What celebrants of self defense via firearms are reluctant to accept is that, in nations with more restrictions on gun ownership, victimhood by violent crime is not higher. In fact, throughout the 2000s, Canada and America had very similar rates of homicide and other violent crimes with the exception of crimes involving firearms, which happen with much more frequency in America. Correlation doesn’t prove causality, but we poor, unarmed Canadians seem to be doing pretty well for ourselves without concealed carry permits and the right to bring handguns to church.

This isn’t to say that nobody has ever protected his/her family with a gun, but as Robert and Ruslan both note, the devil in the details is “In responsible hands”. The numbers certainly suggest that cases where a gun owner successfully prevents a crime aren’t common enough to make a measurable dent in violent crime overall.

Don’t get me wrong. I happen to possess a small collection of various firearms for personal recreational use. I feel that it teaches responsibility, and frankly, plinking is just plain fun.

It’s just the personal-defense obsessives who give use gun owners a bad name. And you’re right. I have friends who collect machine guns, and they spend beyond exorbitant sums of money just to keep them fed. A favorite story involves one of them purchasing an entire ISO CONTAINER full of Argentine 7.92mm Mauser boxes just to feed his collection. It cost him something like $40,000.

Now that’s some serious walking around money.

Once upon a time, I sat down and figured out the cost of lawfully owning and firing a fully automatic weapon. Suffice it to say the figures gravely offended my sense of financial propriety.