Best wishes, –Mike , Candidate for Congress

Handguns have multiple purposes, one of which is self-defense. Yes, it can be used in extreme circumstances to take a human life but, if you believe my story to be true, you must accept that they can serve the purpose of self-defense without anyone being shot. Deterrence does actually work.

Blue moons come more often than you think and we do not live in an ideal world. I see nothing to to suggest that banning handguns would bring us anywhere close to that ideal. It is far too late for that. Perhaps, if handguns had been outlawed long ago, it may have worked, but after the Civil War there were so many guns in private hands that genie could not be put back in the bottle. Ban guns now and all the otherwise law abiding citizens will turn them in as directed. The criminals will not. Since the police are not going to be able to fill in that gap, gun crime will actually increase because those that might otherwise defend themselves (as I did) will be completely at the criminal’s mercy.

I use the example of Prohibition. Sure, guns can’t be made with sugar, but there are so many guns out there already and our borders are porous enough that any illegal market for those guns could be easily met. Prohibition gave a tremendous power to the mobs, almost created them from scratch. The prohibition of firearms would likely create a similar criminal enterprise centered around illegal guns rather than illegal alcohol. Do you want the wingnuts to go crazy and actually start acting on their rhetoric that the 2nd Amendment is there to provide the tools to overthrow the government? If so, then go ahead and repeal the amendment.

I think it’s better to place reasonable restrictions on legal ownership of firearms, severely punish criminal use of firearms and work very hard to take away the reasons for misuse of firearms. If people have jobs, health care, education and secure lives, their reasons for the criminal use of firearms will fade.

And, that is why I want the Second Amendment thrown out or reinterpreted to refer only to this actual militia thing, I want to take away your handgun, and regulate gun ownership. And and that is why I don’t easily accept the arguments you are making.

I want to live in a world where people do not carry around deadly weapons as a matter of course. That is not a civilized world. The way to get there is not to arm the citizenry with pistols.

Cars kill tens of thousands annually and people seem fairly comfortable with that. The only reason it’s finally dropped below 40,000 recently is because with the high price of gas, fewer people are driving.

No, I did not. And they weren’t trying to steal my bike. They were trying to beat me to death because I was a white guy in their neighborhood. The Rodney King riots were going on in LA and I had the misfortune of having to rely on a bicycle for my transportation through neighborhoods that were a hotbed of violence at that time. Of course, the local police and media were assuring everyone that the violence wasn’t happening here.

I was attacked by two youths, one armed with a baseball bat. I tried to flee but could not. I drew my weapon and was literally half way through a trigger pull when my attacker ceased his aggressive action and backed off, but only far enough to allow me to move closer to the police station a block away, taunting me the entire time. Only when withing sight of the police station, my calls for assistance unresponsive to, did they finally free the scene.

Injured, I spent several hours in the hospital watching replay after replay of Reginald Denny getting the shit kicked out of him and wondering whether I would need stitches. My attackers got to go home.

Now, Greg seems to think that I am merely some random guy on the Internet and he doesn’t seem to believe my story. I am disappointed in his complete discounting of my story and thus the dismissal of my arguments. I’m sure that, even if I were to produce the police report, it would be insufficient, as would the testimony of three of my personal friends who similarly encountered violence that week and defended themselves with firearms. (None of them having to pull the trigger, by the way.)

I also think that people should be allowed to do stupid and harmful things to themselves–only when they harm others should we consider restrictions.

All right. I’m coming back to this because it really pisses me off. You want people to die from complications of their health problems? The incidence of diagnosed mental illness ranges from 80% to 90% among people who successfully commit suicide. This is no more “stupid” than a person with Tourrette’s swearing at his or her boss is. This is a side effect, and the easy availability of guns contributes to making it a fatal one.

Further, the idea that the US has always had a higher gun death rate ergo handguns should still be allowed is frankly insane. If American citizens are that psychotic (and I really don’t think they are, but following your line…) then it only makes sense to prevent them from owning implements with which to enact their grievances. I believe you’ve shot yourself in the foot, twice, first by stating that the UK once had US-style gun laws and secondly by proclaiming that Americans are that much more likely to kill people anyway.

You also say that “England has a problem with knife crime”. That’s actually incorrect, because 1) the knife crime centre of the UK is Glasgow, which is in Scotland, but 2), semantics aside, the knife crime “problem” in the UK consisted of a series of murders of young men in London at its peak in February last year, in which on average one man a week was stabbed in a city of 7,000,000. Yes, there are a few murders with knives, but the so-called “knife crime problem”, if there is one, in the UK consists of a much, much lower number of knife murders than in the USA. Which, needless to say, also has 10,000 people dying every year from un-needed guns.

You say that people should be allowed to do stupid things to themselves, and I agree. You also say that when things do harm to others, only then should we consider banning them. And again, I find myself in agreement. But I fail to see how you could say that 10,000 people a year needlessly dying is a sign that handguns (or guns generally) in private hands for any other reason than hunting do not constitute an unnecessary threat to life. That is to say, by your own argument, the idea of banning handguns would be perfectly logical. Which… well, it is. It would be a good idea.

The point here is that you can come up with all kinds of theoretical problems – “well, they could just carry a shotgun” – but empirically, the reality is quite simple: handguns create more deaths for no reason, and the problems you come up with have no real basis in reality. You own a handgun for no reason other than ending human life, which is only called for in the most extreme circumstances, circumstances which only come about once in a very blue moon and which should and would ideally not happen at all.

There really isn’t a rational defense of private handgun-ownership, unless you live in Somalia where a trip to the shops really is like Mad Max. But of course, it’s up to you and your country to work out what to do within its borders.

We are working from different assumptions. I don’t think the successful suicide rate would change much if guns were banned–guns are convenient and effective, but other effective methods remain available–see Japan. I also think that people should be allowed to do stupid and harmful things to themselves–only when they harm others should we consider restrictions.

Eliminating handguns doesn’t eliminate all handgun crime, at least some (and I suspect most) shifts it to other weapons. England has a problem with knife crime, and restrictions on carrying knives don’t seem to help much–they keep the people who aren’t likely to stab from carrying pocketknives. Handguns are certainly easier than long guns for a robber to use, but if they aren’t available a rifle or shotgun isn’t much more difficult and is much more deadly. Plus you can be pretty sure that the victim won’t be able to fight back–carrying a shotgun around all day is different from carrying one from the parking lot to your victim.

Whether armed criminals should be counted depends on context. Convicted felons are far more likely to be killed by guns–but I’m not a felon, don’t have any felons living here so it doesn’t make sense to include them in my personal risk assessment of guns in my house. I can’t find the 48% convicted felon stat I claimed, or a nationwide study–I did find about half have a criminal record, and more than 3/4 were under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of death.

As far as sourced, statistical analysis–I’m not proposing to change or restrict your behavior, and I’m not a statistician. I’m sure that the Brady Campaign, VPC, or some other Joyce Foundation supported group has done this sort of sourced analysis…but for some reason isn’t publishing. It isn’t that I think your sources are inaccurate–the stats you used are probably the best available. However, they don’t differentiate well enough to be useful for the question at hand.