We were having one of our social gatherings recently and I was sitting with a bunch of male friends who got on the subject of the guns they own. (These folks were all in their eighties and nineties with imperfect eyesight I remind you.) They all indicated how much safer they felt having the guns handy. I just sat and listened making sure to never enter their houses without a blast on my air-horn.
I was reminded of two very public shootings where the target was surrounded by trained secret service and police officers, all carrying guns, and all trained to prevent any kind of attack on their principal. They all failed in spite of having vastly out-gunned the assailant. The two examples, Reagan, who had people armed to the teeth specifically trained to prevent his being shot, and Oswald, killed by Jack Ruby in front of numerous armed officers who had been warned to expect just such an action. For another example, on September 16, 2013, the Washington Navy Yard was protected by trained and armed security officers when a gunman killed 12 people. One of those killed was an armed officer. The gunman took his pistol and used it to shoot more.
The lesson is clearly that in spite of what the NRA would have you believe, if an intruder or anyone wants you dead, having a handgun handy is a waste of money and useless. It won't help. Bodyguards won't either. Better just not to piss anyone off.
On the other hand, there were 732 children, aged 0-11 killed, 3,232 teens killed, 606 murder suicides, and 2,015 unintentional shootings in 2017. Those numbers do not inspire confidence.
I deliberately left out the number of defensive use of guns as the surveys have been problematic (see #2 below) and they don't report the result of the use, i.e. did it work, what were the circumstances, etc. The first reference below indicates 2,030 uses but other studies report much higher, but all suffer from a lack of inspection as to what happened and what the result was. For example, we've all seen the story of the guy in the Florida parking lot who felt threatened by the man (black, of course) in front of him and so felt justified in shooting him. Not to mention Treyvon Martin. There are some legitimate cases like the pizza parlor guy who was attacked by the man with the bat, pulled a gun and killed his attacker. Of course if the attacker had had a gun, he'd be dead.
It would be nice to have some comprehensive research on gun violence as a public health issue, but ever since the Dickey amendment (R-AR) they have been de-funded and prohibited from doing any kind of research that might result in any kind of gun control, a broad preventive mandate, indeed. I don't know what the NRA and Dickey are afraid of, unless they know something we don't.
1. https://www.thetrace.org/rounds/gun-deaths-increase-2017/
2. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/04/defensive-gun-use-difficult-statistics-rare-events.html
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