Listening to the asinine speeches before Congress incites me to point out that the argument that we need more guns is the same argument that created the Cold War:

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD):–  if everyone has a gun, who do you shoot, the guy next to you who just pulled his, or the guy he’s shooting at? When you draw yours, you are automatically a high-priority target — for everyone else, not just the original shooter. MAD works only if no one is crazy enough to fire the first shot. Oh, right, this is about deterring crazies… Absolutely wrong solution.

– Hard targets: Deliberate shooters determined to take as many people with them when they check out as they can will wear body armor. Will you? To go to the mall? What does that say about your motives?

– Stealth: Take a lesson from Ballistic Missile Submarines and MAD — When everyone has a handgun, the bad guys will have sniper rifles.

– Gun Economy: During the Cold War, defense contractors were among the top 100 corporations, and absorbed a large percentage of GNP. In the Second Amendment Arms Race, gun shops will spring up next to the Apple Store, and designer purse pistols will outnumber iPhones.   We are almost there, already.  Which. Is. Part. Of. The. Problem.

– Proliferation: The only thing wrong with the economic model above is that iPhones don’t kill people, texting while driving kills people. The more smart phones, the more deaths. Likewise, more guns, less safety.  If people can’t use a phone responsibly, how do you think they will use guns?  Street gangs already text with bullets, and don’t care who they hit.

– Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: You can’t wish your sister Happy Birthday with a handgun, but you can with a smart phone, and you can call 911 faster than you can realize you should have drawn first. You can also hang up the phone if you were wrong, or apologize.  You can’t put the bullet back in the chamber.  Guns don’t increase happiness.

– Security for Future Generations: If your toddler accidentally dials 911 on your smart phone, it is an embarrassment. If you dial 911 because your toddler played with your handgun, it is a tragedy.  I lost a nephew (age 5) to an unsecured purse gun nearly 40 years ago: guns do not protect you and your family unless you protect your gun 24 hours a day, every day, and , more often, guns in the household do irreparable harm.

– Mindset: if you carry a gun, you are, first and foremost, a gunslinger. How will you focus on teaching when you know that, statistically, sometime in the next 15,000 years, a madman with a gun will enter your classroom, and you have two seconds to draw and fire? Or less. If someone you don’t recognize opens the door, do you shoot, in case he might be the one, or do you wait until you see the gun? Oh, too late. Do you practice at the range after school, or do you tutor a child having difficulties?

– —a Well-Regulated Militia: The “people” can have all the guns they want, if well-regulated (doesn’t this mean laws about what kind, and registration requirements) and organized into a militia. The NRA originally taught gun safety for hunters, but now seems determined to arm insurgents against possible (but not probable) totalitarian oppression from the Government, the charter for which opens with “We the people…”  We have met the enemy and he is us. The Second Amendment arose because the founding fathers were determined to run their new country without a standing professional army, an institution which had brought so much grief and strife to Europe over the centuries, and, more recently, in the Revolution, which saw trained British regulars and Hessian mercenaries abuse the civilian population. The second amendment provided for a military reserve of hunters, in place of an insurgency of armed colonists, in the context of a frontier hunter-gatherer society moving toward an agro-industrial economy, in a geographically isolated and sparsely-populated land with a sometimes-hostile indigenous population. Those conditions do not exist in the 21st century: the 2nd amendment is an historical footnote, and should not be interpreted as a literal call to arms.