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Another View: There's only one way to stop gun crime: ban handguns
New Hampshire Union Leader ^ | December 28, 2005 | JENNY PRICE

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.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: New Hampshire
KEYWORDS: banglist; guncontrol; jennyprice; liberals; politics
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To: Beagle8U
I don't wish for any guns to be banned, or hand grenades for that matter, well, ......, see where this can go.

Guns are good, a government of the governed is better, but one needs guns to maintain that equilibrium of power.

So then, we have a complicated issue, what guns (weapons) to ban and those not to ban.

That is the dilemma or the problem, and what other than guns keeps tyranny from being imposed on us? That must be part of the equation, free speech (why did GWB sign the CFR bill into law?) wire taps, taxation, and liberty and freedom in general. Guns are part of the whole. A big part for many, but we must consider all to make the ownership of guns possible and consequential.
161 posted on 12/28/2005 2:23:10 PM PST by Final Authority
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To: armymarinedad
So why did Mom kill them?

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.

162 posted on 12/28/2005 2:24:59 PM PST by Plutarch
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To: flrepublican

and the Aussies....


163 posted on 12/28/2005 2:25:19 PM PST by demkicker
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To: Exton1

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.


164 posted on 12/28/2005 2:27:55 PM PST by amxfan2002 ("Over, Macho Grande??....I'll never be over Macho Grande!!")
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To: Erik Latranyi
Every country that has banned firearms has witnesses an increase in violence.

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.

165 posted on 12/28/2005 2:29:24 PM PST by demkicker
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To: Final Authority
"I don't wish for any guns to be banned, or hand grenades for that matter, well, ......, see where this can go."

Nor do I.

"So then, we have a complicated issue, what guns (weapons) to ban and those not to ban."

?? You posted both of those statements in the same post.

I am forced to conclude that you are making about as much sense as "lug-nuts on a birthday cake"
166 posted on 12/28/2005 2:38:04 PM PST by Beagle8U (An "Earth First" kinda guy ( when we finish logging here, we'll start on the other planets.)
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To: Final Authority; Joe Brower; ExSoldier; wardaddy; Travis McGee; Jeff Head; PoorMuttly; Lurker; ...
Well will criminals or those intent on killing someone follow the law passed tomorrow against it ? They sure didn't follow the laws passed yesterday against it now did they.......why does one spose the same old approach will stop it .

Hasn't stopped it in other parts of the world where total bans have been imposed. The solution is to allow folks to defend themselves . The Polly Anna approach to keeping the whole world safe is a pipe dream. Draconian measures of punishment for those that take a life in a manner not determined to be self defense is the single solution to "reduce" such lackadaisical free for all killings by the punk populace that polidiots pander to....

For anyone to think that removing one germ will keep all disease free is as laughable as this attempt to remove the guns to keep all from being murdered......

Just my opinion of course......
167 posted on 12/28/2005 2:38:25 PM PST by Squantos (Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet. ©)
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To: Final Authority

Why is the Union Leader publishing this totalitarian crap? It used to be a Conservative paper.


168 posted on 12/28/2005 2:44:52 PM PST by 230FMJ (...from my cold, dead, fingers.)
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To: Plutarch

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.

169 posted on 12/28/2005 2:45:40 PM PST by armymarinedad (Never let a peacenik go unchallenged.3) And then they are the first to cry "help" when crime rates s)
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To: Final Authority
"Then she shot and killed her daughter and her daughter's fiance - my brother David.

That's where I stopped reading...I could see right now this woman is dancing the Cindy Sheehan tune; a pity-party in 3/4 time.

Everything in this country that is being taken away, from gun rights to Christmas, is due to those self-pitiful beings who can't handle the trials and tribulations of life without a "group" to share his/her pain.

I'm sorry her brother was killed, but there must have been some unlying reasons other than there was a gun available. The gun wasn't born to shoot every human it encounters...it always takes another human with less than honorable intentions to control the gun.

But let's take the whiners' points a step further; Cindy Sheehan, let's stop having wars and just wait for the bad guys to come over the kill us all.

Let's ban cars and there won't be anymore traffic accidents.

Let's ban knives and no one will ever be cut again.

Ban matches and all forms of fire, and no one will ever die in a fire again.

Ground all the airplanes and there will be no crashes.

Oh...but wait...if we ban all that, then there will be no....oh should I even say it???? LAWSUITS. What will those poor lawyers do? No asbestos, no cigarettes, no rear-enders....the lawyers might actually have to get a job...other than the "extortion-light" racket they're already in.

But I digress; let me get back on track...Let's see now....er....my Father died of a staph infection...I think we should ban surgery.

My dog was run over by a log truck...let's ban logs and trucks.

Ok...rant off, I'm just so tired to the attention-starved people out there who think the world should be tailored to their whims and wants, I could puke. Political Correctness needs to be outlawed...and then maybe everything else would fall back into place.

To all the PC'ers out there...one final thought....YOU CAN'T PUSH A ROPE.
170 posted on 12/28/2005 2:50:32 PM PST by FrankR (Don't let the bastards wear you down...)
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To: Beagle8U
Do you really wish that you or I could and thereby, should, possess a live nuclear weapon? Should I have a 50 caliber machine gun nest in my front yard? Should I keep a RPG or SAM in my car just in case I have to defend myself?

That is the sense of my first sentence. I don't want anything to be banned but reasonable people have to act and agree to do reasonable things.

So, although I wish there to be no laws banning weapons, reasonable people doing reasonable things, see the need to keep things reasonable, so what you referred to as conflicting statements, weren't.

With respect to lug nuts on a birthday cake, I have never seen it or experienced it, but, I guess, it takes one to know one.
171 posted on 12/28/2005 2:55:02 PM PST by Final Authority
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To: ExSoldier

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.


172 posted on 12/28/2005 2:59:39 PM PST by BorisTheBulletDodger (Have no fear of any man no matter what his sizeWhen danger threatens call on me and I shall equalize)
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To: Beagle8U
I replied to your reply without considering that you never got past the banning part of the post. If you read the entire post you would have understood my support of public gun ownership, but apparently, my first sentence threw you for a loop in the thought process. If you did not get it, I attempted to simplify the concept of taking a question or a problem to the extremes of possibilities, then considering whether or not the construct is desirable. If it isn't reasonable, then, reasonable people must consider a reasoned approach.
173 posted on 12/28/2005 3:01:57 PM PST by Final Authority
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To: Final Authority

Come and get my gun. I want you to try.


174 posted on 12/28/2005 3:03:35 PM PST by MAWG (In the shadows, on permanent ambush duty.)
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To: MAWG
Is your reply supposed to be funny, as in, makes me laugh?

Have you actually read (I suppose you can) a post on this thread that I authored? Where do you get the idea that I would want to confiscate your gun? To the contrary, assuming you are of right mind and never have been a felon, I want you to have and keep one or even many. On second thought, based on your post............
175 posted on 12/28/2005 3:08:09 PM PST by Final Authority
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To: Final Authority

I just wanted to get your response and I did. VERY interesting and revealing.


176 posted on 12/28/2005 3:10:24 PM PST by MAWG (In the shadows, on permanent ambush duty.)
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To: Final Authority; wbill; spacewarp
Are the facts correct is one thing I would ask?

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.

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.

And:
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.

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.

And:
Justifiable homicides number around 1500-2000 per year. Sources:
# 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.
And:
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).
-- Page 84 of the Uniform Crime Reporting National Incident-Based Reporting System Volume 4 Error Message Manual
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.

And, 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.

177 posted on 12/28/2005 3:17:07 PM PST by Ichneumon
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To: Final Authority
Bombs, grenades, etc., have been banned for many years, so that kind of thinking shouldn't be an issue in the debate of gun control. Its just a silly straw man.

In my opinion on guns...

Everyone, every man,woman,and child over the age of 14 should be required to own and carry guns at all times.
We have plenty of laws on the books now, that is the only one I can think of adding that would be meaningful in fighting crime.

We don't even need laws requiring training classes.
Classes are available now, the Darwin award types too stupid to learn would shoot themselves saving everyone time and money without need for anymore laws.
178 posted on 12/28/2005 3:19:40 PM PST by Beagle8U (An "Earth First" kinda guy ( when we finish logging here, we'll start on the other planets.)
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To: Ichneumon

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.


179 posted on 12/28/2005 3:21:41 PM PST by 230FMJ (...from my cold, dead, fingers.)
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To: mylife
actually...they can't even get their lies straight: 22 Times Less Safe? Anti-Gun Lobby's Favorite Spin Re-Attacks Guns In The Home http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=119
180 posted on 12/28/2005 3:28:53 PM PST by Rakkasan1 (Peace de Resistance! Viva la Paper towels!)
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