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.
Worse than a person who uses a gun to agress against another is the person who uses "government" to agress againt others. That's what these gun control people are doing. They don't have guts enough to do the job themselves... they enlist government to do it for them.
The Hitler administration had a pretty good plan. You could study that one.
Read post 118 and go away. You argue like a John Kerry democrat.
""Using the same logic:
There's only one way to stop teen pregnancy:
Ban Penises.""
I think the feminazis are working on it.
Most of her "facts" aren't facts at all. For one thing, she compares legal and illegal homicides rates in an attempt to show that self-defense isn't a reason to own handguns. But the fact is that most gun defenses do not involve the discharge of the weapon; let alone casualties. Firearms are used ~2 million times each year in the US to halt crimes. In the vast majority of those cases, the intended victim merely brandishes the gun, causing the criminal to turn tail and run.
If this author were really interested in saving lives, then there are other areas where she could direct her attention. A quick look at Mike Haas' Life/Death Clock shows that one particular segment of the population deserves scrutiny; however, that group, which kills nearly 200,000 Americans each year, is already heavily regulated and licensed.
This remarkable double murder by an elderly woman has had no news coverage for the last 5 years.
I think this has less to do with gun control, and more to do with women, generally speaking, wanting to do anything other than place personal responsibility where it belongs.
Let's not blame crazy Mommy. Let's sue the handgun manufacturer. Part of me, were I a CEO of a handgun company, would want to reply to such a suit with, "What are you suing me for, the gun worked as advertised."
This probably releases her from admitting her brother may have been part of the problem that caused her to act.
He's missing the point. His brother and sister-in-law-to-be should have been armed themselves. Presumably they both knew that the mother had been angry about being forced to move out. She could have chosen arson, stabbing, poisoning, bludgeoning, or other methods to do in the people she wanted to do in, and they'd be just as dead as they are now. Guns aren't uniquely deadly, but naive assumptions that one doesn't need to be prepared to defend oneself effectively are VERY deadly.
The right is to bear arms. Why is the focus always on guns? I should be allowed the right to carry whatever weapon I need.
If I felt the need to, shouldn't I be allowed to carry nunchukas, or a longsword?
I am asking because I want serious feedback, not to upset anyone.
Well, let's look at her stupid and illformed lying "logic". She says, and I doubt her statistics, but if we go by her numbers, that 160 gun deaths a year are self-defense. She said there are 12,000 deaths a year. And she said that "most" of the gun deaths are by legally owned guns. Yet, she turned around and said that legal handguns used in deaths are 7 times more likely to be murder than self-defense. Hmmmm. That means a total of 1040 deaths by legal handguns. Leaving nearly 11 times that of ILLEGAL guns. And we're going to defend ourselves from those people who will own the guns whether they're illegal or not, how?
She's a liar. Plain and simple.
Paul
There are some who would think that is a GREAT idea.
They should think about making murder illegal!
The only way to ban crime is to ban people who ban guns!!What should be told to all liberals is you are small in number and therefore don't count so shut the hel* up!!
Dumbasses! The only way to stop crime would be to be better-armed than the criminals. Pretty soon there would be a shortage of criminals. Gun control is usually spouted by someone who has never been mugged or raped.
These guns are designed to kill people.
That was the only line in the whole article that was correct. I am also against "safer bullets" that were advocated by Jocylyn Elders of the Clinton Administration.
"From my cold dead hands!"
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