Not to distract from the dissection of the 2nd Amendment, but I wanted to throw this article into the mix to help provide further perspective on this issue. Compiled by doctors and medical professionals and hosted at Carnegie Mellon, its worth the read (in spite of its 1994-ish age):
Violence in America - Effective Solutions On the "costs" of gun violence:
Quote:
Amongst the most pervasive flaws in the medical literature on guns is the
discussion of the "costs" of gun violence without any consideration of the
innocent lives saved by guns. These and other benefits of guns are not so
"intangible" as has been dogmatically claimed.[17] We would be mortified
if our colleagues' cost-without-benefit analysis[18,19] became the
standard for evaluating the medical profession. The 1990 Harvard Medical
Practice Study quantified non-psychiatric inpatient deaths from physician
negligence (excluding outpatient, extended care, and inpatient psychiatric
deaths) in New York State.[20] "If these rates are typical of the United
States, then 180,000 people die each year partly as a result of iatrogenic
injury, the equivalent of three jumbo-jet crashes every two days."[21] -
almost five times the number of Americans killed with guns. One might
fairly conclude from such a "costs only" analysis that doctors are a deadly
public menace. Why do we not reach that conclusion? Because, in balance,
doctors save many more lives than they take and so it is with guns.
A conservative estimate from the largest scale, methodologically sound
study to date, the study by Kleck and Gertz, suggests that there are 2.5
million protective uses of guns by adults annually.[22] As many as 65
lives are protected by guns for every life lost to a gun. For every gun
tragedy sensationalized, dozens are averted by guns, but go unreported.
Whether or not "newsworthy," scientific method begs accounting of the
benefits of guns - enumeration of the lives saved, the injuries prevented,
the medical costs saved, and the property protected. Such an accounting is
absent from the medical literature. The protective benefits of guns - and
the politicized "science" that has been used to underestimate or totally
deny those benefits and to exaggerate the costs of guns - have been
extensively reviewed.[4-12]
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On guns vs knives:
Quote:
Nonetheless, even those US Bureau of Justice Statistics samples show that
defense with a gun results in fewer injuries to the defender (17.4%) than
resisting with less powerful means (knives, 40.3%; other weapon, 22%;
physical force, 50.8%; evasion, 34.9%; etc.) and in fewer injuries than not
resisting at all (24.7%).[11] Guns are the safest and most effective means
of self defense. This is particularly important to women, the elderly, the
physically challenged, those who are most vulnerable to vicious and bigger
male predators.
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On "assault weapons":
Quote:
Our colleagues briefly noted that "these weapons account for only a small
percentage of firearm deaths."[18] More pointedly, ten times more Americans
die annually from attacks using hands and feet than die from military-style
rifles.[43] Let us emphasize that, in the worst areas of gang and drug
crime, over two dozen studies show that military-style, semiautomatic guns
account for generally 0% to 3% of crime guns.[10,38]
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As if the fairly lengthy article isn't enough, there are a brazillian[1] footnotes[2] for those wishing to further their education on this topic.
[1] "Exactly how many is a brazillian"?
[2] Which I'm rather fond of[3]
[3] Footnotes, that is