Handguns are a public-health problem.

Although the District of Columbiahas had a ban on handgun sale and possession since 1976, Washingtonresidents are held hostage by the lax gun laws of surroundingjurisdictions.

Fear, physical pain, and death are just part of the price Americans pay for the easy access of handguns. It is estimated that the total costs to Americans of gun violence (the vast majority of which involves handguns) is measured in tens of billions of dollars.3 In comparison, the wholesale value of the 1.3 million handguns manufactured in America in 1998 totaled only $370 million.

You can't get around the image of people shooting at people toprotect their stores and it working. This is damaging to the [guncontrol] movement.

Americans are ready to hate somebody -- and it's going to be the gun industry.

One tenet of the National Rifle Association's faith has always been that handgun controls do little to stop criminals from obtaining handguns. For once, the NRA is right and America's leading handgun control organization is wrong. Criminals don't buy guns in gun stores. That's why they're criminals. But it isn't criminals who are killing most of the 20,000 to 22,000 people who die from handguns each year. We are.

Today's N.R.A. is, in reality, nothing more than a gun industry trade association masquerading as a shooting sports foundation. The organization's agenda is increasingly focused on one goal: selling more guns.