You Grandson Of A Gun!

A few clarifications on this post...

One basic assumption is that there is a 'gun problem.' It is true, if you mean it in the same sense as deadlier item like motor vehicles (43,354 incidents in 2001, accounting for 1.8% of all American deaths that year, compared to 28,663 firearms, or 1.2%, including criminals legally killed through law enforcement or self-defense) give rise to a 'car problem.' Those same vehicles accounted for 44.3% of all accident fatalities in the United States, whereas firearms accounted for 0.8%. For comparison, liquids such as hydroxyl acid (and I drink this stuff all the time!) killed 3,842 people, about 3.9% of all accidental deaths.

If the numbers of guns deaths were higher, one would still have to weigh them against the lives saved by guns, or consider how a gun could have prevented situations like this recent tragedy. Here in Memphis, an 80-year-old woman threatened by a known felon managed to protect herself and end his criminal career from a safe distance, thanks to a little handgun that was all her dainty hands could handle. (Why support making the elderly defenseless? The most avid gun buyers in the United States are senior citizens. We need not worry, unless they are Hell's Grannies.)

It’s been suggested that guns entered homes after a gun owner made others so threatened they felt they also had to own guns, but the more likely scenario is that the threat already existed and the gun filled the need for a tool to combat it. After all, a gun is an amoral, inanimate object. It has no innate wickedness, or inherent ability to commit evil. A gun can work as well as a collectable paperweight as a thief's tool of the trade, just as a knife in the hands of a gourmet chef brings wonder while the same knife in the hands of a serial killer brings horror. Guns do not pull their own triggers. We need more criminal control, not more gun control.

Much about anti-gun activism builds an aura of 'forbidden fruit' around guns that is both unnecessary and dangerous, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. I lost a friend in elementary school when he, intrigued by responses that he should not attempt to learn more about guns, accidentally shot himself in the belly after he decided to do his own research. A supervised exploration of an unloaded weapon would have avoided the tragedy.

Firearm deaths go down with more gun education. Most criminals become less inclined to be criminals in areas with more guns, too, leaving only the deranged and desperate to engage in such sad pastimes as gang wars and drug cartels (Memphis' high murder rate pools deeply in such drug-infested neighborhoods, where even stricter gun control would be as successful as the stricter drug control supposedly already in place). Example: Rapists typically disapprove of any increased probability of getting their heads blown off by bellicose females opposed to being violated. Strange, but true! At the opposite end, Brazil started a ban on carrying a gun on one's person in July, and now the bad guys of Brazil are bolder and deadlier. In September, a criminal first for Brazil occurred as four locals--with illegal guns, natch--robbed a bus carrying 46 unarmed men, all policemen, before driving away. Targeting guns for cultural censorship works, but usually for the wrong people.

Finally, when I quote Lincoln on maintaining a 'revolutionary right,' I am not doing so in reference to head-to-head combat (since it has been noted that few rebels survive against superior firepower) but seek to emphasize the deterrent effect. Dictators are no doubt aware that many a coup occurred because of "weekend wannabe warriors," and take lessons even from hopelessly out-gunned revolts like America's own Whiskey Rebellion. There is also the opposite matter of giving Government a helping hand. I am not calling for everything a government owns to be made available to the public--though I could definitely live with citizens having military firearms, provided the owners were well-trained, licensed and evaluated--but am calling for recognition that the People are captains & guards of their own destinies.