Just Say "No" to Self-Defense

...Stephen Hargarten, co-director of the Firearm Injury Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin, raises questions that should prompt all legislators to look skeptically at a proposal that would allow average Wisconsinites to carry concealed weapons.

(Translation: Another agenda-driven ivory-tower egghead finds no correlation between being armed and being able to defend yourself, and wants more money to expand his influence.)

But youth in Wisconsin are committing suicide at a statistically higher rate than the national average, and if more people are carrying more people might (yeah, the editorial actually says "might") be "killed with their own guns that have been taken from them."

Forget that "youth" won't be in the population eligible for concealed carry. Forget that "Japan, which prohibits handguns, has a suicide rate of more than twice the U.S. level." Forget that the suicide rate in Los Angeles County Jails--where disarmed inmates are monitored 24/7--was documented to be about five times higher than that of the general population.

See, here's the thing. Hargarten and the National Academy of Sciences (the anti-gun collective that recently came out with the massive study that couldn't find any correlation between citizen disarmament laws and reduced violence) depend on continued funding. So it's hardly surprising that their conclusion--when they can't find facts to support their thesis--is they need to ponder some more, and they need more money with which to ponder.

Think of squawking chicks in a nest, maws gaping, shrieking for more regurgitated nourishment. You wouldn't let those determine your defensive options, either.

The actual Hargarten journal article is here. Amazingly it is even stupider and more agenda-driven than the Journal Sentinel editorial. He apparently can't help whining hysterically about a Ruger Blackhawk model that was engineered to include a transfer bar to address the problem of misfires over three decades ago. He demands mandatory (and conveniently non-existent) "personalized handguns," and deliberately misleads his readers with statistics about police officers and takeaway incidents, knowing full well they will be exempted from having to use them.

Bottom line: Hargarten is not acting as a scientist. He is acting as a propagandist. So expect the Brady Campaign and their fellow travelers to hold this dishonest opinion piece masked as scientific literature up like it's the Ten Commandments handed down from God.

And no, I haven't changed my opinions about permitting/licensing of unalienable rights. But that's a different debate.

[Thanks to Dan Gifford]