ducts: "Ford Pintos don't kill people; the people who run into the back of them do." McClurg writes:
Modern legal causation analysis focuses upon the foreseeability of the risk. Certainly, the overwhelming statistical evidence shows that one of the prime foreseeable risks of a handgun is that it will be used to kill someone during a criminal attack. In negligence cases, many modern decisions have held that intentional criminal acts to not supersede the negligence of the original actor where the criminal act was the very risk created by the negligence (McClurg 617).
This raises another argument in favor of gun control, the argument of balancing competing interests. On the one hand, there are those who feel they need a handgun for protection as a matter of course in a society where there is so much violence. The argument that law-abiding people can have guns while criminals cannot is false--criminals are stealing their guns from the law-abiding people. The only way to do something about this is to regulate handguns strictly, with registration and a waiting period only a beginning.
Gun control remains a major political issue with passionate voices on both sides. Opposing gun control is one of the most powerful organizations and lobbies in the country, the National Rifle Association, which is able to command large sums of money in service of its political agenda. The gun control lobby is less well organized and until recently far less effective. The statistics showing the number of crimes committed by guns each year are used by both sides in the debate. One side says that this means citizens should arm themselves for their own protection, while the other says that there are already too many guns in society and that controls are necessary. Those opposing gun control also state that criminals do not obey the law and so will not register guns. This argument ignores several important facts:
1) Criminals may not willingl...