"Handguns...exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing....

[patrice]

33. In whatever tragic situation, all other factors being the same, it's the presence of a gun that

results in a significantly higher probability of harm or death.

Guns kill.

If guns didn't kill, people wouldn't own them and all of your crazies out there or people who make "mistakes" would be engaging in those behaviors by means of tools that have not only less dangerous consequences to their targets, but also whole different sets of consequences to those using those tools to assault others. The "decision" to strike someone with your fist has much different consequences to you, and hence figures differently in "decision" making processes, than standing off at a more inaccessible distance and pulling a trigger. The same is true for most of the other means by which one might assault another person.

"Defense", that is authentic defense and not just psycho feedback warping social systems, is another question that should be addressed in a broader context of what it is that one fears and how that fear becomes more OR LESS legitimate. If we can't figure out the difference between more OR LESS legitimate concerns, guns won't help and can contribute to the problems. To see guns as the sum-total of functional responses to these factors is closing the barn-door after the horse has been long gone. Without a fuller consideration of what danger actually is, where it is coming from, why, and HOW, precisely, this all happens, no amount of guns will ever be enough. Without an honest consideration of root causes, guns "for defense" only become part of the problem and all of it will just escalate into mutually assured destruction.