Proliferation of Handguns in U.S.

J. Neil Schulman’s column “Gunfight at the 4 ‘n 20 Pie Shop” (Column Right, Oct. 27) was a masterful example of the way the gun lobby creates and manipulates statistics to boost its cry for more guns on the street.

The article claimed that “Americans use handguns for defense about 645,000 times a year.” The 1981 poll on which this number is based actually found only 40 gun owners who thought they had “thwarted” an assault in the last five years. Even the National Rifle Assn. has said that it “stretches the data” to jump from 40 to 645,000. In fact, the Journal of the American Medical Assn. reported that for every case of defensive justifiable homicide in the home, there were 43 murders, accidents and suicides.

The article continues by quoting a State University of New York source that “high saturation of guns inhibit illegal aggression.” In fact, the number of firearms in America has increased from 50 million in 1950 to over 200 million today. Almost half the households in the country today contain at least one firearm. How saturated do we have to get? Does Schulman believe that quadrupling again to 800 million firearms would make us safer?

Finally, the article cites Florida’s crime statistics as a good example of what happens when more people are allowed to carry loaded handguns on the street. In fact, since 1987 when Florida began allowing almost anyone without a criminal record to carry concealed weapons in public, rape has increased 12%, robberies are up 19% and felony assaults are up 24%. That is hardly a model of success.

The gun lobby can stretch polls and statistics at will, but the fact is that about 36,000 Americans will die this year by gunfire; 36,000 died last year; 36,000 will die next year. Chances are you know someone in this deadly toll. We are at war with ourselves and the last thing we need to do is pour fuel on this tragedy by putting more guns on the street.

LUIS TOLLEY, Director,

West Coast Operations

Handgun Control, Los Angeles