In so doing, they distract us from the social and health problems that are all too real. Those of us who travel outside the country frequently know that this bias is not limited to America. I am an American by birth who was raised in Canada, and my frequent travels to the country of my youth serve as constant reminders of this. My only complaint with Kates and Kleck's generally fine book, and with Funk's praiseworthy review of it, is that it gives short shrift to the most important justification for the freedom to own a gun. That reason is theoretical and deontological, not consequential.
Citizens have a natural right to self-defense.
One citizen's natural right to self-defense is simply not dependent on another's misuse of his guns. Our Constitution enshrined the right to keep and bear arms for these reasons of natural right. By abandoning them, gun-rights defenders play into the hands of the public policy elite, which scorns natural right and natural law.