First: I have two loaded shotguns within reach of my bed for home defense. Consider that before labeling me the new epithet: hoplophobe. I think it is wise to have a loaded shotgun in your home for this reason, but I obviously think it should be kept completely safe from children and teenagers. This was one of the main focal points of the program -- the statistics involving gun violence are staggering.
One of the major thrusts of the news piece was to inform viewers about the ridiculous gun show loophole that allows criminals and crazy people to buy guns, no questions asked, with no tracking records. It's fuc*ing insane. A young man whose sister was killed at VT went in and bought 15 guns in an hour, including handguns and shotguns and an assault rifle, no questions asked. No ID needed. And lawmakers have zero balls to do anything about it because they are beholden to gun nuts in this country.
All a sane citizen can hope for is a common sense common ground between allowing assault weapons to be sold to criminals and banning all guns outright. And that sort of middle ground does exist. In England, handguns are illegal and their murder rate is one-third of ours. Handguns are used in 8 of 10 murders by firearms. That still gives law-abiding citizens the right to bear arms, just not a certain kind of them. Obviously, that's already the case! We already can't legally own Stinger missiles either, but is that an infringement of our 2nd Amendment rights? No. Ditto for many other kinds of "arms" that are illegal.
I watched the 20/20 piece and came away semi-informed as to the general difficulty of responding with force when a shooter is causing carnage all around you. Basically, your adrenaline counteracts your ability to think clearly and aim effectively, and likely your gun is stowed in an inconvenient place so that you will have to be exposed to pull it out and use it. I don't want to carry concealed, mainly due to the fact that I don't think we need to return to the Wild West where everyone is out there with a gun fending for themselves. The probability of needing to have a gun to defend yourself is basically very unlikely compared to the risk involved in carrying one.
I have often argued with gun nuts that while there were 134 "justifiable homicides" with a handgun in 1999, there were 866 (6.5 times that many) accidental fatal shootings, 314 deaths where intent was unclear, 12,102 murders and 17,424 suicides in 1998. There were 336 deaths of children by accidental shootings in 1998. This basically shows you that the idea that you'll likely need to defend yourself with lethal force is a poor excuse for carrying a gun. It is 3 times likelier a child will be killed by your gun, 6.5 times likelier that someone will be accidentally killed with your gun, 120 times likelier someone will be murdered with it and 170 times likelier someone will use it to commit suicide. And, the 134 justifiables include police shootings! Probably less than a third of that number comes from citizens defending themselves and/or their homes. I will do some research this summer, rather than a few quick Google searches, and compile more relevant statistics and correlations.
Critics of the 20/20 program say the show was unrealistic, but I think they are distorting the facts. They claim the instructor immediately went for the kid with the gun, but as you can see from the clip, that is blatantly untrue. The instructor killed the lecturer first, then went right-to-left sweeping through the room, shooting everyone along the way. The students with the gun were often hit early because they stood erect, trying to unholster the weapon, rather than taking cover first. The other people in the room ran wildly in all directions, ducking.
