So following the "more guns!" strategy will increase the number of criminal homicides involving firearms...Therefore, increasing the number of firearms in the good people's supply will increase the number of firearms in the bad people's supply...
So following the "more guns!" strategy will increase the number of criminal homicides involving firearms...Therefore, increasing the number of firearms in the good people's supply will increase the number of firearms in the bad people's supply...
A future can be imagined where "more guns!" has put guns in the hands of practically all the good people, and where it would be practically impossible for a bad person to kill nine in one incident, but...So following the "more guns!" strategy will increase the number of criminal homicides involving firearms...
It will be a future where even more bad people have firearms, and while they'll be unable to kill more than one or two (before they're killed by the good people), the net number of criminal homicides in America will be larger than today.A future can be imagined where "more guns!" has put guns in the hands of practically all the good people, and where it would be practically impossible for a bad person to kill nine in one incident, but...
I'm sure you saw this:
Contrary to what the gun lobby argues, personal firearms in the United States are rarely used for self-defense, a gun control advocacy group said Wednesday.
In an analysis of FBI and other federal government data, the non-profit Violence Policy Center said Americans are far more likely to hurt themselves or others when handling a lethal weapon.
In 2012, it said, only 259 “justifiable homicides” involving a private citizen were reported, compared to 8,342 criminal homicides committed with a gun.
Put another way, for every justifiable homicide involving a gun, 32 criminal homicides carried out with a firearm occurred. And that does not take into account “tens of thousands” of gun-related suicides and unintentional shootings.
The influential National Rifle Association contends that “guns are necessary for self-defence,” said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center in Washington.
“But this gun industry propaganda has no basis in fact,” he said in a statement.
I saw it, but had two problems with leading with it. One, the study was done by an advocacy group. Two, it does not directly demonstrate that "more guns!" won't work, one could argue that the good people are still too lightly armed.
One would not, however, expect the NRA to conduct such a study. To the contrary they've made every effort to keep the findings of such studies under wraps.
As for being "too lightly armed":
An NRA board member blamed Pastor Clementa Pinckney, one of the victims of Dylann Storm Roof, for his own death, claiming that his opposition to a bill that would have allowed individuals to carry concealed weapons in churches is the reason Roof was able to murder nine people Wednesday night, ThinkProgress’s Jedd Legumreports.
In a post on a Texas firearms forum, NRA board member Charles Cotton wrote that Senator Pinckney “voted against concealed-carry. Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead.”
“Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue,” he concluded.
The bill to which Cotton refers would not only have allowed individuals to carry concealed weapons in churches, but restaurants and day-care centers as well.
As a state senator, Pinckney not only opposed that bill, he supported bills calling for even stricter background checks on gun purchasers — not that that would have prevented Roof from acquiring the weapon he used to attack the pastor and his congregants, which had been given to him as a birthday present from his father.