SALON

Thursday, Jan 27, 2011 1:30 AM UTC

Guns cost more lives than they save

Tucson should be a reminder: There is just no reason for unrestricted gun ownership

By

Topics: Gun Control, Jared Loughner, War Room,

Guns cost more lives than they saveLaw enforcement personnel work on a crime scene where U.S Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot along with others at a Safeway in Tucson, Arizona January 8, 2011. Rep. Giffords, 40, a Democrat, took office in January 2007, emphasizing issues such as immigration reform, embryonic stem-cell research, alternative energy sources and a higher minimum wage. Giffords was alive but in surgery at a hospital on Saturday after a shooting that also injured at least nine other people, a hospital spokeswoman said. REUTERS/Eric Thayer (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST CRIME LAW)(Credit: Reuters)

Some years ago, I reported on a self-defense/gun-safety class mainly for women at Rice University. There had been several forcible rapes on the Houston campus. Students had armed themselves. The instructor was an Army ROTC officer. A Vietnam combat veteran, he found the prospect of undergraduates packing heat unsettling, but reasoned that if they were arming themselves anyway, some training was better than none.

Unlike many entrepreneurs teaching “concealed carry” classes from sea to shining sea, he urged students to leave their guns at home. He stressed that he couldn’t turn them into infantry soldiers with a few sessions in a gym basement. Even most armed assailants, he explained, aren’t hell bent upon murder. They use weapons to control their victims.

Anybody pulling a gun must shoot to kill without hesitation. The soldier reasoned that most Rice students simply weren’t prepared to do that. Hence the likeliest outcome was that criminals would end up murdering them with their own guns. Heightened awareness, avoiding lonely places at night, and pepper spray or mace would afford more safety than the illusion of power conveyed by a 9mm semi-automatic.

Our instructor further advised that shotguns are the weapon of choice for home defense. Unlike a heavy-caliber handgun, a shotgun will put an intruder out of business without a bullet passing through a wall and killing a sleeping child. He emphasized that anybody suspecting a nighttime home invasion should first perform a thorough bed check — a procedure that saved me from potential catastrophe one night after my teenage son and a friend sneaked out to howl at the moon under a maiden’s window at 2 a.m., leaving an open back door and a half-dozen beagles running through the house.

Creeping back home, the lads overheard me shucking shells from my 20 gauge pump, an unmistakably chilling sound. Fearing that burglars had taken us hostage, they were subsequently apprehended in headlong flight up the street. They’d been running for help, they explained.

Would I have shot an unknown intruder? I believe so. I’m also glad I’ve never had to face the choice. Killing a human being, almost regardless of provocation, is nothing like hunting game. Never mind legal peril. Contrary to action/adventure films, psychological fallout can be severe.

Anyway, we students next proceeded to the firing range for lessons in loading, unloading and blasting paper targets. “If you can point your finger,” I wrote, “you can learn to kill” — an observation that annoyed almost as many gun fanciers as this column will. Maybe I should have said that I was already fairly good with a shotgun, and had spent half my life aiming balls at things.

Anyway, here’s the thing: In the wake of the Tucson tragedy, handgun advocates argue that a well-armed private citizen could have saved lives by putting a decisive end to alleged gunman Jared Loughner’s mad act. Never mind that Arizona has the most permissive gun laws in the country. Indeed, the killer had broken no laws until he shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords at point-blank range.

Ah, but there was an armed bystander. His name was Joe Zamudio, and he bravely helped subdue the gunman without firing a shot. But he’s also admitted how close he came to shooting the heroic retired Army colonel who’d wrested the pistol from Loughner’s hands when he paused to reload.

Thanks to the killer’s 30-round ammo clip, he’d gotten off 31 shots in 15 seconds. Fifteen seconds! Everything was chaos and terror.

In Hollywood films, shootouts are carefully choreographed. Villains can’t shoot; heroes rarely miss. Nobody panics. Melodramatic violence metes out justice and redeems the world.

In reality, as Americans seem fated to experience again and again without learning anything, a gunman walks into a Detroit police station and shoots four cops before himself being killed.

Two cops serving a warrant in St. Petersburg, Fla., are killed and a U.S. marshal wounded by a suspect who escapes.

Two sheriff’s deputies are shot at a Walmart near Seattle before a third officer kills their assailant, whose motives remain unknown.

A policeman in Waldport, Ore., is shot by an unknown assailant during a routine traffic stop. He remains in critical condition.

At another routine stop, an Indianapolis cop is shot four times, twice in the face. He’s in critical condition too.

All of these events occurred within 24 hours between Jan. 23 and 24.

It’s worth emphasizing that the 11 victims were trained, experienced law enforcement officers. But their assailants, who’d found semi-automatic weapons easier to acquire than whiskey, gave them no chance.

Meanwhile, NRA fundamentalists pretend that America will be a freer, safer place if more poorly trained, inexperienced, unfit, would-be Bruce Willis heroes were waddling around shopping malls carrying pistols.

There’s a word for people who cling to absurd beliefs against massive evidence. They’re called cultists, and they’re currently in charge.

Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com. More Gene Lyons.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 222 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations