Hi Kai,

Okay. What are the numbers for Germany, and other countries in Europe? What are the per capita murder rates?

And don't cite me the number of people killed by guns alone. How many people per 1000 are murdered?

There was a television show here many years ago called "All in the Family." In one episode the daughter was arguing against guns by claiming some grossly exaggerated number of people were killed by guns each year. She exaggerated the number by more than an order of magnitude and then completely ignored the fact that at least some of them were only killed because their intended victims were the better shots. But I digress.

The point is that her father ended her argument by asking her (in his characteristic Bronx accent), "Would youz feel better little girly if they'd been pushed outta windows?"

In America we have a saying that goes, "God created men, but Sam Colt made them equal." Possible blasphemy notwithstanding, killers don't need guns to kill. But even the weaker man can defend himself with one.

So let's look at these numbers that you and others seem so convinced of. Cite your source and tell me how many people per capita in your part of the world are murdered each year. Let's start there and see where this goes.

Of course, to me this isn't about numbers. As is so often the case in life, I see this as a choice that can not be judged on outcome. It's like poker. You can not say that someone made a right or wrong decision based on whether they win or lose the pot, because they couldn't know whether they would win or lose the pot when they made the decision. Their decision had to be made, and therefore judged, based only on the information they had at the time.

Similarly, it doesn't matter to me whether more or fewer people are killed with guns if one of my sons becomes one of those who were then killed with a knife. Neither am I willing to bet my son's life on the chance that in such an unfortunate circumstance I might be physically strong enough to fend off such an attacker with my strength alone. Instead, I will ensure that I have the best possible chance of defending my family in the worst case, and leave you to decide how best to protect your own family.

And before I end this post, let me answer one more of these false arguments that have gained such popularity among the terminally naive. How many times do you hear people say something like, "The problem is the availability of guns. They're too easy to get."

e.g., courtesy of Christoph,


When I was a boy it was common to see boys trekking off to the woods on their bicycles with bows or guns. And the only alarm it raised was that they not get hurt in traffic. Every pickup truck had a gun rack in the back window and at least one gun in the rack. If a child wanted to get his hands on a gun, all he usually had to do was take the gun down from the rack in the living room. And prior to the Gun Control Act of 1968, if the boy was too short to reach above the mantle, any child of any age could call any sporting goods or department store in the nation and order a gun delivered COD with no more effort than they order pizza today, and the mail man would deliver it to him (as long as he had the money to pay when it arrived). Yet for all of that ready availability, there was never one incident of a boy taking a gun to school and shooting all of his classmates. It simply didn't happen.

Q.E.D.. The availability of the guns was not the problem. They were more available then and such things did not happen. They are less available today and yet killing sprees are becoming commonplace.

Now I ask you. Since the availability of guns has been empirically ruled out, what is the problem? What is different today from then that murder has become so rampant?