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Author's Note: 10 Big Questions in the U.S. Gun Control Debate

I grew up in western Pennsylvania, where the movie "The Deer Hunter" was set, and where a lot of my neighbors were avid hunters. So the idea of law-abiding people owning guns was never something I questioned. But except for my toy pistols, we didn't have any guns in our home, because my father, who wasn't a hunter, didn't want them around. He'd been a combat medic in the U.S. Army during World War II, and he had a huge, scary scar on his left bicep where a German machine gun bullet had hit him on a battlefield in 1945. He'd had to bind up his own arm in a battlefield tourniquet, which enabled him to escape having it amputated. I still have a vivid picture in my mind of what a bullet can do to a person's body. I think that's given me a real-world perspective on the gun issue that a lot of debaters, who tend to get caught up in legal and constitutional abstractions, often seem to lack.

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    Start the Countdown
  • 10: How Many Guns Are in the U.S.?
  • 9: What Does the Second Amendment Say?
  • 8: Is the U.S. Gun Homicide Rate Really That High?
  • 7: Are There Countries With as Many Guns as the U.S. but Less Crime?
  • 6: What's a Semi-automatic Gun?
  • 5: How Often Do Gun Owners Actually Prevent Crimes?
  • 4: How Often Are People Killed by Guns That They or Family Members Own?
  • 3: Did the Federal Ban on Assault Weapons Affect Crime?
  • 2: Do States With Strict Gun Control Laws Have Less Gun Violence?
  • 1: Has American Public Opinion Shifted on Gun Control, Over Time?
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