On Saturday 14/12/13 Lorraine Kelly spoke about Gun Control in the US one year on from the Sandy Hook tragedy. The article was full of the usual emotional based rhetoric with no consideration given to facts or the pro gun side. I tried to contact Lorraine via the E-mail address on her column but it was sent back undelivered. Below is the E-mail.
I read with some interest your article regarding Sandy Hook and the US pro gun lobby. A very emotive piece but I wonder if you had given some consideration to the pro gun lobby’s arguments and certain facts and figures.
You try to trivialise the pro gun argument by using the word “bleating”(I wonder if you would use this term to describe people if they were defending their rights to free speech or trial by jury.) However if you would care to look at their side you would see they have very many valid arguments and the facts go some way towards backing it up. Do you know that firearms are used for self defence and prevention of crime daily? Estimates range from hundreds of thousands to millions of uses a year often with no shots fired. Would you rather have hundreds of thousands of innocent law abiding people raped,mugged,assaulted or murdered because of the actions of one madman?
Studies have shown that victims of crime that offer armed resistance are less likely to come to harm than those that offer no resistance, this effect is actually higher with females than men.
More children in the US are killed each year by drowning in garden swimming pools than by firearms. If people were so concerned with saving lives then surely swimming pools would be a higher priority?
You have stated that gun sales in the US has gone up. Well if guns are the problem they surely we should be seeing millions of gun deaths in the US every day?
You mentioned Dunblane and how gun laws were (unfairly) tightened after this tragedy, however you don’t mention that gun crime actually sky rocketed after the handgun ban, you do not mention that there was more than enough justification under laws at the time to remove Hamilton’s firearms, you also don’t mention that Hamilton had actually obtained one of his firearms illegally and for some reason was allowed to put it on ticket. So even if his firearms certificate was revoked he would still appear to have access to an illegal source.
More and more evidence is emerging each day that there is no link between legal gun ownership and violent/gun crime. The evidence would also appear to suggest that the more law abiding gun owners their are then the safer society is as violent crime falls. Restricting the rights and freedoms of the law abiding because of the actions of criminals and madmen does not make society a better place
There was a period in the UK where anyone could purchase a firearm and freely carry it and there did not seem to be many issues.
Are you aware that in China where the Government heavily restricts firearms(A common trait amongst totalitarian regimes is to disarm the people they wish to control) there have been several attacks in schools where the perpatrator has used a knife to murder and maim dozens of children.
Until people stop blaming guns and actually look at the root causes of violence it will never be stopped.
I realise that your column is an opinion piece but I think you have a duty to your readers to let them know both sides of the argument and make their own minds up. I think once people get past the emotive argument of the anti gun argument they will see that rationally the pro gun lobby are in fact correct.
Regards,
Dave Ewing”
