Dear Reader editors:
Bryan Miller’s article on women and guns [February 4] was the most persuasive polemic I’ve read in favor of widespread handgun ownership.
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There are much more convincing counterarguments. There is great potential that gun ownership will lead to accidents, that guns will be used in domestic disputes, and that innocent people will be shot by paranoid gun owners (as in the Louisiana case where the Japanese exchange student was killed). Think about all the people you know–do you trust their emotional stability and technical competence to the point that you’d feel confident about them carrying a .38 in their pocket?
Miller says there were more than one million incidents where guns were used to deter crime, but how many cases were there where a criminal seized the gun and used it against the owner, or stole it and used it in another crime?
Chicago police detectives giving self-defense lectures in their roles as Chicago police detectives are naturally going to be officially antigun, because the political policy of the Chicago Police Department is antigun. Almost every police officer to whom I’ve ever spoken on the subject, however, is a believer in private gun ownership by responsible citizens. They obviously believe the statistics that show that armed citizens take care of more bad guys than the cops do.
