Private Guns, Public Health

Rating:
Summary: A Breakthrough Book
Review: David Hemenway is a scholar who has written the "Bible" for gun safety. If we lived in a modern day utopia, his suggestions would be embraced by our society without question. Advocates for gun safety will find reinforcement for their beliefs through the author's statistics and those who might be detractors should read the book and see the logic to Hemenway's practical solutions to the gun violence epidemic in our country.

Rating:
Summary: Private Guns, Public Health
Review: Hemenway's book is an enlightening, indepth, and comprehensive study of the issue of gun violence, an issue worthy of such intense scrutiny because of the devasting impact it has had on our country. Analyzing a compilation of the best research available on this topic, Hemenway demonstrates empirically what most of us have known intuitively--more guns equal more gun violence, injuries, and deaths.
After reading this book, one cannot not help but see that the public health implications of gun violence must be factored into the public policy discussions in a meaningful way. If, as a society, we are ever to prevent gun violence, we must be guided by works such as Private Guns, Public Health rather than the rhetoric of the extremist pro gun forces.
For years, the pro gun leadership has cultivated a misperception that sensible gun violence prevention strategies and policies threaten our dearly-held American heritage, including the hunting tradition and even patriotism and individual freedoms. To whatever degree Hemenway's book drives the discussion of gun violence prevention away from the pro gun leadership's nonsensical blather and toward an examination of facts, we will be a safer, saner society. It's about time!

Rating:
Summary: I thought this was science!
Review: It is not. It is poly-sci. Which means it was reach that only supports the predetermined conclusion of the writer. I have read over 20 books on gun control and this is possibly the worst.

Rating:
Summary: Flawed premise, false conclusion
Review: The Amazon book description discloses everything a prospective reader need know about the book, and why it is be a waste of time to read, and a waste of money to buy. The book's title denotes "private guns." If a police officer lawfully shoots and kills a criminal, the criminal is just as dead. The fact that the gun is wielded by an agent of the state makes that death more palatable to those opposed to "private guns." The description then states that "guns are used to kill almost ninety people" every day. While this statistic is undoubtedly overblown ("nearly?") and a distortion, it ignores the circumstances in which guns are used. If a gun is used in self-defense, or in the defense of another who is subject to an unprovoked attack, and the gun stops that attack, it has functioned as designed.

The public health and product safety angle that anti-firearm activists are now taking is just the latest in a stream of fallacious and failed arguments against guns. Unless a gun malfunctions (and a malfunction is defined as failure to function as designed and intended), and the gun was not modified in any significant way after manufacture, then the gun maker could reasonability be held responsible for the negative consequences of the malfunction. What is done with a gun by its owner (or in the case of criminal activity, most likely by its thief) is not the responsibility of the gun's maker, any more than makers of knives or baseball bats are responsible for assaults and murders committed with these tools.

To those who have tried to disarm law-abiding Americans (for whom this issue is mostly relevant, since most of the remaining inhabitants of this world have been disarmed), and have failed in their attempts to argue against private gun ownership by claiming...

- The constitution does not protect private ownership
+ Google on the essay "The Embarrassing Second Amendment"

- Banning guns reduces violent crime
+ Take the time to review how disarming the law-abiding in England and Australia has affected rape, murder, and robbery rates. Also note crime rates in communities in the US, and how rates of legal gun ownership negatively correlate to gun crime.

- Claim that children die at alarming rates due to gun violence
+ Check to see how "child" is defined in these stats, and investigate how many more real children die in kiddy pools and buckets of water than as a consequence of gun misuse.

- Pretend that private firearm ownership is not a cultural and philosophical cornerstone of the American tradition of freedom
+ Investigate what happened to Michael Bellesiles' Bancroft Prize, and his job, when numerous scholars exposed his book "Arming America" for the deliberate sham it is.

...I say, try again. Oh, and read "More Guns, Less Crime" while your at it.

Rating:
Summary: Flawed premise, false conclusion
Review: The Amazon book description discloses everything a prospective reader need know about the book, and why it is be a waste of time to read, and a waste of money to buy. The book's title denotes "private guns." If a police officer lawfully shoots and kills a criminal, the criminal is just as dead. The fact that the gun is wielded by an agent of the state makes that death more palatable to those opposed to "private guns." The description then states that "guns are used to kill almost ninety people" every day. While this statistic is undoubtedly overblown ("nearly?") and a distortion, it ignores the circumstances in which guns are used. If a gun is used in self-defense, or in the defense of another who is subject to an unprovoked attack, and the gun stops that attack, it has functioned as designed.

The public health and product safety angle that anti-firearm activists are now taking is just the latest in a stream of fallacious and failed arguments against guns. Unless a gun malfunctions (and a malfunction is defined as failure to function as designed and intended), and the gun was not modified in any significant way after manufacture, then the gun maker could reasonability be held responsible for the negative consequences of the malfunction. What is done with a gun by its owner (or in the case of criminal activity, most likely by its thief) is not the responsibility of the gun's maker, any more than makers of knives or baseball bats are responsible for assaults and murders committed with these tools.

To those who have tried to disarm law-abiding Americans (for whom this issue is mostly relevant, since most of the remaining inhabitants of this world have been disarmed), and have failed in their attempts to argue against private gun ownership by claiming...

- The constitution does not protect private ownership
+ Google on the essay "The Embarrassing Second Amendment"

- Banning guns reduces violent crime
+ Take the time to review how disarming the law-abiding in England and Australia has affected rape, murder, and robbery rates. Also note crime rates in communities in the US, and how rates of legal gun ownership negatively correlate to gun crime.

- Claim that children die at alarming rates due to gun violence
+ Check to see how "child" is defined in these stats, and investigate how many more real children die in kiddy pools and buckets of water than as a consequence of gun misuse.

- Pretend that private firearm ownership is not a cultural and philosophical cornerstone of the American tradition of freedom
+ Investigate what happened to Michael Bellesiles' Bancroft Prize, and his job, when numerous scholars exposed his book "Arming America" for the deliberate sham it is.

...I say, try again. Oh, and read "More Guns, Less Crime" while your at it.

Rating:
Summary: Just the Facts Please
Review: The debate over guns in America is often more smoke than bacon, but this book brings well thought out, persuasive scholarship to this controversial topic.

Why shouldn't we treat gun violence as a public health problem? Good question -- and Professor David Hemenway has cogent, on target answers.

A lot of Americans want to make this an emotional issue. It's not; it's a life, death and injury issue.

Hemenway is a public health professor who knows his stuff. Put aside your arsenal of biases for a few hours and read his book.

He offers an approach that should become as American as apple pie.

I give it a five bullet rating.