Posted on 12/28/2005 12:06:11 PM PST by Final Authority
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.
That would probably be mentioned in the news articles describing this remarkable murder. I've searched, the LA Times, Google, and Lexis-Nexis and can't find any murders that fit her description.
and the Aussies....
Actually, guns are not designed to kill people. Guns are designed launch a projectile at a very high rate of speed. The killing of people is where the human factor enters the picture.
Why?
Because, like drugs, guns can be smuggled easily the only ones who disarm are the 'law abiding' citizens, leaving the criminals at a distinct advantage.
Why is the Union Leader publishing this totalitarian crap? It used to be a Conservative paper.
Then she shot and killed her daughter and her daughter's fiance - my brother David.
I don't think you would find a news article saying any murder was caused from a liberal mindset.
hahaha that list is awesome!
there should be a thing in there about how Americans who hunt with firearms tend to donate more to the preservation of national forests/wild life reserves and national parks than any other environmentalist group.
This whole gun debate thing is about control and it should be compared to censorship. The Nazis banned guns and they also banned certain books. If you change "guns" to "books" then those who are argueing stricter gun control sound silly. There are reasons we have the first and second amendments. They are to protect us from those who wish to control us.
Come and get my gun. I want you to try.
I just wanted to get your response and I did. VERY interesting and revealing.
No, they aren't, and in fact they're presented in a way as to be maximally misleading.
For example, she says, "Of the 12,000 guns used to kill people every year, 160 are used in legitimate self-defense."
This "statistic" is taken from the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Reports, and is NOT an actual tally of the total number of justified self defense incidents with a firearm. It's the number of firearm *deaths* (most defensive uses of a firearm do *not* result in the death of the perp) which were IMMEDIATELY determined (by the cops at the scene) as being so overwhelmingly clear as to not even require any kind of arrest or further examination in order to be determined "self defense", case closed. Needless to say, this is a very small percentage of total "perps killed" cases -- usually the cops prefer to have a grand jury check it over to be sure.
Here are some older posts of mine on that subject:
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, in 1992 there were only 262 justifiable handgun homicides compared with a total of 13,220 handgun murders in the United States.And:Also according to the FBI UCR, that number is *not* the total number of justifiable handgun homicides. Again, Albert seems to be getting his half-truths from HCI, which is fond of leaving out the significant parts of the information they misleadingly present. The actual figure is in the thousands. The number in the FBI UCR is *only* those homicides which were *immediately* judged to be justifiable, *and* which the police bothered to properly record and then send to the FBI. As it turns out, most such homicides are sent to grand juries or the courts to be examined in greater detail (which makes good sense), and many police departments don't have the time or inclination to keep the FBI up to date on such things.
Furthermore, please explain to me why you're only counting the number of attackers *killed*, please? Surely you must understand (well, maybe you don't) that the aim of defending oneself with a handgun is *not* to kill the attacker, but to simply halt the attack? Most folks who are attacked would rather *not* kill anyone, as it turns out.Fortunately, just showing the handgun is almost always (about 99% of the time) sufficient to halt the attack, for the excellent reason that most attackers aren't suicidal enough to continue to attack someone who's armed with a gun.
Counting *all* successful handgun defenses, not just those in which the attacker is shot and killed, gives a much more sensible view of the effectiveness of handguns as a self defense tool. That number is in the hundreds of thousands, but you'll never hear Albert, nor his sources at HCI, mention that. You'll also never hear them mention the FBI figures that show that employing a gun as defense against robbery or assault is *the* most effective form of self defense, including cooperating with the criminal.
The DoJ figures are way too low because they rely solely on the basis of how they were classified by the initial police investigation. Unfortunately, the majority of self defense homicides are referred to the DA or the courts for further examination, and are only later declared justifiable homicide. The DoJ figures miss all these.And:For example, Time Magazine's July 17, 1989 cover story on a week of gun deaths reported that only 3% of the homicides were self-defense. However, in a May 14, 1990 follow-up story, they reported that 12% of the homicides had eventually been ruled self defense. It's almost a certainty that even more were still pending decisions -- one year is quite often not enough time for the wheels of justice to turn.
Justifiable homicides number around 1500-2000 per year. Sources:And:
# Bensing and Schroeder (1960): 19.5% of homicides found to be self defense.
# Wolfgang (1958) : 1.6%(?) of homicides found to be self defense.
# Rushforth, et al (1977) : 10.1% of homicides found to be self defense.
# Dietz (1983) : 13.0% of homicides found to be self defense.
# Wilbanks (1984) : 13.1% of homicides found to be self defense.
Al, once again, fails to note that the FBI number counts *only* justifiable homicides that are counted as such *on the spot*, and ignores *all* that are later judged in court to be justifiable (or excusable) homicides.Someone's bound to ask for documentation for that, so allow me:
49. NO ARRESTEE RECORDS ARE PERMITTED FOR A JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE Group ôAö Incident Reports cannot have arrests when Data Element 6 (UCR Offense Code) is 09C = Justifiable Homicide. By definition a justifiable homicide never involves an arrest of the offender (the person who committed the justifiable homicide).Note that this manual, which is part of the instruction manual for the computer system by which police agencies report incidents to the FBI for inclusion in the Uniform Crime Report, specifically says that "BY DEFINITION", a justifiable homicide as tallied by the FBI's UCR (and parroted by Albert) DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY INCIDENT IN WHICH THE SHOOTER WAS ARRESTED, no matter what the ultimate outcome before the grand jury or a court of law. In fact, if the shooter *is* arrested, the computer will reject any attempt to mark the incident as a justifiable homicide -- note that the above passage from the Error Message Manual is explaining why an attempt to do so will cause the computer to reject the attempt, and produce the cited error message.
-- Page 84 of the Uniform Crime Reporting National Incident-Based Reporting System Volume 4 Error Message ManualAnd, as we all know, *most* shootings involve an arrest no matter how clear the circumstances, because it's not up to the police to single-handedly determine guilt or innocence in a serious matter like the killing of one person by another -- that's almost always left up to the grand jury, and/or the courts.
For example, a number of years ago Mr. Hale shot Mr. Tavai in a well-publicized shooting up near Dallas. Despite the fact that Hale was clearly defending himself (the much larger Tavai was beating the hell out of Hale's head while Hale was helplessly strapped into his parked car), Hale was arrested and charged with murder, specifically so that a grand jury would be able to examine all of the facts. They did, and they no-billed him, on the grounds that his shooting of Tavai was justifiable self defense. The FBI's UCR would not have included this incident in their tally of "justifiable homicides by a private citizen".
Guns in the home are used seven times more often for murder than for self-defense.
Again, this only counts self-defense incidents which resulted in the DEATH of the attacker -- a very small subset of the total.
HCI and other gun-control-nuts have been making this "mistake" for over ten years (the above posts are from the early 1990's), so they've had plenty of time to be informed that they're being grossly misleading. The fact that they continue to use these twisted, carefully selected, not-the-whole-picture factoids after all this time clearly indicates that they *know* they're twisting the facts, and use them anyway. In other words, they're knowingly lying.
The title of the article at the top of this thread starts with "Another View". I have "another view" for those who think the Second Ammendment is thiers to trample on. That view is down a pipe which is .451 in diameter, and if you look real close you can see the copper dome at the other end.
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