I dunno. But Stephanie Zvan has worked out the Gun Protection Best Case Scenario. And it happens to be the latest post on Quiche Moraine so I know you won’t want to miss this.
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or Paperback
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Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
States with concealed carry rights have lower overall violent crime rates.
And as for having a gun in the home– it’s better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it. Firearm education is the solution to accidents that occurr in the home. Basic common sense would sense many accidental gun deaths. If a criminal breaks into your home you have every right to shoot his azzzz.
oops, i should proofread– meant to say –basic common sense would *prevent* many accidental gun deaths…
Accidental gun deaths aren’t the big problem, as I’m sure you’d be happy to point out if I’d said it were. That’s only about 1,000 of the 30,000-35,000 gun deaths in a year. How are you going to prevent the rest?
As for what’s better, well, you’d actually have to read the post to have an informed opinion on that.
The only way to prevent gun deaths completely (accidental and deliberate/criminal) is to
1) lock down the borders so nothing can get in without being vetted by border patrol agents
2) ensure those border patrol agents are utterly incorruptable (so they won’t let anything pass that’s not allowed to enter the country)
3) outlaw gun ownership completely
4) a mass campaign to confiscate by force all guns in the entire country. This would mean SWAT and army units searching every building from subbasement to rooftop, digging up every garden, forest, and field, etc. etc., all at basically the same time (so nothing can get transported/smuggled to an already searched location for future retrieval).
5) destroying all guns found, as well as all guns in posession of law enforcement and military units, and destroying all gun making equipment anywhere.
6) repeat steps 4 and 5 every few days to ensure noone’s created tooling to make new guns.
That’s not just the case for the US, where gun ownership is currently legal (even if many states seem to consider it illegal) under the constitution, but in countries where it’s illegal as well (as in those only criminals and government agents have guns, the difference usually being only that those government agents have a piece of paper saying they’re not criminals).
These things may work in North Korea or Cuba, but I’d not want to live in such a society and I doubt sincerely that a lot of people will want to live like that.
JT: Faulty logic. The same sort of criteria (extreme, complete, all encompassing, and impossible) can be said to apply to virtually anything in order to achieve a high level of result. Yet we make very few decisions on that basis. Students graduate from college with a B, and not every bird shot hits the duck. The argument you are making here is a tired old one that we’ve all heard before and that has no merit. It can be summarily rejected.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9715182
OBJECTIVE: Determine the relative frequency with which guns in the home are used to injure or kill in self-defense, compared with the number of times these weapons are involved in an unintentional injury, suicide attempt, or criminal assault or homicide.
RESULTS: During the study interval (12 months in Memphis, 18 months in Seattle, and Galveston) 626 shootings occurred in or around a residence. This total included 54 unintentional shootings, 118 attempted or completed suicides, and 438 assaults/homicides. Thirteen shootings were legally justifiable or an act of self-defense, including three that involved law enforcement officers acting in the line of duty. For every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides
len, you do understand that an overall lower level of violent crime may not be the same thing as personally being safer, yes?
As a woman living alone, I’ll takepersonally being safer . I can control who has access to my firearm (via gun safes, locks, etc), and whether or not I kill myself with it. I cannot control if anyone tries to break in while I’m home alone, or what they might want to do.
And while I realize that anecdotes aren’t data, I find it interesting that after growing up in a firearm-friendly state, all of my friends and family know how to safely use them, and none of us feel particuarly macho about them. Interestingly, none of us has been harmed by one; none of us has had our kid take one to school; none of us carries or uses inappropriately.
It’s one thing to ask the would-be Rambos to knock it off. They’re idiots; we don’t really need the general population packing heat at Dunkin Donuts. But to imply that all guns are bad and no one but the military and police should have them? I respectfully disagree.
OleanderTea, what makes you think you can control whether you get major depression or control your irrational thought processes if you do? If you want something that actually increases your safety, get a well-trained but territorial dog.
OleanderTea, you are making the same mistake many gun enthusiasts (and/or nuts, as the case may be) make when coming to this forum. I don’t believe I (on this blog) or Stephanie or anyone else (on Almost Diamonds or Quiche Moraine) has advocated for the elimination of personal firearms. Therefore, your comparison is invalid as an argument.