BOOK REVIEW : Every Handgun is Aimed at You : The Case for Banning Handguns

[Mulliga]

Well, I borrowed both Wayne LaPierre's Guns, Crime, and Freedom and Josh Sugarmann's Every Handgun is Aimed at You from the library, just to see how their arguments stack up. LaPierre, of course, is VP of the NRA, and Sugarmann is (was?) the executive director for the VPC, perhaps the most spastically vocal of the anti-gun groups. I started into Sugarmann's book.

Not surprisingly, the book starts off in an emotional manner - a graphic depiction of bullet wounds from the LA Times. This is rather blatant sensationalism in this kind of policy book, but I let it slide.

Reading on, Sugarmann describes handguns in "Handguns 101 - A Primer," presumably designed for the antis who know little or nothing about handguns. Of course, when trying to actually tell factual info, Sugarmann gets into trouble:

The broadest definition of a handgun is a firearm specifically designed and built to be fired with one hand...Action heroes in movies and television are often shown using two hands in their make-believe gunfights. This two-handed technique does create a more stable platform and improves rapid-fire accuracy but is not necessary

Of course, anyone who has ever actually considered a handgun for HD or SD knows that firing with only one hand when you can use two hands is silly, and potentially dangerous. The "action heroes" Sugarmann talks about are obviously well-trained citizens, police officers, and soldiers .

Moving on, we get the typical description of types of guns the VPC has traditonally hated - "junk guns," "assault pistols" designed to "hose down" an area, and, of course, the dreaded "pocket rockets." There's some unproven speculation about what makes handguns so deadly as opposed to rifles and shotguns (his arguments are concealability, capacity, and caliber - all of which also make handguns suitable for personal defense).

Finally, he has a pointless anecdote from a trauma surgeon saying how she never "saw a bullet in anybody" in England. Of course, she never talks about the stabbings, beatings, and rapes that happened in England, but hey, that would complicate the issue, right?

These anecdotes/editorials are perhaps the most infuriating part of the book - these people are basically stating their opinions and personal experience, which have no place in a book that's supposed to be about fact. They occur at the end of every chapter, which means fully a quarter to a fifth of the book is sheer opinion.

The next chapter is about the history of handguns, and is drawn almost exclusively from anti-gun "historian" Michael Bellesiles, who argues handguns (and even firearms in general) were relatively rare in America before the twentieth century.

prior to 1850, at most only a tenth of the population individually owned guns

Obviously, Bellesiles regards that whole Revolutionary and Civil War stuff as a bunch of made-up stories - they fought with sticks and stones. There are the standard "the Second Amendment doesn't prevent banning anything" arguments even though the Second Amendment seems to read that it prevents banning anything.

At the end of this chapter is another anecdote from a "hunter", who argues that "handguns are totally unnecessary" and that "any real hunter...should never have to use anything more than a bolt action." I suppose the latter could be construed as true (though BAR owners would heartily contest that), but the former is baseless opinion.

The book goes on into the role of handguns in suicide, as if swallowing a shotgun or rifle barrel and pulling the trigger was any more difficult than killing yourself with a handgun. By this logic, then, all guns would have to be banned. But, of course, people could always jump off a bridge or slit their wrists - maybe we should ban bridges? And Japan has a higher suicide rate, but you'll find no mention of that in Sugarmann's work.

Perhaps the most ridiculous chapter, "Handguns and Self-Defense" talks about how owning a handgun does not make you safer (no, it doesn't repeat the tired "43 times more likely" myth, but it comes close). Instead of facts, it gives opinions from the "Police Foundation":

Few people have any rudimentary training in combat situations. If the police on occasion shoot the wrong person, it is certain civilians will do the same - only more often.

Of course, anyone who does any research finds that the "mistake rate" for CCW permit holders is actually LESS than the police, but hey, that directly refutes Sugarmann's argument, so he conveniently ignores it.

http://www.sacsconsulting.com/ccw_Research.htm#DonKates

Even more preposterous is another "factoid" from the Police Foundation:

A large percentage of armed households...may cause some predatory criminals to change their tactics and acquire a gun in anticipation of possible gun use by their intended victims

So not having a gun in the house suddenly makes criminals act warm and fuzzy towards you and your family? But having a gun prompts them to violence? The fallacies here are almost so obvious that it's amazing some people buy the VPC's ranting against handguns.

Moving on, Sugarmann writes about crime and handguns, claiming that handguns increase violent crime. In another fairly strange turn, Sugarmann gives statistics that seem to indicate bans will not work - 27 percent of prisoners surveyed bought their handguns over the counter in a gun shop, while 31 percent got them from friends/family, 28 percent from an illegal source, and 9 percent stole their guns. So fully 73 percent of handguns are obtained from places where bans wouldn't touch...but Sugarmann still wants to ban them. The writing, as they say, is on the wall.

The next three chapters are fairly tedious anti-gun divisiveness - "Handguns and Women," "Handguns and Youth," and "Handguns and Minorities." These are the standard junk statistics you've come to expect, such as graphs that alarmingly show the U.S. is leading other countries in youth handgun deaths (i.e., our black bar is three times bigger than other countries' bar), until you look at the graph scale...for some 100,000 children in each age group for "one year during 1990-1995" (translation - they're picking from 1990-1995 a year for which gun deaths were high in the U.S. and low in other countries, and the best they could come up with is an extra 1.5 deaths PER 100,000).

There's the obligatory mentions of the rare school-schootings, and finally, a call to ban all handguns. The afterword, "But What Can I Do?," is particularly frightening:

1. Declare a handgun-free zone

As if declaring something banned ever made the illicit object magically disappear...

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Quite a frightening and poorly written book, but you have to "know your enemy." It's a horror story of epic proportions - opinions and emotion instead of fact, lies and statistics in place of reasoning, and all wrapped up in a pretty, soccer-mom-friendly package. Most startlingly is how short the book is - I read through it in an hour and a half, with time spent checking his sources - and thus, how baseless "the case for banning handguns" really is.

[geekWithA.45]

The case for banning handguns is


A) non existent
and
B) So 1968.

[GSB]

Of course, anyone who has ever actually considered a handgun for HD or SD knows that firing with only one hand when you can use two hands is silly, and potentially dangerous.

Are you saying the techniques I learned from John Woo are not practical? Damn. And I thought I looked soooo cool with those dual 92s and black longcoat.

Excellent post BTW.

Oh, and Sugarman is a raving loony who is one step away from foaming at the mouth and ranting about following a white whale round Good Hope, and round the horn, and round the norway maelstrom, and round perdition's flames .

[Hkmp5sd]

The thing I like about Bellesiles' "research", as commented on by himself and his supporters, is he took all previous records and information commonly used to determine how many firearms Americans owned, and went deeper into the files. He claims previous researchers didn't go through all available information in developing their ownership statistics and as a result, their numbers are wrong.

So, he claims to have viewed all previously used records and then viewed even more records, and ended up with a total number of civilian owned firearms less than other historians had previously reported.

[Langenator]

Instead of facts, it gives opinions from the "Police Foundation"

Um...first of all, does this group even exist, and second, who are they? Do they actually represent cops, or is it a fan club for the band Sting used to play with?

1. Declare a handgun-free zone

These have been quite successful in Chicago and DC.

[Standing Wolf]

Of course, anyone who has ever actually considered a handgun for HD or SD knows that firing with only one hand when you can use two hands is silly, and potentially dangerous.

This old bullseye shooter would beg to differ.

Seriously: I'll start to commence to begin to consider the remote possibility of taking anti-Second Amendment bigots seriously when I hear them advocate disarming criminals rather than law-abiding American citizens. Until then, I'll remain certain they're just leftist extremists who are completely out of touch with reality.

[71Commander]

A large percentage of armed households...may cause some predatory criminals to change their tactics and acquire a gun in anticipation of possible gun use by their intended victims

Isn't this all the more reason to be armed ? If you were not before, you dam well better be now.

This could actually work in our favor. Motivate some anti's into getting a HD gun.