Dear Editor
Concerning your article of April 13, 2021, on “Forget Thoughts and Prayers, We Need Real Gun Control – This Is How We Can Do It”. By Ed Kociela
Ed,
I wish to share what I have learned in the over half a century of Gun Control Debate.
You mentioned 106 people in the USA die from firearms causes daily. But, you failed to mention that figure used to be 122 or over daily. Since 1993 firearms death average has come down some twenty-four percent (24%). And, considering there have been many more millions of firearms put into the hands of the populace the 24% decrease is notable.
You also fail to mention the lives saved by the private use of firearms. The last statistic I read, several years ago, put the number of self-defense with a firearm here in the USA only, at one thousand to two thousand (1000-2000) a day.
So you are trading maybe 106 deaths a day for maybe 2000 more crimes a day. Of those 2000 more crimes a day the question becomes how many will be caused by firearms?
Next – with your ideals – the loss of firearms will only apply to the law-abiding populace – just how are you going to get the firearms out of the hands of the criminal populace? This reminds me of a study by, I believe anthropologists around 1980, was in talks with the incarcerated population, one question was – what is your greatest fear?
Can you guess what that fear was? Entering a home with an armed citizen! With no armed citizen then no fear.
Please reconsider your ‘beliefs’ – I believe they may be flawed.
Respectfully,
William Bigelow
*Editors Note: Gun violence between 1993 and 2013 fell by almost 49%
Pew Research Center.
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