Gun Discussion

I own a rifle and a pistol. While I am in favor of stricter gun laws, I do not want to outlaw guns.

Like some 74% of Americans, I am not in favor of banning handguns. I don’t think that banning handguns would work. First, we have too many handguns already in circulation to make a ban feasible. Second, I see valid needs of individuals to own handguns, for sport, for personal protection, and for hunting.

 I do believe, like 92% of the American people, that we need stricter background checks on people purchasing guns. Right now, even a felon can walk into a gun show, hand over cash, and walk out with a gun. Right now, a suspected terrorist, who we won’t allow to fly on an airplane, we will nonetheless allow to legally buy a gun. Someone with a history of mental illness, can go to a licensed dealer and buy a gun or ammunition, as long as he or she has not previously been committed. To me, there is something wrong with that.

As with 62% of Americans, I am in favor of banning high capacity magazines. Adam Lanza fired 154 rounds in three minutes, because he did not have to stop often to change magazines. The Aurora theatre movie shooter killed 12 and wounded 58, and would have killed more if the gun with its 100 round magazine had not jammed. Seriously, I would like to know what sporting purpose is served by a 100 round magazine.

I am in favor of banning military style rifles – what has been called assault rifles. How often, either in hunting or personal protection, is an assault rifle markedly superior to a standard pistol or rifle? I’ve been deer hunting, and if I can’t kill a deer with 2 or 3 shots, then ten shots in as many seconds probably won’t do it either. I have not faced either, but I can imagine that a charging bear or boar could be dangerous and intimidating, but 5 to 10 shots from a decent rifle will do about as well in the vast majority of instances as an assault rifle with a 30 round magazine.

The gun aficionados have a new poster child, in the form of a sweet faced 16 year old girl, who talks about her gun training, and her shooting skill, and how that shooting skill won her college scholarship offers. I am happy for the young lady, and do not begrudge her either her training or her gun ownership. However she contends that stricter gun laws would have made that impossible. How? If all we do is what I have recommended, she could still get her training, she could still hone her marksmanship, and she could still likely get her shooting scholarship. Seriously, do you think the scholarship is based on firing 154 shots in three minutes? I suspect the scholarship is based on her ability to hit the target a very high percentage of the time, which has nothing whatsoever to do with assault rifle ownership, using high capacity magazines, or having background checks on purchasers of guns or ammunition.

The girl talks about how the same week as Adam Lanza killed 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary, that someone walked into a Chinese school and stabbed over 20 children. That is quite true, but what she omitted was that everyone Adam Lanza shot, died, while everyone the Chinese man stabbed, lived. Let me give you a scenario – you have a choice, you must go through one of two doors. On the other side of one door is Adam Lanza with a Bushmaster and high capacity magazines. Through the other door is the Chinese knife assailant. Both will try to kill you if you come into the room where they are. Which door would you choose? Call me crazy, but I’ll take my chances with ‘knife guy’ – any day. Two reasons, first for him to stab me, he has to get close enough where I could get my hands on him. Second, I have a far better chance of surviving being stabbed than being shot – the evidence being the Chinese attacks versus Sandy Hook.

The young lady talks about how often people are assaulted and killed by weapons other than guns. True, but the Journal of Trauma did a six year study of injury admissions in Seattle hospitals. “The mortality rate for gunshot wounds was 22% while that for stab wounds was 4%. Even among patients that survived, gunshot wounds were more serious…” and “...other studies mostly looked at equivalent wounds in equivalent locations. Without exception, gunshot wounds were more serious and more likely to lead to death.”

Our young gun lover repeats the old maxim, ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’. No kidding. Why do you think people like me want more background checks on gun buyers? We need more background checks to minimize the number of felons and mentally unstable people who have easy access to guns. Most of us are not interested in keeping guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens – apart from the aforementioned assault weapons. She also talks about how gun laws would make it very expensive for poor people in crime ridden neighborhoods to buy guns to protect themselves. Why would background checks, assault weapon bans, and high capacity magazine bans push up the cost of a .22 pistol, for instance? We are not talking about making ordinary pistols and rifles unavailable or even significantly harder to get, except for criminals or the mentally ill. Licensed gun dealers already have to conduct these background checks, and it does not seem to have materially pushed up prices through them. I suppose if they don’t sell as many assault rifles, their profits will be down a bit, but they seemed to survive nicely during the previous assault rifle ban.

Our petite spokesperson says that only 1% of gun deaths in the United States are committed with assault rifles. Probably true, but in mass shootings, some 28% involve assault weapons, and when assault weapons were used the death toll was significantly higher – 8.3 deaths for mass shootings with assault weapons versus 5.4 deaths for mass shootings with other guns. Assault weapons are demonstrably deadlier than other types of guns, and guns are demonstrably deadlier than other types of weapons.

The young woman talks about the sacredness of the constitution and its guarantee of the right to bear arms. It is arguable as to the meaning of the Second Amendment, but even if we take it as guaranteeing any law abiding citizen the right to weapons, that right is not unlimited. Machine guns have long been legally banned, and the previous assault weapons ban was found to be constitutional. The right to bear arms clearly does not mean the right to own any weapon one chooses.

Our pretty shooter was claimed to have demolished the arguments of those proposing gun controls, but her arguments have holes that I could drive a Hummer through.

I heard a story from another gun proponent about a mother whose home was invaded. She took her children and went to the attic, only to have the criminal follow. She shot him 5 times, after which he left the house and was captured later, wounded, but still quite healthy. The argument was that the woman needed a weapon with a high capacity magazine because she would have been safer if she could have fired more shots. First, the proposed laws allow up to ten shot capacity, twice what she used. Second, what the woman needed was not a higher capacity magazine, but training on how to aim and fire the gun. If she fired five times and only wounded him, she is a lousy shot – her aim is the problem not her weapon capacity. If my family is in danger and I fire five times at the perpetrator, they will be taking him out in a hearse, and it has been many years since I took target practice. As I said, I have guns. I am also willing to use them if need be, though only as a last resort.