Here is an article from CNN.com suggesting that gun extremists' views are completely irrational:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/31/opinion/waldman-gun-women/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7
(CNN) -- Let me explain to you why it's important
that I have a .50-caliber machine gun capable of firing 500 rounds per
minute bolted to the top of my Corolla. I live in Washington. You do
know that this is a dangerous city, right? A guy I know got mugged last
month.
Not only that, it's
entirely possible that while going around the Beltway, a commando team
of Taliban fighters could come up behind me on their way to murder the
president, and the only thing standing between them and disaster will be
me. Not to mention that this one time, after I cut a guy off because he
was in my blind spot, he gave me a really dirty look. If had had my
.50-cal, you can bet he would have stayed a good distance back.
If you consider this reasoning rational, then you were probably also
persuaded by the testimony Gayle Trotter of the Independent Women's
Forum gave Wednesday to a Senate committee discussing potential
legislation to place some relatively modest limits on guns.
Trotter argued
that women need to have the biggest, baddest weapons they can get their
hands on. Why? For "the peace of mind that a woman has as she's facing
three, four, five violent attackers, intruders in her home, with her
children screaming in the background, the peace of mind that she has
knowing that she has a scary-looking gun gives her more courage when
she's fighting hardened, violent criminals. If we ban these types of
assault weapons, you are putting women at a great disadvantage."
So we can't limit the
most dangerous weapons, because somewhere there might be a woman who
needs one to fight the five violent attackers who have invaded her home.
And we can't limit the rounds a magazine can hold, because what if that
frightened housewife needs to engage in an hourlong firefight? You
don't expect her to reload, do you?
Your average gun owner
may think that's crazy, but it's the world some extreme gun advocates --
including those with great influence in Congress -- inhabit, where laws
should be written not with the reality of Americans' lives and deaths
in mind, but according to the most horrible fantasies anyone can
conjure. Now, let's talk about some reality. The sad fact is that what
women most have to fear is abusive partners, not home invaders.
According to one analysis of FBI data from 2010,
94% of female homicide victims knew their killers, and most of those
killers were husbands or boyfriends. And as you've probably heard, a gun
in your home is many times more likely to
be used to kill one of the people in that home, be used in a suicide,
or result in an accidental death than it is to be wielded against an
intruder.
What gun advocates say is
that we all need to put ourselves and our families in danger to prepare
for the home invasion that is the equivalent of being struck by
lightning. According to the FBI,
in the entire country in 2011 there were just 201 justifiable homicides
committed with guns by private citizens. There are over 300 million
guns in America, which means that about 1 out of every 1.5 million guns
was actually used for lethal self-defense. According to the National
Weather Service, your chance of being hit by lightning this year is a mere 1 in 1 million.
Nevertheless, people
still have the right to own as many guns as they want. What we're
debating is which kind of guns they can get and what procedures they'll
have to follow to get them. Perhaps Gayle Trotter believes that having a
few handguns and rifles just isn't enough to protect herself; she needs
the kind of weaponry that Seal Team Six carries if she's going to feel
secure in her home.
That could be what Nancy
Lanza thought as she amassed the arsenal her son Adam would use to
commit his horrific crime in Newtown. That may seem like an inflammatory
comparison -- after all, what are the odds that someone in your family
is going to go crazy and kill a bunch of people? Perhaps lower than the
odds of a heavily armed band of escaped convicts invading your home. But
not by much.
Let's have one final dose of reality, the story of Hadiya Pendleton.
A 15-year-old honors student from Chicago, she recenlty performed with
her school's band at President Barack Obama's inauguration. Four years
ago, as an elementary school student, she appeared in a public service
video imploring kids to stay away from gangs and violence. This Tuesday,
she was in a park with friends when someone came up and started
shooting. She was shot in the back and died at a local hospital.
Hadiya Pendleton's
tragic death wasn't someone's paranoid fantasy, and it wasn't lighting
striking. It was one of the many real faces of gun violence in America
today. She had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong
time, but it was a tragically common place to be. Just since the Newtown
massacre, 1,463 Americans have been killed with guns.
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