If, as you say, even Everytown agrees that at least 55,000 - 80,000 times a year, gun owners prevent violence, and that there are 11,000 gun murders per year in the US, then clearly the notion of eliminating private ownership of guns serves only to vastly increase the incidence of murder.
The rationale for this statement is recognition that the potential murder rate is constant - the motives for violence and murder will not change in a society - and in fact, may go up when emotions are no longer contained by fear of deterrence. But the success rate of completion of the act of murder is reduced by the presence of guns as a deterrent. Guns in the hands of private citizen gun owners. By 55,000 to 80,000 people per year!
The question then becomes: who accepts the responsibility for the additional 55,000 to 80,000 murders - between 5 and 7+ times the current rate - that will occur in the absence of that deterrent? Who has the moral authority to say that these people are to die in order that "my" emotional preference that guns not be in private hands be satisfied?
What gives such people such a confused moral compass that they cannot see that in their titular crusade to "save" lives, their proposed approach will, in fact, cause more deaths than for the status quo - and that moreover, INCREASES in private ownership might well - as statistics appear to show - result in a further reduction in deaths, thanks to the deterrent effect?
If police were present at the moment the crime were to occur, no one would doubt that it would likely not occur; why should it be any different if the deterrent force were an armed private citizen instead? Why are these people to die thanks to the anti-gun community's illogic and unwillingness to face the truth that an armed society - one with citizens as equals, rather than a mix of weak and strong - is a peaceful society? That it is deterrence that is the key to safety, not unarmed victimhood?
If, as you say, even Everytown agrees that at least 55,000 - 80,000 times a year, gun owners prevent violence, and that there are 11,000 gun murders per year in the US, then clearly the notion of eliminating private ownership of guns serves only to vastly increase the incidence of murder.
The rationale for this statement is recognition that the potential murder rate is constant - the motives for violence and murder will not change in a society - and in fact, may go up when emotions are no longer contained by fear of deterrence. But the success rate of completion of the act of murder is reduced by the presence of guns as a deterrent. Guns in the hands of private citizen gun owners. By 55,000 to 80,000 people per year!
The question then becomes: who accepts the responsibility for the additional 55,000 to 80,000 murders - between 5 and 7+ times the current rate - that will occur in the absence of that deterrent? Who has the moral authority to say that these people are to die in order that "my" emotional preference that guns not be in private hands be satisfied?
What gives such people such a confused moral compass that they cannot see that in their titular crusade to "save" lives, their proposed approach will, in fact, cause more deaths than for the status quo - and that moreover, INCREASES in private ownership might well - as statistics appear to show - result in a further reduction in deaths, thanks to the deterrent effect?
If police were present at the moment the crime were to occur, no one would doubt that it would likely not occur; why should it be any different if the deterrent force were an armed private citizen instead? Why are these people to die thanks to the anti-gun community's illogic and unwillingness to face the truth that an armed society - one with citizens as equals, rather than a mix of weak and strong - is a peaceful society? That it is deterrence that is the key to safety, not unarmed victimhood?
This is a great break down. Thanks for adding it!