Personally, I still want bullets to fly in specific situations. I'll give you a few examples:
1) I'm on a bus and a gangbanger gets on and starts terrorizing folks with his knife. I try to protect a little old lady and wind up against the bus wall with his knife to my throat and his bad breath in my nose. I would be very grateful if the genteel lady sitting opposite me let a carefully aimed bullet fly.
2) I am on the ground getting stomped by a group of thugs because I was wearing the wrong color when my car broke down in the wrong part of town. I would be very glad if a kind stranger whose car didn't break down at least threatened to let bullets fly (with the will to back it up if necessary), then got me to a hospital when the thugs dispersed.
3) I am lined up against the wall in a bank and the robber has just shot the two hostages next to me. He's smirking as he points his gun at my head. I would very much appreciate a police sniper rendering his brain non-functional before he can pull the trigger.
4) A female friend or relative is accosted by a knife wielding assailant who wants to use her for entertainment. I very much want her to have the ability to meet force with force and shoot to stop him in his tracks if necessary.
I still don't understand how people being armed will help anything.Consider the situations above.
I too once supported severe gun control. I am very idealistic at heart. But I have learned that things are not what they appeared to be as far as gun control is concerned. I know people who have suffered dearly, who once had a very idealistic and unrealistic view of the world.
Violent crime is relatively rare, but it is better to be prepared for an event that never occurs than not be prepared for an event that does occur. Normal people wear seatbelts. Normal people have fire extinguishers. Normal people wear helmets. Normal people keep and carry guns.
The fact that normal people keep and carry guns has a helpful effect in my opinion. Here is some scientific evidence along with a story to support my position:
Scientific Evidence Part 1: Armed civilians fighting back are less likely to be hurtConventional wisdom holds that guns are not useful for self-defense. Defensive gun
ownership is a “dangerous self-delusion,” and groups like Handgun Control, Inc., the Brady Campaign] advise victims who are attacked by a rapist, robber, or other felon
that “the best defense against injury is to put up no defense—give them what they want or
run.”
This conventional wisdom persists only because the definitive contrary facts receive little
or no attention in the popular media. Criminological data and studies have definitively
established that, compared to victims who resisted with a gun, victims who submitted
were injured about twice as often; also, of course, non resisters were much more likely to
be raped or robbed.
Source: Don Kates, introduction to Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control, (New York: Prometheus Books, 2001), 16.
Scientific Evidence Part 2: Evidence strongly suggests that criminals are deterred by the existence of armed citizensThere is direct, albeit not conclusive, evidence on the deterrent effects of victim gun use
from surveys of imprisoned criminals. Wright and Rossi interviewed 1,874 felons in
prisons in ten states and asked about their encounters with armed victims and their
attitudes toward the risks of such encounters. Among felons who reported ever
committing a violent crime or a burglary, 42 percent said they had run into a victim who
was armed with a gun, 38 percent reported they had been scared off, shot at, wounded, or
captured by an armed victim (these were combined in the original survey question), and
43 percent said they had at some time in their lives decided not to commit a crime
because they knew or believed the victim was carrying a gun....
Concerning the felons' attitudes toward armed victims, 56 percent agreed with the
statement that “most criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they
are about running into the police,” 58 percent agreed that “a store owner who is known to
keep a gun on the premises is not going to get robbed very often,” and 52 percent agreed
that “a criminal is not going to mess around with a victim he knows is armed with a gun.”
Only 27 percent agreed that committing a “crime against an armed victim is an exciting
challenge.”
Source: Gary Kleck, “The Nature and Effectiveness of Owning, Carrying, and Using Guns for Self-Protection” in Armed, 319.
Story about people being armed doing goodIn 1966 there were a series of brutal rapes in Orlando Florida. 78 Residents, mostly women, were buying
guns at the rate of two or three hundred a week. The Orlando Sentinel Star strongly disapproved.
Martin Anderson, the publisher, and Emily Bavar, supplement editor, went to the police chief, Carlisle
Johnstone, and insisted that he stop the gun sales.
The chief informed them that handguns were legal in Orlando. Since they couldn‟t achieve their ideal—
disarmament—they decided to teach the ladies to shoot and safely handle guns. The police and newspaper
cosponsored a training program, and the paper ran a front page story announcing the time and date.
...newspaper personnel and police made preparations for as many as four to five hundred
women. To everyone‟s utter amazement, more than twenty-five hundred women showed
up, carrying every type of firearm under the sun, some loaded and some unloaded. Knox
talked to one officer who was there who said he had never been so scared in his life.
Apparently the cars were parked blocks away from the park, and the women were
walking all over the place armed to their teeth. Some had their guns holstered, others had
them in their purses or pockets, and the rest had them in their hands....{79}
Not being prepared for such numbers, the officers sent the women home and regrouped. They set up three
classes per week. In five months, they taught more than six thousand women.
The results should interest anyone responsible for gun policy. Chief Johnstone expected a “tremendous
deterrent effect.” He was right:
the rape rate in Orlando, Florida fell from a 1966 level of thirty-six to only four in
1967. Before the training, rape had been increasing in Orlando, as it was nationwide.
Five years later, rape was still significantly below the preprogram level, even though,
during the five years after the training, rape climbed 308 percent in the surrounding
Orlando metropolitan area, the Florida rate escalated by 64 percent.
Another result of the Orlando training is that, while most other crimes escalated or
remained steady in Orlando in 1967, violent assault and burglary decreased by 25 percent
each, making Orlando the only American city of more than an hundred thousand in
population in which crime declined in 1967.
Source: my open letter to Obama at www.obamaonsecond.com
I found, in learning about the Second Amendment, gun laws and history, that it was helpful to examine the very best arguments from the opposing camps. The best arguments are not found on the nightly news or in most of the advocacy sites online, but in historical, criminological and legal books and articles.
In all modesty, I think I have assembled and presented some good arguments in my open letter cited above. I also highly commend to you a brief by police instructors--officers and professionals who teach police officers to do their job--on the uselessness of handgun prohibition. The brief is highly informative and will no doubt surprise you. It is a friend of the court brief to the Supreme court on the pending Chicago case and is available here
http://www.chicagoguncase.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/08-1521tsacileeta.pdf .
I admire your idealism and your goals. In reading your posts thus far, however, I see that you are unaware of many facts--counterintuitive and difficult facts, perhaps, but facts nonetheless. You are also unaware of many of the best arguments for gun rights.
Even if you continue to support banning handguns, you will be a better advocate if you are aware of the strongest facts and arguments used by those who support handgun ownership.
PS: and my point wasn't merely that crime went down in the District and the US, it was that CRIME WENT DOWN AS THE NUMBER OF GUNS IN CIVILIAN HANDS, THE NUMBER OF CONCEALED CARRY PERMITS, AND THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE ABLE TO LEGALLY DEFEND THEMSELVES IN MORE SITUATIONS
INCREASED. That flies directly in the face of the common contention that more guns and more liberal gun rights lead directly and inevitably to more violent crime--"blood in the streets."
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