Friends, folks like those at VPC don't even let the poor bodies chill before they start using them for their political agenda. The very day Columbine occurred I checked VPC's and HCI's web sites - they were updated for Columbine within a couple hours of the first shots, and well before the end of that day. These people are ruthless.
Lori, what you will find is that the anti-self defense movement doesn't care one bit about the millions of times guns are used to terminate violence and protect life. They look at only one-half of this cost / benefit equation.
Most decisions in life are based upon weighing the costs and benefits of a proposed course of action. Ignoring for a moment the substantial issues of Constitution and human rights, the gun issue also contains costs and benefits. The costs are obvious - the waste of human life and terrible injury from the criminal and negligent uses of firearms. The benefits are less obvious, but actually much more common - the defense of life and property from criminal abuse, often without firing a shot. (Consider reading 'The Best Defense', by Robert Waters - thankfully, a member here at TFL and an excellent author.)
Ask yourself this - if handguns are only used to kill people, then why do LEO's ('law enforcement officers') carry them? To terminate violence - not to kill or maim. That is the same reason honest civilians carry them - to terminate violence.
I know I go on and on, so I apologize. But, one more point. To show you how biased and illogical VPC is, they had offered a study of concealed carry permit holders in Texas. They had all these statistics about how bad these permit holders were, how many 'crimes' they had committed, etc. However, it was clear from the study that they were not telling us how many individuals were involved. And, most of these 'crimes' were not gun crimes - they were DUI's and such (not attractive, but not as though these people were knocking over liquor stores with their concealed handguns).
Here is the point: VPC wanted to essentially show that the state of Texas was allowing bad guys ('BG's', in TFL-ese) to carry concealed weapons. I sent an email to them asking for more details on the study, and they ignored my request. The question is simple - did their study show that the population of concealed carry permit holders in Texas was more 'criminal' than the general population of Texas? I'm sure they didn't respond because they had twisted their presentation to show Texas CCW holders in the worst light, when in reality, the vast majority of Texas CCW holders were law-abiding, upstanding people. When I got my CCW permit in Arizona I called up our state police (DPS), and asked the rep their impression of Arizona's conceald carry law - they said DPS had no problem with it - as a matter of fact, there is more than one case in Arizona where a civilian has defended an LEO with a handgun!
You see, Lori, one thing that makes some of us, like myself, increasingly rabid about this issue is the volume and constancy of lies from the anti-self defense movement. They seem unable to win their arguments with truth and honesty, and everytime, everytime I dig deeper into their 'studies' and 'facts' I find that they have dishonestly manipulated their data.
I encourage you to investigate VPC's, HCI's and other anti-self defense web sites. Look at what they say with a critical eye. Ask them to cite their sources, and consider carefully the logic of their arguments. Come back here, and we'll discuss it with you. You make the decision as to where the logic resides on this issue. And, as always, thank you for taking the time to consider this issue closely. It may be the most important political issue our country ever considers.
Regards from AZ
~*~
(Inside joke, stick around and you'll see it happen)