"
Laws designed to keep guns away from criminals, domestic abusers, drug addicts and others have been thwarted..."
Thwarted by leftists mostly. As in their opposition to the death penalty, three strikes and you're out, severe prison terms/punishment of habitual offenders and unwillingness to "label" or profile the known mentally ill.
*Most firearms used in crimes are stolen. Hence the offender is was and never will be subject to a background check. Of any kind.
*Background checks even when done rarely prevent gun abuse. Recent Examples: The Newtown shooter stole his weapons from his mom. Who had passed the required background check. The Navy yard shooter had just passed a federal background check only months before his rampage.
"But the death and injury toll from guns is large, and the logic of resistance to safety improvements is small...."
Flight Safety International has a advertising slogan that reads something like this. "The best aircraft safety device is a well trained pilot"
Proper firearms training of everyone in a household with firearms would be more effective in preventing accidents than unproven technologies that don't wear well in a violent recoil environment. Now let me see, who is it that opposes giving children gun safety training? Oh yeah, the same bunch that wants children to get birth control without parental consent, that's who.
"John D. Williams underestimated his fellow citizens' appreciation of life. So does the NRA."
Cry me a river. In 1997 a criminologist estimated that nearly 7,000 crimes were thwarted by legal gun owners every day in this country alone.
Do the math. Take out drug/gang gun murders and we easily have far more people being saved by legal firearm ownership than what are injured or killed by gun accidents.
Trivia:
1 in 50 or 2% of private citizen self defense shootings result in an innocent bystander being shot.
1 in 10, 11% of police shootings result in an innocent bystander being shot - BY THE POLICE.
