RE: “There comes a point at which countering guns with guns becomes little more than Russian Roulette.”
Which is, of course, an individual decision made by ordinary people in those situation. Thank God those decisions are not made by the author of this piece.
RE: “I’ve got to think there are better public safety options than that.”
Like what? You solution appears to be to disarm honest citizens because you trust violent offenders more than people who deliver pizza.
I encourage everyone to read Jeffrey Snyder’s essay “A Nation of Cowards”:
It is by no means obvious why it is “civilized” to permit oneself to fall easy prey to criminal violence, and to permit criminals to continue unobstructed in their evil ways. While it may be that a society in which crime is so rare that no one ever needs to carry a weapon is “civilized,” a society that stigmatizes the carrying of weapons by the law-abiding — because it distrusts its citizens more than it fears rapists, robbers, and murderers — certainly cannot claim this distinction. Perhaps the notion that defending oneself with lethal force is not “civilized” arises from the view that violence is always wrong, or the view that each human being is of such intrinsic worth that it is wrong to kill anyone under any circumstances. The necessary implication of these propositions, however, is that life is not worth defending. Far from being “civilized,” the beliefs that counterviolence and killing are always wrong are an invitation to the spread of barbarism. Such beliefs announce loudly and clearly that those who do not respect the lives and property of others will rule over those who do.
. . .
In truth, a state that deprives its law-abiding citizens of the means to effectively defend themselves is not civilized but barbarous, becoming an accomplice of murderers, rapists, and thugs and revealing its totalitarian nature by its tacit admission that the disorganized, random havoc created by criminals is far less a threat than are men and women who believe themselves free and independent, and act accordingly.
