Fox's Jon Scott Falsely Suggests Guns Improve Personal Safety

Fox News anchor Jon Scott falsely suggested that potential crime victims are “sitting duck[s]” if they don't own guns, citing the murder of a Texas district attorney and his wife in 2013. But according to news reports, the D.A. in that case “kept a gun 'in every room of his house.” The murderer in that case had also previously killed another Texas prosecutor who had told friends he “was carrying a gun everywhere he went” because of threats.

During a discussion of a dispute over whether Nassau County district attorneys can own firearms, Scott asked, “If you are a prosecutor, aren't you sort of a sitting duck ... if you don't have the ability to defend yourself,” citing the Texas D.A. case. Contrary to Scott's suggestion that people who do not own guns are unable to defend themselves, research indicates that brandishing a firearm makes crime victims more likely to be injured compared to victims who ran or hid.

From the September 30 edition of Fox News' Happening Now

JON SCOTT: Right now, there's a new twist in a debate over Second Amendment rights in New York. For years now, the district attorney's office in New York's Nassau County, a Long Island suburb on the east edge of New York, has banned its prosecutors from owning handguns -- not just carrying them, they could not even own them. As we've been preparing this segment, just this morning came a sudden change of heart. Under the policy change in just the last couple of hours, Nassau County prosecutors now are allowed to own handguns but they cannot carry the weapons while they are on duty and the weapon must be approved by the district attorney's office. 

[...]

SCOTT: There have been cases -- this one in Texas in early 2013. Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McClelland and his wife Cynthia, they were gunned down in their home from an ex-county employee who was upset that he had been convicted of theft and some other things. If you are a prosecutor, aren't you sort of a sitting duck, Fred, if you don't have the ability to defend yourself?