In a recent Washington Post article , Professor Arthur Kellerman takes issue with the recent Supreme Court decision concerning the 2nd Amendment (big surprise).

While Professor Kellerman, does not hesitate to criticize Justice Scalia for his conclusion, the same arguments can be made in critiquing the esteemed professor. The professor’
Such arguments, as those posed by Kellerman are conspicuously absent when answering the question: what do you do if the unthinkable takes place and your home is terrorizes by a knife (or gun wielding) bandit intent on doing you harm. Should we simply wait and hope the police arrive before the assailant is finished robbing raping or murdering his intended victim? Why exactly is Professor Kellerman so opposed to the principle of self –defense? Since when did being a citizen of the United States entail surrendering certain basic human rights to the state? Indeed, 74% of all violent crimes committed in the United States do not involve firearms, yet we are to believe that barring law abiding citizens will save us from crime. Such a premise is purely beyond the pale of reason. Nor does it explain why countries like Australia and Britain have seen increases in violent crime as firearms have become all but impossible to acquire, nor does it explain how violent crime has increased as gun restrictions have become more ubiquitous in the United States.

As Kellerman notes, there are incidents in which firearms have caused accidental deaths or been the instrument by which suicides have been committed. In Japan, where firearms, are virtually unknown by the general populace, suicide far outpaces anything seen in the US or anywhere else in the industrialized world. The assertion that suicide is a result of the presence of firearms is as spurious as the assertion that the presence of cutlery leads to stabbings.

Yes accidents can and will happen but does this realty lead to the draconian decision to ban all firearms? Verily, 55000 annual deaths on American roads certainly hasn’t lead to Kellerman’s call for a ban on motor vehicles, nor has it lead to a call to ban home swimming pools, even though statistics clearly show that more accidental deaths occur in homes with swimming pools than they do in homes with firearms.

Then there is the subject of concealed weapons permits, while this is not addressed directly by the professor, it warrants such attention. Perhaps Kellerman refuses to address this matter because such data would reveal that less than 1% of firearms related crimes involve those citizens who have met the requirements to obtain a firearms license. The point being that law abiding citizens meeting certain reasonable requirements before they acquire firearms present no danger to themselves, only ne'er do wells who show no respect for the law in the first place. And it also begs the question, of those homes the professor supposedly studied in which the presence of firearms was related to some unjustifiable homicide, in how many of those homes were the owners legally able to obtain or possess a handgun?

Link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/27/AR2008062702864.html