Everyone else is talking today about the swine flu in Mexico and whether the disease could sweep through the U.S., so I thought I’d tackle something different. The National Rifle Association is bringing its annual convention to Phoenix in mid-May, just as there has been a rash of mass shootings in recent weeks. I expect to hear a lot of arguments in support of the Second Amendment similar to the view expressed in Friday’s Tribune by letter writer Mark Hawthorne. The basic contention is any mass killing by a firearm is little different than a mass killing by swords, knives or archery. Hawthorne wrote:

“Any tool, whether it is a pocket knife, baseball bat, shovel, et al., when placed in the hands of a murderous deviant, can achieve similar results. It’s an issue of personal responsibility.”

But this view is fundamentally inaccurate and most Americans know it. Different weapons bring different considerations to civilized society, and modern firearms deliver a level of lethality that simply can’t be ignored.

Think about being in a crowd or in your office, and you want to start slashing with a knife. You would have to physically engage your victims and stab for the most vulernable parts of the body. You would expose yourself to a counter-attack simply by promixity to your target, and you could be overwhelmed by others who might come to the aid of your first victim.

But with a pistol or revolver (as easily hidden as a knife), you can stand several feet away and fire bullets through a victim’s toughest bones. A victim can try to close the distance to counter-attack (assuming he or she isn’t disabled by the first bullet), but likely will be shot two or three more times before the victim can get in a single strike for defense. If on-lookers want to come to a victim’s aid, you can quickly quick point your gun in their direction and disable or kill them as well before they can reach you.

Even bow-and-arrow mayhem doesn’t offer this kind of lethality. In the time an average person would need to arm a bow, aim and let fly with a single arrow, a person with a semi-automatic Glock could fire 9 or 10 shots more accurately and do more damage. Of course, the lethal nature of firearms escalate exponentially when you talk about rifles and machine guns.

My guess is most people haven’t examined this argument in such a manner, but they inituitively understand the inherent difference between handheld weapons and firearms. And that’s why many people see all gun rights groups as slightly off-kilter, because a lot of Second Amendment advocates fail to acknowledge what is patently obvious — put a powerful firearm in the hands of a deranged killer and more people are going to die than if that murderer was armed only with a kitchen knife.

Personally, I believe a much stronger argument for broad Second Amendment protections takes an approach sort of like Mutual Assured Destruction. If more good people were armed (and took some safety training), potential killers would have harder time finding multiple victims unable to defend themselves. They are far too many guns in the world to expect we could keep them all out of the hands of outlaws.  But outlaws would be less eager to reach for their weapons if they risked an immediate counter-attack from law-abiding citizens who can match their fire power.