It's certainly true that most people killed by guns did not themselves have guns, at the time. It does not follow that *having* a gun makes you *less* likely to be killed, when a shooting situation occurs. There are a few cases of successful "return fire," to be sure. Once in a while, a civilian just carrying his gun while out in the com…
It's certainly true that most people killed by guns did not themselves have guns, at the time. It does not follow that *having* a gun makes you *less* likely to be killed, when a shooting situation occurs. There are a few cases of successful "return fire," to be sure. Once in a while, a civilian just carrying his gun while out in the community *is* the hero, but that's not the same thing as being safer for having the gun. In the chaos of an unplanned public gunfight among amateurs, sometimes the armed civilian just makes himself the priority target, to the original shooter, or to other would-be heroes, or to arriving police. Sometimes he adds to the carnage, shooting the wrong people.
No question. I was just doing the devil's advocate thing of pointing out how readily the other side of the debate would snatch up such a line. As you point out, the reality is much more complicated.
It's certainly true that most people killed by guns did not themselves have guns, at the time. It does not follow that *having* a gun makes you *less* likely to be killed, when a shooting situation occurs. There are a few cases of successful "return fire," to be sure. Once in a while, a civilian just carrying his gun while out in the community *is* the hero, but that's not the same thing as being safer for having the gun. In the chaos of an unplanned public gunfight among amateurs, sometimes the armed civilian just makes himself the priority target, to the original shooter, or to other would-be heroes, or to arriving police. Sometimes he adds to the carnage, shooting the wrong people.
No question. I was just doing the devil's advocate thing of pointing out how readily the other side of the debate would snatch up such a line. As you point out, the reality is much more complicated.