

Noir’s response was clearly written from a strong Second Amendment position, and he did not try to hide that. But the strongest part of his argument was not the rhetoric; it was his demand that the numbers be separated, explained, and applied to the right questions.

The question is not whether every gun in every home makes every person safer. The better question is whether trained, responsible gun owners can be safer and more capable with a firearm than they would be without one when a violent threat comes through the door. Noir’s answer is yes, and he argued that USA Today’s opinion piece only works if readers never slow down long enough to examine the categories behind the headline.