Word: handgun
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Many gun owners say this "right" to carry a handgun is guaranteed by the second amendment to the Constitution, which speaks of the states' rights to support a militia. But the Supreme Court has ruled time and time again that the second amendment has nothing to do with the individual's right to bear arms...
...There's a legitimate place for the handgun in self-defense, because there are a lot of cases where only very violent methods of self-defense are sufficient," Cassidy, an ex-marine, says. "In most violent crimes, the victim is older, less vicious and weaker than the attacker. You've got to remember that originally, guns came into effect as equalizers...
However, gun control advocates have long been citing statistics showing that when the victim of a crime is carrying a handgun, the odds are better than six to one that his assailant will use it against him. As long ago as 1968 a report by the Eisenhower Commission on Firearms and Violence concluded that nationally, the use of guns had thwarted only about two per cent of burglaries and home robberies...
What bound the incidents together was the gun. No fewer than 26 of the 33 victims on the two weekends were killed by firearms, and of these, all but one by handguns. In the midst of a community outcry for tighter controls on weapons, the Chicago Tribune called on Congress to prohibit the manufacture of all handguns and handgun parts in the U.S. "Guns," says Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, "are the No. 1 problem in the city...
...immediate effect of controlling the possession of handguns would not be to reduce crime but to reduce the many needless deaths and accidental shootings caused by the availability of the handgun. It would also decrease the amount of fear that these deaths generate. Hopefully, as the supply of handguns diminished, it would become more difficult for the criminal to obtain handguns...