Another View: There's only one way to stop gun crime: ban handguns

Five years ago an elderly Los Angeles woman who had agreed to move out of her daughter's apartment bought a handgun.

She cleared the background check, passed the safety test and practiced on targets at the local shooting range. Then she shot and killed her daughter and her daughter's fiance - my brother David.

As someone who has lost a member of my family to gun violence, I see the new federal legislation to limit gun manufacturers' liability as unconscionable beyond my ken. But what troubles me most is that the gun control lobby is pouring its resources into battles that probably won't save many lives - and we're losing even those.

In the past decade, states have passed law after law to require safety locks, force gun-purchase waiting periods, trace bullets back to their sources and allow victims to sue manufacturers for negligence. That such measures have produced at best slight decreases in the rate of gun deaths is hardly surprising, because only 3 percent of gun deaths are accidents, and most murderers own their handguns legally and know how to use them safely.

California has passed a raft of such laws in the past five years and is widely praised as one of the most progressive states on gun control. In that same period, the number of handgun-related homicides has fallen and then risen again, with no correlation whatever.

The real problem is not that handguns aren't safe or well-regulated enough, or that you can't sue and try to bankrupt a corrupt manufacturer after someone you love has been killed.

The problem is that 60 million people in the United States own handguns. The gun used to kill my brother was a Glock 19, a light and portable semiautomatic.

These guns are designed to kill people: That's their sole purpose. Nearly 12,000 Americans annually use guns to do just that, and the majority use handguns.

Twelve thousand: that's comparable to the number of AIDS deaths each year in the United States. (Great Britain has about 100 gun deaths each year.) And if the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which leads the gun control crusade, continues to assure us that it won't try to outlaw handguns.

Then new laws to restrict who can buy guns and where they can carry them might reduce the annual toll to 10,000. But that's optimistic. Wouldn't it make more sense to define the ultimate battle as one for a national ban on handguns - the sole gun-control measure that promises to save tens of thousands of lives' With an endgame that can actually achieve the ultimate goal, perhaps we'd acquire the logical and moral authority to win more of the smaller battles.

I can hear the gun lobby scoffing, "Guns don't kill people. People do." This ditty is familiar to all of us. Yes, and bombs and chemical weapons don't kill people either, but they're not sold over the counter to just about anyone without a criminal record who can prove that he or she can use them safely.

Of the 12,000 guns used to kill people every year, 160 are used in legitimate self-defense. Guns in the home are used seven times more often for murder than for self-defense.

I cannot say whether the woman who shot my brother was vicious or insane: I myself no longer understand the exact difference. But we all know that rage, vengefulness and deep alienation are hardly unusual in our society, and a handgun makes it horrifyingly easy for people to express them, on purpose or on impulse, by killing people.

If the National Rifle Association wants to pour its own considerable resources into creating a society ruled by absolute peace and brotherhood, I'm all for it.

But let's stop arming the populace in the meantime, which pro- and anti-gun advocates alike know for certain will create a mountainous death toll. Jenny Price is a writer in Los Angeles.

You are wrong about Nazi's opposing traditional morals.

The Nazis openly supported illegitimacy and encouraged "Aryan" women to reproduce "Aryan" children despite their marital status. If you were familiar with the Lebensborn you wouldn't make such comments.

the so-called, rank and file Nazi was disgusted by the permissive sexual breakdown during the '20s in their culture and voted for the party in opposition to the liberal culture of the time

The party opposed to the permissive sexual breakdown of Germany in the 1920s was the Catholic Centre Party, not the Nazis.

The Nazi voter was voting for a leftist program of guaranteed employment and opposition to the "Jewish" free enterprise system of the Allies.

Anyone whose prime concern was sexual morality voted Centre.

BTW, there was free enterprise in Germany during the war.

A cartel competing for a limited number of licenses in industries that are mandatorily unionized by government fiat is not "free enterprise."

I mean, be serious.

We shouldn't lump all of those of certain traits into the Nazi bin because you may be called one next, and the Nazi's were and are too important an historical fact to not examine exclusively.

The Nazis were leftists. I did not claim that all leftists were Nazis - Nazis were simply a subset of the left, not the entirety thereof.

And I get called a Nazi all the time by idiots who think that a right to smoke crack emanates from the penumbras of the US Constitution. They also have no understanding of who the Nazis were.

Nazis were the complete opposite of American conservatives.

The only possible superficial point of contact was that Nazis claimed to be patriotic - but in reality, they placed loyalty to their Darwinist concept of race over loyalty to their country and (especially) its (Jewish) citizens.

Do you intend to write a response to the editors?

Actually, I just sent the following to the editors, but knowing they have a 200 word limit on letters, I asked them to FWD to Miss Jenny:

NOTE: Emphasis mine for certain important numbers.

38 Reasons For Gun Control

1. Banning guns works, which is why New York, DC, & Chicago cops need guns.

2. Washington DC's low murder rate of 69 per 100,000 is due to strict gun control, and Indianapolis' high murder rate of 9 per 100,000 is due to the lack of gun control.

3. Statistics showing high murder rates justify gun control but statistics showing increasing murder rates after gun control are "just statistics."

4. The Brady Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban, both of which went into effect in 1994 are responsible for the decrease in violent crime rates, which have been declining since 1991.

5. We must get rid of guns because a deranged lunatic may go on a shooting spree at any time and anyone who would own a gun out of fear of such a lunatic is paranoid.

6. The more helpless you are the safer you are from criminals.

7. An intruder will be incapacitated by tear gas or oven spray, but if shot with a .357 Magnum will get angry and kill you.

8. A woman raped and strangled is morally superior to a woman with a smoking gun and a dead rapist at her feet.

9. When confronted by violent criminals, you should "put up no defense -- give them what they want, or run" (Handgun Control Inc. Chairman Pete Shields, Guns Don't Die - People Do, 1981, p.125).

10. The New England Journal of Medicine is filled with expert advice about guns; just like Guns & Ammo has some excellent treatises on heart surgery.

11. One should consult an automotive engineer for safer seatbelts, a civil engineer for a better bridge, a surgeon for internal medicine, a computer programmer for hard drive problems, and Sarah Brady for firearms expertise.

12. The 2nd Amendment, ratified in 1787, refers to the National Guard, which was created 130 years later, in 1917.

13. The National Guard, federally funded, with bases on federal land, using federally-owned weapons, vehicles, buildings and uniforms, punishing trespassers under federal law, is a "state" militia.

14. These phrases: "right of the people peaceably to assemble," "right of the people to be secure in their homes," "enumerations herein of certain rights shall not be construed to disparage others retained by the people," and "The powers not delegated herein are reserved to the states respectively, and to the people" all refer to individuals, but "the right of the people to keep and bear arm" refers to the state.

15. "The Constitution is strong and will never change." But we should ban and seize all guns thereby violating the 2nd, 4th, and 5th Amendments to that Constitution.

16. Rifles and handguns aren't necessary to national defense! Of course, the army has hundreds of thousands of them.

17. Private citizens shouldn't have handguns, because they aren't "military weapons", but private citizens shouldn't have "assault rifles", because they are military weapons.

18. In spite of waiting periods, background checks, finger printing, government forms, etc., guns today are too readily available, which is responsible for recent school shootings. In the 1940's, 1950's and1960's, anyone could buy guns at hardware stores, army surplus stores, gas stations, variety stores, Sears mail order, no waiting, no background check, no fingerprints, no government forms and there were no school shootings.

19. The NRA's attempt to run a "don't touch" campaign about kids handling guns is propaganda, but the anti-gun lobby's attempt to run a "don't touch" campaign is responsible social activity.

20. Guns are so complex that special training is necessary to use them properly, and so simple to use that they make murder easy.

21. A handgun, with up to 4 controls, is far too complex for the typical adult to learn to use, as opposed to an automobile that only has 20.

22. Women are just as intelligent and capable as men but a woman with a gun is "an accident waiting to happen" and gun makers' advertisements aimed at women are "preying on their fears."

23. Ordinary people in the presence of guns turn into slaughtering butchers but revert to normal when the weapon is removed.

24. Guns cause violence, which is why there are so many mass killings at gun shows.

25. A majority of the population supports gun control, just like a majority of the population supported owning slaves.

26. Any self-loading small arm can legitimately be considered to be a "weapon of mass destruction" or an "assault weapon."

27. Most people can't be trusted, so we should have laws against guns, which most people will abide by because they can be trusted.

28. The right of Internet pornographers to exist cannot be questioned because it is constitutionally protected by the Bill of Rights, but the use of handguns for self defense is not really protected by the Bill of Rights.

29. Free speech entitles one to own newspapers, transmitters, computers, and typewriters, but self-defense only justifies bare hands.

30. The ACLU is good because it uncompromisingly defends certain parts of the Constitution, and the NRA is bad, because it defends other parts of the Constitution.

31. Charlton Heston, a movie actor as president of the NRA is a cheap lunatic who should be ignored, but Michael Douglas, a movie actor as a representative of Handgun Control, Inc. is an ambassador for peace who is entitled to an audience at the UN arms control summit.

32. Police operate with backup within groups, which is why they need larger capacity pistol magazines than do "civilians" who must face criminals alone and therefore need less ammunition.

33. We should ban "Saturday Night Specials" and other inexpensive guns because it's not fair that poor people have access to guns too.

34. Private citizens don't need a gun for self-protection because the police are there to protect them even though the Supreme Court says the police are not responsible for their protection.

35. Citizens don't need to carry a gun for personal protection but police chiefs, who are desk-bound administrators who work in a building filled with cops, need a gun.

36. "Assault weapons" have no purpose other than to kill large numbers of people. The police need assault weapons. You do not.

37. Trigger locks do not interfere with the ability to use a gun for defensive purposes, which is why you see police officers with one on their duty weapon.

38. Handgun Control, Inc. says they want to "keep guns out of the wrong hands." Guess what? You have the wrong hands.

At the end of the e-mail, I told them I was a public school history teacher with 17 yrs experience, former LEO, former US Army Officer and a current NRA Instructor.

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