Why do people think that pointing to a single anecdote somehow justifies a terrifyingly bad idea because sometimes it produces good results? Yeah, it's great that lady was able to defend herself. I'm glad no harm came to her or her kids. But it would take me two seconds to find a hundred anecdotes of somebody accidentally shooting a family member, or a kid playing with a gun and shooting a friend, somebody showing they have a gun thinking that will deter a conflict only to in fact escalate the conflict, ect ect ect. Math and statistics trump anecdotes.
Somebody pointed out back much earlier that antigun laws effect places like both Japan and Mexico. Japan has exceedingly little gun violence, mexico has an abundance. The pro-gun side fears we would be more like Mexico. I think they may be right, but the question is why is our society so fucked up that violence is so intrinsically an aspect of our society?
There are 11 times more assault victims in the US than Japan by percentage of population. 198 times more deaths by fire arms in the US than japan. three times more rape victims by percentage of population in the US. Ironically, when polled Americans felt safer walking at night alone than Japanese citizens despite the fact that the japanese were far less likely to come to harm.
http://www.nationmaster.com/compare/Japan/United-States/Crime
If it is true that we would be more like Mexico than Japan if we passed stricter anti-gun laws, then that says something about us. Why is our culture so backwards and deficient that that we feel like we need guns to protect ourselves from ourselves? For starters we are a violent culture. Look at this thread. Nobody is lamenting the catastrophic failures of society and the community that lead to a violent thug breaking into a house with a crowbar to do some unspecified crime. The majority of people are congratulating a woman for killing somebody that they feel deserved a good killin'. That is culturally a problem. Our "each person for themselves" mentality doesn't help. Japan is a community oriented culture that expects individuals to put the needs of others above their own. Perhaps instead of just handing guns to everyone and letting nature run it's course, we should actually try to look at why we think handing guns to everybody is a good idea. The fact that we think that is a reasonable course of action in and of itself says something about our culture. Maybe that is why we are Mexico instead of Japan. Economically we are the world's powerhouse, culturally we are still a third world country.
Now you might say that things like trying to encourage a sense of community, community responsibility, trying to make it so we don't view "appropriate" violence as a virtue but rather as a failure of the community to prevent violence, you might say those are all pie in the sky "liberal" dreams. But the machismo power fantasy of an individual successfully preventing a school shooting by carrying a concealed weapon and using it in a responsible and skillful way to wound or if necessary kill an evil individual is also a fantasy. And honestly, it is a far less healthy fantasy for a culture to propogate. And statistically it is horribly unrealistic. That simply isn't what is happening out there.
When the anecdotes are viewed against the statistics, the actual motto of the Pro-Gun Lobby is "If we shoot enough people, some of them are bound to have deserved it." Why don't we just try to find a way to shoot less people? It has worked for Japan.
