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.
Around here they are -- hundreds in the last year alone.
At least the victims can know that they were "safely" murdered.
Yep. The issue isn't about gun control. It's about people control. But it's easier to spin and emotionalize gun control.
I google david price as well, with no results
See my reply #76
Indeed. Those want to violate murder statutes would of course be compelled to obey laws banning handguns.
Shew. Some people are just beyond stupid.
Jenny Price appears to be an LA based writer. I found this list of articles where she is credited with writing an anti-gun article in 1998, apparently two years before this alleged tragedy;
http://www.vpc.org/studies/wgun980324.htm
Gun control is a totalitarian mindset. Anyone who wants to rule a people by force, first needs to remove from the people the ability to defend themselves. This was true in feudal societies. It was true in Nazi Germany and the USSR. It's still true in Africa, NK, China, and the Fourth Reich European Union. Either defend your right to keep and bear arms in order to protect yourself, or just put your chains on and obey.
An elderly woman killing her daughter and daughter's boyfriend. That is the type of man-bites-dog story that makes news.
A google search of "Jenny Price" + handgun comes up with this blog, which identifies the brother as David Price . The story has, however, the fiance killing David Price, not the elderly mother.
A Google of "David Price" + murder, or fiance turns up nothing.
See my reply #76
Where's the author's source for this stat? Or is it the "87% of all Statistics are made up on the spot" type?
See my reply #76
You are spot on with your moral arguments. The right of self-defense is unalienable. There is a great book on the subject of the history of the Second Amendment....The Second Amendment Primer by Les Adams. I highly recommend it to the "chior" and to the unwashed.
Did you run for president last go around?
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No I didn't run for President, I just help the winners get elected.
Hmmmm.
Jennys article doesnt pass the smell test.
You dont suppose she would make it up do ya?
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