Last update: 07/09/2001
Email: JoeH@turbonet.com
Index of pages.
The January 16 2000 issue of The Sunday Times of London has an article of great interest. It's about the rise of killings in the UK as 3 million illegal guns flood Britian. Some snippets:
Research suggests that in some areas a third of young criminals, classed as those aged 15 to 25 with convictions, own or have access to guns ranging from Beretta sub-machineguns to Luger pistols, which can be bought from underworld dealers for as little as £200.
"There is a move from the pistol and the shotgun to automatic weapons," said Detective Superintendent Keith Hudson, of the national crime squad. "We are recovering weapons that are relatively new - and sometimes still in their boxes - from eastern European countries."
Anti-gun campaigners hoped the handgun ban after Dunblane - where Thomas Hamilton shot dead 16 children and a teacher - would reduce firearm crime. The latest figures, however, show crime involving weapons is on the increase.
If someone says that guns are more dangerous than useful (for example the tired old 43:1 statistic) then suggest they push laws to ban the poor or minorities from owning guns since they are more frequently the victims (and perpetrators) of firearms violence.
Or suggest banning the police from carrying firearms.
THE ONLY QUESTION ABOUT GUN REGISTRATION
by Alan Korwin
Dear Editor,
Only one thing is overlooked in the common sense proposals to register guns, so here it is. How exactly would writing down my name, or your name, help arrest criminals or make you safer? Although at first blush, gun listing has a sort of tantalizing appeal, on reflection you have to wonder whether gun lists would be an instrument of crime control at all.
The unfortunate answer is that, no matter how good it feels when the words first pass your ears, registering honest gun owners doesn't stop criminals, and in fact focuses in exactly the opposite direction. It is an allocation of resources that has no chance of achieving its goal, if that goal is the reduction of crime.
1. Registering 70 million American households is extremely expensive.
Do you know what it takes to run a database that big? You need 19,000 changes daily, just to keep up with people who move every ten years. Floor after floor of cubicle after cubicle for employees with permanent jobs, payroll, parking and dry cleaning bills. It's a federal jobs program all by itself, all in the common sense -- but deceptive name -- of stopping crime. How many criminals do you figure will register when all is said and done? That's right, none, and the planners know that. All that money and time, invested on tracking the innocent.
2. Americans who fail to register would become felons without committing a crime.
Under registration, activity that is a common practice and has been perfectly legal since inception makes you a felon. Think about that.
Possession of private property would subject you to felony arrest, if the property isn't on the government's master list. Boy, that doesn't sound like the American way. No other evil is needed, there is no victim and no inherent criminal act takes place.
3. Registration, if enacted, will create an underground market for unregistered guns bigger than the drug trade.
How many times must an elite forbid what the public wants, before learning the unintended consequences of outlawing liberties? People get what they want either way, it's just a question of how much crime the government itself forces to accompany it. With respect to guns, the last thing you want to encourage is the creative import programs and price supports that drug dealers enjoy, for gun runners.
4. People have said to me, "But Alan, if all guns were registered and there was a crime, then you could tell."
Tell what? If your neighbor is shot, that's not probable cause to search everyone with a matching caliber in a ten-block radius. The evidence needed to conclusively link a person to a crime has no connection at all to a registration plan -- police aren't waiting for official lists so they can start catching murderers. Gun registration schemes lack a crime prevention component.
5. You don't really think authorities would use gun registration lists to confiscate weapons from people, do you?
Despite current examples of exactly that in New York and California, and global history for the past century, this couldn't really happen, do you think? Who would even support such a thing in a country like America, with its Bill of Rights? The guarantees against confiscating property, unwarranted seizures and the right to keep and bear arms would surely forestall any such abuse of power.
And what about the so-called First Amendment test? If it's OK for arms it must pass muster for words too. Why would an honest writer object to being on the government list of approved writers? Why indeed.
Pile logic on logic, some people just feel the government should register everything, just to keep control. When government has that much control, you no longer possess your liberties. You're living where government lists define who can do what, and where people control trumps crime control -- the gun registration model precisely.
I might favor registration if the system would include criminals. In fact, I'd favor testing the system on them first. But the U.S. Supreme Court, in a widely known case (Haynes v. U.S., 1968), has already determined that a felon who has a gun cannot be compelled to complete such forms, because it violates the Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination. That's right, registration -- not in your case of course but in the case of a criminal -- is a self-indictment of a crime, and is therefore prohibited.
Gun listing is a feel-good deception that passes unquestioned by the media, engorges the federal bureaucracy, and undercuts the linchpins of American freedoms. It has no more place in a free society than a government authorized list of words, and should be rejected outright. Elected officials who promote such a scheme are opposing the very Constitution they take an oath to preserve, protect and defend, and deserve to be removed from office.
Sincerely,
Alan Korwin, Author
Gun Laws of America
Alan Korwin is the author seven books on gun law, and can be reached at gunlaws.com.
From a discussion about the article at: http://www.omaha.com/Omaha/OWH/StoryViewer/1,3153,276595,00.html
In response to someone that said:
I also believe in punishing the owners of guns used in violent crime. If your gun is used by someone else in a crime, you should be fined for losing it, and your gun license should be taken away. If you can't look after your dangerous tools, you can't be trusted with them and should be punished. Of course, if you report the gun stolen prior to any crime committed while using it, the fine should be less and you perhaps shouldn't lose your license.
A good response was:
If your car were to be stolen tomorrow by some bank robbers, used in the commission of a violent crime, and during the ensuing chase it smashed into and killed some pedestrians, how many years in prison should you serve? Okay, then how big should your fine be?
[JKH]: I'm skeptical of the number of deaths caused by physicians. One out of five causes an accidental death each year? That seems really high.
An article in the Seattle Washington Post-Intelligencer dealt with accidental deaths caused by physicians (based on research by Laura Key)
Number of physicians in the US - 700,000
Accidental deaths caused /year - 120,000
Accidental deaths/physician = 0.171
Based on readily available statistics found on the internet:
Number of gun owners in the US = 80,000,000
Number of accidental gun deaths/year (all age groups) = 1,500
Accidental deaths/gun owner = 0.0000188
THEREFORE, one may derive the following:
That Doctors are approximately 9000 times more dangerous than gun owners.
Also, I heard somebody yesterday on the radio talking about the "old, tired rhetoric" about 2nd amendment rights. A good challenge might be something like "OK, the 'freedom of the press' rhetoric is 200 years old, too, and you don't think it's out of date, do you? How old or how often a phrase is said does not affect the underlying TRUTH of it, and the truth is what matters, unless your objective is creative lying......"
[JKH: How about we shorten this up some? How about, "How old does the rhetoric of 'freedom of the press' have to be before it's 'old and tired'?"?]
Hey Joe. Add this to your list. He makes the point that I wish more of our compatriots would internalize. You can't win people's hearts by arguing legal minutia or by talking about a 'right' which they could never see themselves using.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_excomm/19991019_xex_how_to_sell_.shtml
How to sell gun rights
By Harry Browne
© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com
From time to time the press reports a tragic event in which a child is killed in
a gun accident. It provides an opportunity for politicians and reformers to
speechify about the need to pass stricter gun laws -- laws that will require
safety locks on guns, laws that will force gun owners to keep all guns in locked
storage, even laws to make it harder for someone to buy a gun.
But why does the press bother to report the tragic gun accident?
Because it is an extraordinary event. Like an earthquake big enough to cause fatalities, the rarity of a gun accidentally killing a child makes it newsworthy. It's the legendary "Man Bites Dog!" story.
But thousands of children are killed in car accidents every year. Why don't you see reports of those auto accidents on the TV News? Because they are too commonplace to be news -- events no more unusual than "Dog Bites Man."
The death of any child or adult is a tragedy. Life is the most precious gift a human being possesses. But if the death of a child from a gun accident justifies taking away freedoms from people, why doesn't the death of a child from an auto accident justify laws that would keep children away from cars?
Rights and freedoms
The answer stems from a simple truth: Few people care about the rights and freedom of others. Most of us care only about the rights and freedoms that affect our own lives.
Almost every adult drives a car and accepts the risks that go with driving an automobile. To forcibly keep children away from cars would inconvenience most families so much that the idea could gain the support of almost no one -- except perhaps the vice president of the United States.
But only about half of American families own guns. The other half includes people who, for one reason or another, see no need to own a gun -- in some cases because they are afraid of guns. Those people can easily believe that reducing gun ownership will save lives without inconveniencing them in any way.
Politicians are particularly prone to this attitude. Most of them work in buildings with heavy security; many of them have armed chauffeurs and armed guards, and if they want to go into a dangerous area of a city, they can requisition an armed escort. So they don't feel imposed upon when restrictive gun laws prevent average citizens from defending themselves.
Also, politicians respect the political influence wielded by many gun-control advocates. Some of those advocates run America's biggest newspapers, or are pundits on the Washington Sunday-morning talk shows, or are wealthy Hollywood celebrities. Why shouldn't politicians pander to these gun-controllers who can do so much to help their careers -- especially when the politicians feel no need to own guns themselves?
Appealing to non-gun-owners
We may never change the minds of the politicians or the gun-control advocates. So our efforts should be directed toward the rest of the people who don't own guns.
And the first point to keep in mind is this: You will get nowhere by proclaiming your right to keep and bear arms. Very few people care about rights they don't plan to exercise themselves.
To them, it doesn't matter that the Founding Fathers meant the Second Amendment to provide unqualified gun ownership for citizens, and it doesn't matter that the right to be armed against a potential tyranny may be the most important right of all.
You might be able to win debates asserting such arguments, but you won't win converts. And what's the point of winning debates if you don't convert anyone, and if winning a debate simply encourages your opponents to look for new ways to defeat you?
I know of only one way to bring non-gun-owners over to our side: by showing them that widespread gun ownership makes them safer than they would be among a disarmed populace.
Here are some examples of points that can help you persuade them:
Understand that none of these points is likely to convert someone overnight. But your prospect will actually listen to you when you discuss these things, because you're talking about matters that affect his life directly. And as he considers more and more of these matters, he is likely to become less adamantly opposed to gun ownership, then grow even more open-minded, and eventually become your ally.
That's how so many people have come to want an end to the Drug War -- a step at a time -- and not out of concern for someone else's right to take drugs, but to make one's own life safer.
The ability to keep and bear arms is one of the most important rights you can have. So it's essential that you be as persuasive as possible when you get the chance to talk to someone about it. Don't waste the opportunity by preaching about your right to do what you want.
Instead, agree with the person's concern for safety -- so he knows you want a more peaceful society, not a more violent one. Then you can help him understand how much safer he'll be in a society of armed citizens, rather than living in one where only criminals and government employees have guns.
Harry Browne was the 1996 Libertarian presidential candidate. More of his columns are available at his website http://www.HarryBrowne.org. You can also hear his Sunday night radio broadcast at that site.
Women Against Gun Control (WAGC) have an interesting slogan. I hope they don't mind my sharing their slogan with you:
When women are disarmed, a rapist will never hear - Stop or I'll shoot!
[JKH: I snagged and slightly rewrote this from the WA-CCW list. I have had somewhat vague thoughts about this for a time, but had not yet put it into words.]
Gun owners need to start thinking of themselves as a constitutionally protected minority. Gun owners are one of the original minorities, expressly protected in the constitution. You are accepting of the demonization of gun owners if you believe that someone should be protected from employment discrimination due to disability, but that you should not be protected from employment discrimination because you chose to exercise your right to self protection, a right spelled out far more clearly in the federal and state constitution.
Most people have no PERSONAL experience with firearms - they get all of their information from the news and entertainment media. If someone has had a close brush (say a friend or relative assaulted/robbed/raped/murdered), express condolences, and be sincere, but point out that they still have no personal experience with *firearms*. They may have experience with violent crime, but they have not handled a firearm personally....keep the focus on the act and the people involved, not on the hardware...
Talk about how we (pro-gunners) are emphatically against crime, but most gun owners don't commit crimes, and it's not appropriate to punish the innocent for the CRIMINAL acts of others who happen to use firearms in their illegal acts.
[JKH: From one of our members. It's a 'novel' rather than a sound bite, but it does invoke a lot of emotion and push some important buttons.]
Below is what I mean by a true "teaching story" (in the Buddhist sense, or parable), yet completely factual and true, on guns. It involves a female as it should. In my opinion, most guys, whatever they may *say* have a gut feeling for the reality of things (look at Carl Rowan). Most of the genuinely "principled" opposition to private gun ownership, where people feel it in their gut and it isn't just a sleazy political opportunistic thing, is primarily among females. Don't know what copyright issues exist on this story, as it is take from Quigley's book "armed and female": But it is a good example of what is needed.
"All the time I was locked in the trunk, I could hear him yelling from the driver's seat about what he was going to do to me."
Kate Petit's car sputtered to a stop on the interstate highway between Lake Kissimmee and Tampa, where she lives alone in a nicely groomed but older condominium development on the established side of town.
"You know, I have never made that drive to the lake without worrying somewhere along the way about the risk of having a flat tire or breaking down and being stranded on the side of the road, alone."
Kate was stranded, all right. What looked to her like a mixture of smoke and steam was pouring out the top, bottom, and sides of the engine compartment. She knew it was safer to stay in the care with the windows and doors secured, but sitting in a burning car, to her thinking, was by far the most dangerous thing she could do, so she grabbed her purse and took up a position at the side of the road at a conservative distance from the car's gas tank.
"I didn't know what to expect next. You just hear so many stranded-women-on-the-highway stories that I became short of breath and nervous as soon as the car took its final gasp and I pulled to a stop on the shoulder of the road. Just being stopped on the highway after going sixty miles an hour for the last half-hour is unnerving enough, but with the car burning and all those cars whizzing by shaking the ground, I just hoped - well, maybe prayed - that a state highway patrol car would pull up and some yes-ma'am-type trooper would tell me not to worry and take me home." The car that stopped was not a highway patrol car, and Kate tried to reason with herself that anyone stopping, short of an actual policeman, could be more of a problem than her stalled car, but she knew she couldn't stand there all day. So she greeted the well-dressed, middle-aged good Samaritan with enthusiasm for his assistance, and grinned a big hello with an audible sigh of relief.
"I had to size up the situation in a hurry," said Kate. "Here was this respectable-looking gentlemen who stopped an expensive-looking car on the highway and backed all the way up in front of me and my burning car. I didn't have much choice except to ask him for help."
Kate was right. She had no choice. After being polite and sympathetic, the man took a knife from the inside pocket of hhis suit coat and pressed it sharply into Kate's ribs, telling her that if she didn't cooperate he would push the knife into her heart. "He slit a tear in my blouse and I felt the knife cut me. I was absolutely numb. All of a sudden there was no more traffic noise, or even a fear of being stuck on the highway, or any concern for my car," explained Kate. "I was this man's prisoner."
Kate was ordered into the trunk of the man's car. She had no choice. She got in the trunk. The man drove with Kate in the trunk for what Kate guessed to be a half-hour. The last few minutes were on an unpaved road; then the car stopped and the engine was turned off. During the entire time, the man yelled back obscenities to Kate in the trunk. She wouldn't respond when he demanded to know if she could hear him, so he yelled louder and got more obscene. When the car stopped, Kate recalls vividly the sound of the key in the trunk lock.
By the time she heard that sound, Kate had repositioned herself so that she was lying on her back, her feet tucked up under her, and her knees pushing hard up against the inside of the license-plate wall. Kate's head was jammed up against the back seat, and she hoped the overhang wouldn't obstruct a clear view of him when he opened the trunk. She knew he would have his knife out - that was the only thing she was really sure of.
Kate doesn't remember when the man stopped yelling at her in the trunk, and doesn't remember what he said as he opened the trunk. All she remembers is the flood of daylight momentarily blinding her when the trunk lid popped and an almost slow-motion sight of the bullet holes being made in the man's chest by the .38-caliber revolver she took out of her purse.
She had planned to shoot every bullet in her gun at the man when the trunk opened, but after three shots he slumped into the trunk on top of her, dead.
"The nightmare was over, but when he fell on me, bleeding, I became so frightened I thought I was suffocating. I gashed my head on the lid as I got out of the trunk. It was so horrible having him lie on top of me, dead like that. When I got out of the trunk, I forced his legs in beside him and slammed the lid. I went over to a tree and threw up."
"You know, I have carried that gun for years in my purse when I drive along or have to go into areas of town I think are unsafe. It's funny, but all those years I never really thought about actually shooting someone, much less killing anyone...
The police investigation revealed that the dead man was a twice-convicted felon who had previously been found guilty of eleven counts of sexual assault, including sodomy, child molestation, and rape. He had served prison sentences in another state at various times for a number of convictions. At the time he picked up Kate on the highway, he was out on parole for good prison behavior after having served only twenty-two months for raping a woman and her twelve-year-old daughter.
From Armed & Female (1989), by Paxton Quigley, St. Martin's Press.
[JKH: Or perhaps, 'Fewer gun accidents with children would happen if they were taught proper gun safety."]
Fewer gun accidents would happen if children were taught how to unload a gun the right way.
[JKH: Great idea. This will help us understand the other side's mindset and what buttons we need to push to convert them. Okay people. Let's find those quotes and 'buttons'. And not just celebrities. Friends and acquaintances too. ]
Also there should be a section " I used to be anti-private-gun-ownership, but then ...". Start with quotes from better-known types like Paxton Quigley and Dr. Laura.
To all the anti-gun people out there: If you believe guns are so evil, then here's a challenge for you. Put a big sign in front of your home that says "Our Home Is Proudly Gun Free." Now don't you feel safe?
[JKH: Although I agree with the substance entirely, I'm not sure this will be very effective. It's the Hitler argument. People just don't believe it can happen here. You might be able to bring up the Japanese interment camps, and make a little bit of progress. But fundamentally, they just don't buy into it. "It just can't happen here. We are different. We have learned from other's mistakes. We have laws in place that prevent that sort of thing... etc., etc., etc." If someone else has had better success than I or has a slightly better angle on it please let me know.]
I had another thought - sorry it's a bit long winded, but the gist may
help... also may need to get names spelled correctly, I may have some errors
here
--
When the "antis" begin to talk about the gun control laws in
"other countries" (usually meaning England, Australia, Japan, etc.),
you can respond along these lines: Oh, YES, let's talk about other countries
with excellent gun laws:
Stalin's Russia, 1918 - 1950 or so (20 million + dead)
Hitler's Nazi Germany, 1935-1945 (6 million + dead)
Communist China, 1949 - present (10-20 million dead)
Hungary, 1956 (remember that revolution?)
Chekoslovakia, 1968
Pol Pot's Cambodia, early 1970's (1 million dead, of 6 million population)
Idi Amin's Uganda, mid-1970's (300,00 dead)
Haiti, late 1970's or so (the Gun Courts)
Afghanistan, early 1980's (this
actually makes our point - they had guns, and eventually beat the Russians)
Sudan
Rwanda
Yugoslavia
Bosnia
All these countries had EXCELLENT gun control laws, and every one also had state sponsored genocide of large numbers of its OWN people. What? You say it can't happen here? Well, how long did it take Hitler to "take over" (less than 10 years). How long from when he was ELECTED until the Holocaust started (less than 10 years, again)?
But it still can't happen here? I hope you're right, but show me just ONE tyrannical, despotic government, anywhere, anytime in history, where the ordinary citizen was freely allowed to own the small arms of the day....(save your effort - there isn't one [that I know of])
That's the point - the Second Amendment is proof against a tyrannical government. Those kinds of regimes can't survive in an environment where the average citizen owns the means to resist. Kinda makes you wonder what the Diane Fienstiens, Ted Kennedys, etc. are trying to accomplish. They don't trust YOU, Mr. and Mrs. Average Citizen. You aren't the crime problem - you don't commit violent criminal acts, so why should you have to give up a God-given right (to protect yourself) because some other fool does, AND VIOLATES EXISTING LAW IN THE PROCESS??
[JKH: Very good points here by the person on the soapbox. I would like to also add that we tend to miss out on the emotional appeal to the great mass of undecided people. We often come across as uncaring. We need to let them know that we CARE that innocent people are getting hurt with guns. Saying it's only 30 per 100K (or whatever) just doesn't cut it with many people. Especially when it's their family member or a neighbor.]
<SOAPBOX>
Pro-gun people need to think about the rhetorical aspects of this conflict,
especially during the formulation of talking points or in a duel of sound bites.
All to often we take what we preach to the choir, our citations of Founding
Fathers, Supreme Court decisions, Kleck, Lott, Kopel, Limbaugh, Dirty Harry,
etc., and try and apply said preaching to our adversaries and the lay public.
The study of rhetoric teaches us that persuasion requires that we identify the
attitudes and beliefs of our hostile audience, then construct a voice (ethos)
and argument that will carry the listener from his current attitudes and beliefs
to ours. Keeping in mind who the audience is is critical. Say you're out having
lunch with your team. On your team is a rabid anti-gunner. Let's say his
initials are B.S. It would take a monumental feat of rhetoric to move B.S. to
your point of view. For tactical reasons, you factor him out of your audience
analysis. Think about the _rest_ of your team. Where do they stand? What do they
know? Which of you do they like more? What tone would they respond best to? The
presence of B.S. means you won't have full control of the argument, you will be
in a dialectical exchange, but you still need to know what you want to say how
to whom.
</SOAPBOX>
Something interesting: http://www.justfacts.com/gun_control.htm
The anti-gun people suffer from "do something" syndrome and see inanimate objects as the problem. Even worse they see selective possession of these objects as "okay". (Police and military, and probably themselves - [scary thought]). In essence they see the world as they are, and it scares the hell out of them, fear is a powerful motivator. If this seems wrong, check the number of "gun owners" that "want stricter gun-control laws" they would have to believe that it wouldn't apply to them and this "above the law" attitude is very dangerous to the "law-abiding" citizen who it will be too late for when all these people who were "anti-gun" are forcing their will at gunpoint on the law abiding. This falls within the base principle of "Accuse others of doing what you are doing to shift the focus." I don't see this as terribly insightful, frankly I think it's obvious.
It's already 100% illegal for criminals to carry firearms anywhere.
What about something on the lines of the successful defensive gun uses that save lives? Examples that show "even if just saves 1 life, having a gun is worth it".
[JKH: Expanding on the previous thought.]
If it saves just one life isn't it worth it (to ban guns)?
[Of course if this can be agreed on, which all reasonable people should agree on. Just bring out Lott and Kleck and we win. If they don't agree on this then push for what their REAL objective is.]
How about the Canadian statistics on suicide after they passed the firearms restrictions there? I haven't seen the numbers, but I've heard that there was a short drop after the law went into effect, then it went back to the same levels. I'll chase this angle.
What about law that SHOULD be enacted? Something like access to the NCIS for stolen guns - if a dealer or gunsmith takes a gun in, they check it against the NCIS. If found as stolen, call the cops.....
The other big point requires a graph: The purpose of law is to change the behavior of people who improperly impinge on someone else in our society. 99% of the people (and gun owners) are responsible, law-abiding citizens who are doing the right thing now. The other 1% are criminal - the group that the law is trying to target. Criminals do not obey the law - that's what makes them criminal. What good does it do to pass law that hassles the 99% who aren't the problem, but doesn't change the behavior of the 1% who ARE the problem?
On the matter of "you don't need certain guns", well, you don't need a 6 passenger car to commute by yourself. You don't need 400 horsepower to do the 60 MPH speed limit. You don't need your 4,000 pound behemoth car which just becomes a battering ram when you get in a crash. A Honda Civic will get you around just fine. What? It's your choice about what car you drive? Where is your constitutional guarantee of the right to drive any car you want? (kinda hokey, but may make them think)
People working to deny your rights never put it bluntly - they always use an incremental approach, like boiling a frog - start with cold water and heat it up gradually. What's next? Your right to the car you'd like? Maybe kitchen knives are too dangerous? What about alcohol? What about high-fat foods?
If more guns mean more deaths, why did handgun murders drop 27% at a time when the number of handguns increased 69%?
The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and gun info on http://www.jointogether.org/gv/default.jtml?O=254637 In 1992, 1,426 youth aged 10-19 committed suicide with a firearm.
Seventy-eight percent of firearm suicide attempts are fatal.
Ceasefire memorial page lists 46 children age 18mo-16yr killed in 99-93.
Every six seconds a gun is made in America.
Every year 300,000 firearms are reported stolen to the FBI. Ceasefire is big on noting the caliber and 'action type'. Ceasefire says safe homes with a gun is a MYTH, and state the 43:1 'research' as FACT. Ceasefire FACT: 'survey' of teens say over half could get a weapon, 64% 'believe' they could safely use a firearm even if untrained. Cease Fire can educate Americans to view handguns as the inherently unsafe and dangerous products they are, and not appropriate to have in any home. In 1993, 116 children under the age of four were killed by firearms.
I believe we should use Orwellian terms; like Freedom Protester. We should twist and coin the terms back at them. Protester has a negative connotation, "Freedom" is positive, combined sounds like people against Freedom.
[JKH: I didn't understand this at first. Now I get it. We call them Freedom Protestors!]
In fact, in homes with guns, the homicide of a household member is almost three times more likely to occur than in homes without guns. The risk of suicide of a family member is increased by nearly five times in homes with guns; the risk of suicide is higher still for adolescents and young adults." This is a variation of the "43 times more likely" argument. A logical assault on this involves attacking the research, which doesn't lend itself to sound bites.
An approach I'd like to consider is to realign the playing field. The anti's want to monkey with statistics and to argue from authority. I propose bringing them to ground. Make it personal. Speak from personal experience. Force them to confront _you_ face to face. Response: "Since no one in _my_ house is criminal, psychotic, or suicidal, my having a gun in my house makes the risk of homicide ZERO times more likely."
You're more likely to kill a friend or family member than you are to shoot a criminal.
The antis love to exploit innumeracy and certain features of human cognition to create the illusion of Holocaust. http://www.vpc.org/fact_sht/firearm.htm opens like so:
In 1995, nearly 35,000 Americans died by gunfire.
Most people haven't thought through the implications of the BIG NUMBERS WORLD. They just don't get that if only 1% of 1% of the population is evil, that's an Army of Darkness 26,000 strong. They see ***26,000*** murders with corresponding murderers ) and think the forces of good are being overrun. They can sorta visualize the 26,000 killers, but they can't appreciate how much we outnumber the bad guys. The TV news, which sells ads by squeezing the lower brains of viewers with fight-or-flight imagery, isn't about to tell its audience that criminal violence is statistical noise. Interestingly, the VPC site strays from their right brain stronghold with citation of homicide rates, expressed in deaths per 100,000. "Tallying up murders, suicides, and unintentional shootings, the firearm death rate among teenagers aged 15 to 19 increased 59 percent from 1988 through 1993, reaching 27.8 deaths per 100,000-the highest level ever." They're making some headway with "increased 59 percent", but they sense the weakness of "27.8 deaths per 100,000", and tag on "the highest level ever" because even the numerically challenged can grok that 30 is very small compared to 100,000. ( While digging through death rate stats, my search turned up http://www.sayno.com/violence.html, which we may want to add to the antis "Fact Page" collection, although sayno doesn't appear to be a major organization).
You don't need certain firearms, e.g., handguns, or assault weapons.
It's ridiculous to think the solution to gun-play is more gun-play.
So you're saying that we don't need police, that everyone should carry a gun and handle their own crime problems?
Some people need to be shot and the police can't always be there to do it. Get over it.
[JKH: You know, I don't know for certain. My intent was to be very direct and to the point. Quit dancing around the point and get it over with. My gut response is that the anti's won't entirely know what to do with it. Perhaps offer comments about 'vigilantes' or something. But what I'm hoping to evoke with this is that people realize there ARE people that need to be shot and the antis don't believe this. I think that many of them believe in some sort of touchy-feely type of thing will make the problem go away. Just give them what they want and no one will get hurt. "Is your wallet worth someone dying for?" That sort of thing.]
You don't care that 15 children die each day from guns.
This may be able to put them on the defensive which is where they are attempting to put us. They are the ones that can imagine someone "doesn't care about children dying" and are accusing us of being as uncaring as they are, personally I can't imagine anyone who doesn't care about that. They are simply accusing others of doing exactly what they do, in an attempt to shift the focus of their own depravity to others. This does not only apply to the gun control argument it is SOP of the anti-constitutional rights people. While this as a strategy is effective it requires a level of disingenuousness that many on the correct side of the discussion are not willing to engage in for integrity reasons. It makes the fight difficult when one side has rules and the other does not. Somehow, if we can make it "okay" to go to "streetfight" rules (no rules) for the group with integrity it will go a long way. I'm not sure how that can be done, personally I'd have less internal struggle with demonstrating physically how silly the anti-gun arguments are directly than debating the issue, since they do not stick with the truth, reasoning is nearly impossible.
If you are REALLY interested in saving lives, work on heart disease. It kills 1,300 people a DAY, and the bulk of the problem can be solved with a low-fat diet and regular exercise.
The issue is behavior, not hardware. Focus on criminals, not the hardware they use.
The issue is the **criminal** misuse of guns.
The 99% of law-abiding citizens should not suffer for the 1% of crooks that the law doesn't deter.
The sign says "Certified gun-free zone". The criminal reads "Certified defenseless victim zone".
Guns ARE designed for just one purpose: to propel a small object along a parabolic trajectory. It's up to the operator to decide where that trajectory goes Show me one example (any country, any time in history) of a totalitarian society that allowed its citizens the right to unfettered possession of the small arms of the day.
There are 5 legitimate, law-abiding, responsible uses of firearms: recreation, competition, hunting, collecting, and personal protection. None of these will ever be covered or portrayed by the news or entertainment media. Think of the headlines:
"Action pistol match draws 50 shooters to Kirkland; 5,000 rounds fired; 2 shooters suffer minor sunburn" or
"Licensed citizen uses legally carried firearm to thwart attempted assault/robbery/rape/murder; no shots fired; no injuries" Bizarre, aren't they? Yet, this is the NORM. If you have no personal experience, how could you know? The news and entertainment media won't tell you.... 97% of defensive gun uses do not involve shots fired. Just having a gun makes the bad guy rethink his victim selection process.
There is one adjective that accurately describes almost all of Hollywood's product. (pause) It is NOT a derogatory term, either. The word is fiction. Would you use the movie "Bullitt" as a driver training movie? No? So why should you expect a Jean-Claude Van Dame movie to be a firearms training movie?
We advocate the ability of responsible, law-abiding citizens to own and use firearms in legal and responsible ways. This is no business of government until they cease to be responsible and law-abiding. And if they do (cease to be responsible and law-abiding), the hardware they use doesn't really matter.
Show me a crime that involves a gun that would not be a crime if a gun was not involved.
Here are just a few from the home page of the Million Mom March. Including gun shows which have become the Tupperware parties for the criminally insane.
Are you saying that everyone who attends a gun show is "criminally insane"? <Plays to their irrational characterization of gun show attendees.>
We call on Congress to require all handgun owners to be licensed and that they be required to register their weapons with the proper authorities. It makes sense.
Does it make sense to license alcohol users and register alcohol purchases too? Alcohol can be abused, too, but anyone over the legal age, regardless of their criminal record, mental fitness, or domestic violence history can purchase and abuse alcohol freely in this country. Why aren't these "mothers" crusading against this menace, which destroys more lives and homes each year? Could it be that their agenda is predetermined? <Somewhat long for a sound bite, but shows that their "hammer" of gun control is used to hit every "nail" of childhood misery.>
We believe that it is only common sense to end straw purchase transactions where individual who may legally purchase a firearm is hired to purchase firearms for Gun traffickers. These guns are sold on the illegal market and eventually wind up on our nation's streets, killing our kids.
Rather than prosecute illegal gun traffickers, you want to punish the "individuals who may legally purchase firearms"? Isn't this a punishment for those who do not commit crimes?
We call on all officers of the law to assume a no-nonsense approach in enforcing existing gun laws and to join us in our mutual crusade for stronger legislation.
If law enforcement can't enforce the existing statutes, which number over 20,000, how will they find the time to enforce new laws?