Sunday, June 22, 2014

The folley that a gun has but one purpose

"A gun has but one purpose...to kill" is highly simplistic and in many cases wrong. First in most cases guns that are aimed at people are designed to stop a threat, not to kill; the Hague Convention of 1899 prohibits the use of bullets that expand when fired into a body, hence only full metal Jacket bullets are used in warfare. A full metal jacket bullet makes it less likely a person will be killed; it's also well known that a wounded soldier takes more resources that a killed soldier. There is also the fact that guns are used as a deterrent much more than they are used to shoot people; hence the saying that carrying a concealed weapon gives the carrier more options than those that don't. There are also many firearms specifically used for target shooting that are so job specific (the majority of competition/target shooters do not hunt), they don't translate well to handling/aiming hunting firearms and certainly would be impractical to use hunting or in a deadly force scenario. Yes, the purpose of a gun used to hunt is to kill, but if a police officer wounds a bad guy and that wounding stops the threat, it would be a homicide for the police officer resume shooting to make sure the bad guy was dead. Certainly if a person uses deadly force, for clarity sake there needs to always be the justification to take a life. But one can't ignore that the rate of fatal firearms injures in the US is 10 per 100,000 but the number of non-fatal wounded is 25 per 100,000. So if "a gun has one purpose; to kill" it would seem the gun is not accomplishing it's purpose very well.

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