Crime self-defense

Would banning the cheap handguns called Saturday night specials reduce crime by drying up a source of starter guns for beginning criminals Or would it deprive poor people of the most effective means of self-defense they can afford ... 

Bogus, Carl T. The Strong Case for Gun Control. The American Prospect, no. 10, Summer 1992, pp. 19-28. Reviews smdies and concludes that gun laws work, guns in the hands of citizens do not deter crime, guns are seldom used for self-defense, and people would not substitute other deadly weapons if guns were not available. 

Quigley, Paxton. Armed and Female. New York E. P. Dutton, 1989. A combination of gun advocacy and a how to manual for women who want to obtain a gun for self-defense. Quigley covers both practical and legal considerations for gun use and includes real-life accounts of crime incidents to illustrate tactical problems. 

Kleck, Gary, and Marc Gertz. Armed Resistance to Crime The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, vol. 86, no. 1, 1995, n.p. Argues that use of guns for self-defense is underreported in surveys by government agencies because of fear of prosecution. Kleck s own survey finds an estimated 2.2 to 2.5 defensive gun uses per year. 

Firearms are relatively cheap, readily produced, reliable, and deadly and find many uses, among which are warfare, sport, self-defense, hunting, law enforcement, and crime. It is the use of firearms in crime that demands the attention of the forensic scientist. 

A lesser crime was in his pleading self-defense. I hate hat term. If you limit your action to defense, which he idn t, an attacker can break through your defense. The... 

We need not dwell here on the disastrous consequences of the widespread and unopposed practices of the inquisitors. It should suffice to re-emphasize that by combating witchcraft, the inquisitors actually created it. The continuous teachings of the Church, observes Lea, led its best men to regard no act as more self-evidently just than the burning of the heretic, and no heresy less defensible than a demand for toleration.. . . The fact is that the Church not only defined the guilt and forced its punishment, but created the crime itself. The same, of course, may be said for Institutional Psychiatry. ... 

---