My experiences from living in a high crime area have left me with some serious doubts about the level of protection firearm ownership offers a person.
Off an on over a 17 year period, I lived in what was a veritable cess pit of violent crime in a certain Third World country. Yet in all that time, I personally knew only two people who got shot:
- and both of them were "carrying" a firearm.
Both were gold buyers by occupation, and as such, were each licensed to carry a 9mm automatic. Both, too, knew how to use the things - regularly taking part in pistol shooting competitions against the police shooting teams. Yet, in two separate violent confrontations, it was they rather than their attackers who got shot (luckily, neither shooting was fatal, although one of them was only a millimetre or two away from being left paraplegic).
Maybe the Australian country singer, John Williamson, had a point in his song We must have a Flag of Our Own - a stanza of which reads "The way to get shot is to carry a gun."
My experiences while living "at the sharp end" tends to suggest so, anyway!
(I could also add the double shooting of two armed policemen. While not knowing these two officers personally, I was less than 100 metres away from them that Friday night when both were shot down by a .38 Special-weilding assassin. One officer was killed instantly, while his companion was greviously wounded. Again, the M-16 rifle that each man was carrying failed to protect him from getting shot, and the criminals escaped with the two M-16 assault rifles. However, it was our unarmed, 70 man strong security detail that recovered these stolen weapons, using nothing more than a dog unit. The culprit, also, was induced to surrender himself later the following day. That was brought about by using distinctly Melanesian methods, none of which would be approved of by Civil Libertarians, and which is the subject of another story altogether!)
Bill
