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Show SOME PLAIN TALK ON CRIME. Statistics say that from 1918 to 1926, inclusive, of the 1882 people killed in New York City, only eight were slain by men de fending their own lives. Such figures do not prove that the average person does not need a pistol for defense; they may prove that existing anti-pistol laws have kept many of the 1874 victims from defending themselves. them-selves. Most of the 1882 killers went freen on pleas of insanity, or through frantic appeals of slobbering sentimentailsts who had already al-ready robbed Innocence of the means to protect itself; for the anti-pistol anti-pistol laws are generally framed and urged by the elements that send flowers and dainties to rapists and murderers and who sob over the woes of the human butcher and degenerate. Indiscriminate pistol-toting may well be declared unlawful, like the possession of poisons of powerful explosives where their menace outweighs their necessity. But by no stretch of the imagination imag-ination could even universal pistol-toting be as loathsome or as deadly as a law to leave Decency helpless and at the mercy of Vice. The remedy for crime does not lie in forbidding arms for legitimate legit-imate use or defense, but in better execution of the laws against crime. These laws are too often nullified by hysteria that raves against the loss of life by shootings, while urging the .abolishment of crime penalties, thereby making murder a fine art or a psychopathic psycho-pathic lark. |