Unintended Consequences – Endnotes
Data from U.S. Treasury Department, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Foreign Trade Division. Handguns accounted for 48 percent of all firearms available for sale on the civilian market in the…
Unintended Consequences – Appendix A: The Experts
This study is built directly upon a close reading of the published writings of the nation’s top-ranked experts in the use of firearms for self-defense, and in the nature and consequence of deadly force encounters. The following are the principal…
Unintended Consequences – Chapter Five: Facing Facts
The United States leads the industrialized world in firearms violence. Most of that violence involves handguns, which in America are uniquely easy to acquire. By what right do civilian handgun owners – a minority of one in six – think…
Unintended Consequences – Chapter Four: Scared to Death
Is good marksmanship enough? Not if you’re scared to death, or, as self-defense expert Massad Ayoob says in his training course, “almost paralyzed with fear.”159 The human physiological and psychological response to mortal danger—the only situation in which one would…
Unintended Consequences – Chapter Three: Paper Targets Don’t Shoot Back and Have No Right to Live
It is difficult to shoot a handgun accurately, even under the most tranquil of circumstances. “The handgun is the most difficult firearm to shoot accurately and rapidly; skill comes only with practice,” according to Massad Ayoob.80 But many handgun owners don’t…
Unintended Consequences – Chapter Two: Safety Last
Every handgun is inherently deadly. None can ever be considered safe. Therefore, safety issues begin to multiply from the moment a person accepts the industry’s arguments and brings home a handgun for self-defense.h Even if the handgun is never called…
Unintended Consequences – Chapter One: Selling A Lie
According to gun makers and the gun lobby, packing heat for self-defense has always been as American as apple pie. In their version of history, “responsible” gun owners from the beginning of the American experience have relied on a revolver…
Unintended Consequences – Introduction: The Emerging Public Health Debate
Handguns inflict a staggering toll on our society. More than one million Americans have died in firearm homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings since 1962. Handguns were used in more than 670,000 of these fatal shootings.4 On average, if someone gets shot…
Unintended Consequences – Summary
One question lies at the heart of the public health and safety approach to gun control: Do the risks associated with firearms outweigh their benefits?a The question is particularly acute with respect to handguns, which are responsible for most of America’s…
License to Kill IV – Section Two: Details of Specific Arrest Incidents Involving Concealed Handgun License Holders
Using outside resources, such as newspaper accounts, law enforcement reports, and public data on criminal records, the Violence Policy Center was able to obtain additional information on 11 of the 5,314 arrests reported by the DPS�10 for murder or attempted…