It’s not very scientific and it sure ain’t American. But John Horgan at scientificamerican.com just up and goes for it in a rant entitled A modest proposal for curbing homicides: Socialism. Well, not at first. At first, the author admits that his previous belief in a cause and effect relationship between gun control and crime control may have been a tad hasty. “The link between homicides and easy access to guns—like the link between real violence and media violence—is tenuous. You can make the cause [sic] for or against a causal relation, depending on what society or time period you examine. Complexities like these lead to complaints that ‘social science’ is an oxymoron.” Hey, you said it. Needless to say, Horgan’s polemic goes downhill from there . . .
One of the things that bothers me about armed self defense is what happens after I kill or wound an attacker? What then? Do I get indicted? Get no-billed? Go to jail? Win, but spend the rest of my life paying off an attorney? That leads me to thinking about “if shooting someone opens the door to all these risks, what are the rules that govern what is judged a “good” shoot or a “bad” shoot? Thankfully, I’m not the only one that worries about such things. And even better, there are people out there who know a lot more than I do on the topic, and are willing to share. Enter everybody’s favorite self-defense expert Massad Ayoob.
After reading RF’s thoughtful piece on the Petit tragedy, I was moved to respond. But as I collected my thoughts, I realized what I had to say would take more space than the comments section allows, hence this separate post. 
