Using Guns for Self-Defense

* Amazing. John R. Lott Jr., a scholar from Yale Law School, exhorts concealed weapons use as a means of self-protection, stating that “passive behavior is simply not the wisest course” (Commentary, June 1), while in the same issue there’s a tragic story of a man who did just that: He pulled a gun on armed intruders in his home, and they shot and killed him (“Grandfather Kills Intruder, Is Shot to Death”). They shot him 19 times. Even one of his own children said, “Maybe nothing would have happened” if he had not brought out his own weapon. “They probably would have just left.”

Gun advocates like to cook statistics, making it seem that the very few incidents of people defending themselves with guns outweigh the dangers of having the gun taken away and used against them, or escalating the situation into a shooting. It is simply not true, and it’s time to face the facts: If you have a gun with or near you, the odds are tremendous that you will be harmed by it.

SAMANTHA KIMMEL

North Hollywood

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If Lott’s commentary is true, wherein he states that “the chance of serious injury from an attack is 2 1/2 times greater for women offering no resistance than for those resisting with a gun,” then possibly it can be noted that the common statement that if you keep a gun in the home, you are 10 times more likely to have it used on you is false.

RICHARD L. DILLY

Lakewood

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Why aren’t letter writers (June 1) as incensed over the, and I quote, “tens of thousands of deaths” each year from medical mistakes (May 29) as they are about gun killings?

BRUCE JOHNSON

Dana Point