Josh Sugarmann

About the author: Josh Sugarmann is director of the Violence Policy Center, a gun control advocacy organization, and the author of Every Handgun Is Aimed at You: The Case for Banning Handguns, from which the following viewpoint is excerpted.

When people think about gun homicides, they often imagine "street criminals"—strangers who murder their victims in the course of committing a robbery or rape. But in reality, the majority of homicides in America result from confrontations between two people who know each other. For example, most female homicide victims are killed by an intimate acquaintance. Handguns are the most common weapon used in homicides. Thus, while gun ownership does not cause people to commit violence, it dramatically increases the likelihood that violence will culminate in homicide.

The vast majority...