Premium
Guns, Politics and Reason
Author(s) -
Stell Lance K.
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
journal of american culture
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.123
H-Index - 3
eISSN - 1542-734X
pISSN - 0191-1813
DOI - 10.1111/j.1542-734x.1986.0902_71.x
Subject(s) - politics , citation , library science , classics , history , law , political science , computer science
A significant portion of the American intellectual community is heir to a conventional wisdom about guns. For them, this wisdom paints a chilling picture by the numbers. It takes shape something like this. Private American citizens own approximately 120,000,000 guns (give or take twenty million). Fifty-five to sixty million of these are handguns. Fifty percent of all American households have one or more guns. Approximately ten thousand handgun homicides are committed each year. I add to this number, tens of thousands of woundings plus more than two thousand accidental deaths plus several thousand gun-suicides. A national scandal? What's the answer? In a heartbeat, the conventional wisdom screams its answer: GUN CONTROL! Pollsters Harris and Gallup say a substantial majority of Americans want it. Liberals like Ted Kennedy want it. Conservatives like George Will want it. Shouldn't we have it? Why can't we get it?