Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for February 13, 2011

Is that figure correct? 270,000? I can’t believe that!

I’m sure illegal aliens think just like we do.

Why else would they fly here?

@davidblack: I think that figure is accurate.

We have met the enemy, and he is us?

But of course, they are the source (carefully camouflaged) of all the better new high-tech gadgetry - especially the Really Top Secret stuff…

AWESOME THOUGHT

Yes, about a thousand people a week are killed in the United States by someone using a gun.

Mostly these are suicides, or folks killed by family members or people they know. Most of the people pulling the triggers have no previous criminal record, or at least no felony convictions.

Amateurs with guns are more likely to be shot than those without guns when encountering criminals. Having a gun can make you cocky and defending yourself can get you killed. Unfortunately, you never know if THIS guy only wants your wallet, or is one of the smaller number of crooks who won’t stop at that if you don’t stop him. But if no one defended himself or his property, and these days with police budgets being slashed everywhere …

What some gun advocates want is to privatize law enforcement. I have heard it seriously maintained that if every citizen could defend himself, you would hardly need a police force. Riiiiiight!

Even if this were true, it is positively feudal or Darwinian in its implications: those who for any reason aren’t able to defend themselves will just have to suffer, or place themselves under the protection of some more warlike person who is able to protect them. If every person carried a gun, the only safe way to rob people is to sneak up behind them, shoot them in the head, and then take their wallets (and their guns). And you could then carry your gun without it drawing attention to yourself , too. A fine state of affairs.

In the old wild wild west, law-abiding honest citizens deplored the wide-open town. As soon as possible, they tried to establish law and order. And that usually meant that no one was permitted to carry a gun while in town. Turned them in at the sherriff’s office when you got to town and pick them up when you leave.

The gun-toting line of men at the saloon bar was the exception, found in towns not yet properly established, rather than the rule, as Hollywood would have it. It was a passing phase, not the nature of society.

We now live captive to our own myths.

Wait until the Greenies publish how many die as a result of automobiles, directly in accidents and indirectly through pollution and road rage. Remember, cars don’t kill people, unenforced laws do. We already have enough laws, registration and licencing.Keep the cars out of the hands of drunks, and people with cell phones..

Chikuku, the total number of dead on 9/11 was 2,996. Taking away the 19 hijackers it is still 2,977. One needs to remember the 246 passengers and crew from all four flights, and the 125 victims from the Pentegon.

The difference between terrorism and Darwinism.

Chikuku - I suppose we can always protect ourselves with sharpened pencils that the 1st amendment guarantees us. It is interesting how the same proponents of gun bans are the same folks who man the picket lines defending abortions. I wonder how many lives of been lost there. Its nice to know none of us live in glass houses, right?

^ Superior alien technology.

Gun control attitudes are akin to religious beliefs, and arguing them in this forum is a pointless, albeit entertaining, exercise in futility.

As for the two wars, one would do well to remember the conditions in Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban and in Iraq under the rule of Saddam Hussein. There was much editorial hand-wringing over both situations, yet when action was taken recriminations were immediate.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

I’m from an alien family, i.e. German and Ukrainian. We learned English because we knew and respected that was the language of this great country we had immigrated to. And, we became citizens so that we could rightly participate and enjoy all aspects of this country’s society. However, now, those of us in my generation are being blamed for the slavery that existed long before we even came to this country, are being accused of being racist because we are fair-skinned, and are being accused of being Nazi’s because we do not know Spanish. Huh? Whhrrr-does not compute, is right! But, I’ll have some of that coffee!

With respect, woowie, it sounds like you didn’t leave all of your prejudices behind in the old countries.

An alien? My wife is from German and Hungarian backgrounds (second generation) but has never thought of herself as anything but American …

See, what I mean? What prejudices? I did not express any prejudices. And, I do feel I am an American-I was born here! But, as sandfan has said, bleeep if you do, and bleeep if you don’t. I, by the way, have started learning Spanish because I feel it would be to my best interests if I do. I would like to learn Chinese as well, but I am meeting resistance to that. White men, it seems can mix with the Chinese, but if us white women attempt to- well, talk about prejudices! I, frankly, find Asian men very attractive!

These numbers are tiny. All a drop in the bucket.

Every year we kill 1.3 million of our unborn in the USA.

Over 3500 a day. Year in & year out.

The 911, war, gun & auto deaths are a pittance by comparison.

We are making Hitler look like a amateur….

Most of those killed by guns are criminals shooting other criminals. Thousands of people every year are saved because they own guns, often without even firing a single shot. I’d much rather trust my own gun to protect me from a criminal than follow British laws, and “shout sternly at a burglar to persuade him to leave.”

Oh no! Our guns only kill bad people. These are democratic guns, not dictatorial guns. After all we are a nation with 300,000,000 well regulated militias. Most of them use ballots in well regulated ballot boxes, not bullets in well regulated multi-round magazines.

Right on cue, we have the usual gun-nuts posting about how society should ban knives, automobiles, hammers, baseball bats, etc. along with firearms because they too have occasionally been used to criminally kill people.

Folks, if you truly can’t distinguish between articles that (though dangerous and deadly if misused) were devised primarily as tools as opposed to handguns and assault rifles (whose purpose is to do harm against other people, with no practical alternate use) it’s obvious you have nothing constructive to contribute to the discussion.

The alien probably drinks through his ear. I know I sometimes drink it all in that way.

Once again, the anti-abortion freaks abuse this alleged forum to raise the only issue on their minds. I do not relish living in this, the stupidest of all nations with the stupidest of all people.

The striking thing about this discussion is that no one is questioning the basic figure: 270,000 people, over nine years, killed by guns at home. An average of 30,000 per year seemed high to me – a kind of urban legend number, quoted and requoted without thinking – so I checked the data. It’s correct.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control for the seven years 2001-2007 (the most recent year available) are as follows for deaths by firearms:

homicide: 84,496 suicide: 118,871 accident: 4,987 total: 208,354 average total per year: 29,750

Three things come to light. First, well over half of the firearm-related deaths are suicides, and conversely, deaths by suicide are overwhelmingly by firearms. How many suicides and homicides would still occur if firearms weren’t a factor is unknowable. And second, accidental deaths by firearms – a favorite bête noire of gun-control advocates – is actually quite low…as these things go, of course.

But third, as has been pointed out above, the number is rather less than deaths from motor vehicle accidents – 302,642 in the same period – and it’s a drop in the bucket compared to over ten million deaths from disease, a good part of those preventable by better lifestyle choices, like smoking, obesity, etc., or by availability of better medical care.

It’s similarly dwarfed by the number of fetal deaths from abortion, which is not recorded by the CDC as a “cause of death”, since the definition of unborn child as a “person” is a moral and political judgment that they choose not to address in their statistics.

Any unnecessary human death is tragic, especially by suicide – which is over half of the gun death total. But if we seriously want to make a dent in unnecessary deaths, there are much larger and lower-hanging fruit to try to pick.

And almost everyone keeps blaming the current admin……………

we strangers in this strange land grok both the red G-string and the glock.

burma shave

from the Louisiana state home for those of Boggled Minds

(2nd generation Russian-American)

English ain’t our native language(s)……………….

@ pavlov,,, Since when are hunting and assault rifles highly restricted and licensed? I think maybe you mean fully automatic weapons, otherwise I am in violation for my old .22.

fbjsr: As I showed above, GT is not “making stuff up”. The numbers vary from year to year, and of course are subject to spin (including yours), but they’re real enough. Allow me to repeat my point:

Three things come to light. First, well over half of the firearm-related deaths are suicides, and conversely, deaths by suicide are overwhelmingly by firearms. How many suicides and homicides would still occur if firearms weren’t a factor is unknowable. And second, accidental deaths by firearms – a favorite bête noire of gun-control advocates – is actually quite low…as these things go, of course.

But third, as has been pointed out above, the number is rather less than deaths from motor vehicle accidents – 302,642 in the same period – and it’s a drop in the bucket compared to over ten million deaths from disease, a good part of those preventable by better lifestyle choices, like smoking, obesity, etc., or by availability of better medical care.

It’s similarly dwarfed by the number of fetal deaths from abortion, which is not recorded by the CDC as a “cause of death”, since the definition of unborn child as a “person” is a moral and political judgment that they choose not to address in their statistics.

Any unnecessary human death is tragic, especially by suicide – which is over half of the gun death total. But if we seriously want to make a dent in unnecessary deaths, there are much larger and lower-hanging fruit to try to pick.

I’m not sure I see the point in comparing one-off terrorist attacks with year-long statistics. anti-abortionists do it all the time (and hey, what’d you know, they’re doing it on this very thread), and ignoring for a second the fact that fetuses aren’t people, it’s just kind of like comparing apples to oranges. I think it’s more interesting to note that when American civilians get killed, it’s terrorism, but when we kill civilians it’s “winning the war on terror.”

as far as guns are concerned, I think they should be legal, but then I think all drugs up to and including heroin should be legal because, honestly, I think personal freedom is more important than trying to artificially lower death statistics.

SCAATY makes a good point. From the NHTSA:

Vehicle crash fatalities by year, 2001 to 2009, reverse order:

33,808 37,423 41,259 42,708 43,510 42,836 42,884 43,005 42,196

So, what everyone here is trying to say is, that……….Darwin was wrong?

Sorry, you are wrong. The number 1 killer in the United States is still cigarettes. Boy, them native people got back at us. 440,000 annually, but them there poiticians sure like that tax money.

There have been 1.4 million known firearms casualties in America since 1933, that includes suicides, homicides, and accidents. That is more than have been killed in all wars combined since our country was established

The statistics show the gap between “gun deaths” and vehicle “accident” deaths is narrowing, guns up, vehicles down. About half the gun deaths 16,000 on average- are HOMICIDES, suicides about 15,000- that’s every year. Auto deaths are “accidents” though a few may be suicide (by cell phone drivers?)- while very few people commit armed robbery or “drive by” mow gang members down with cars. Guns and cars can be “tools”- cars aren’t designed to be deadly weapons. In fact design plays a large role in reducing auto deaths.

The most “alien” things in America are logic, common sense, and self-restraint. To quote Kermit “It’s not easy being green.”

dtroutma: Perhaps you’re getting your data on gun deaths from a source other than the CDC – your privilege, of course, but I think the CDC is the most objective and credible source we have. For whatever it may be worth, the CDC data indicates that gun-related suicides substantially outnumber homicides in every year. But now I’m carping over details; your post is quite well-taken.

I am surprised it took 2 years of a democratic White House before gun ownership is being attacked again…

If we don’t keep thinning the herd, the freeways will get all jammed up.

As SCAATY notes, abortions are not counted as “deaths” by the CDC because a fetus is not legally a person.

Conflating the aborting of a fetus with deliberately murdering a fellow-human being is insane. It shows mindless confusion about the value of a life.

This confusion is writ large in our general population, half of whom are against abortion but believe in capital punishment while the other half are in favor of abortion but against capital punishment.

Such a sharp divide implies that both positions are wrong. If there is a morally correct position, it has to be sought outside the majority.

A tiny minority—many of them involved in law enforcement—support both capital punishment and abortion.

A fourth possibility is to reject both abortion and capital punishment. I can’t think of anyone who takes this unrealistic position, except for the pope and naive teenagers (including those who never grow up).

Doughfoot, if you’re going to make up numbers, you should pick a subject that isn’t as easily researched. The total murders in the US in 2009 (2010 data hasn’t been released yet) was 15,241. That’s about 293 per week. Of those 293, about 45% were killed with knives, clubs, fists or poisons.

Now it’s estimated that about 2,000,000 crimes are prevented every year by a citizen with a firearm. In almost all cases, there were no shots fired. You see, criminals are cowards and will run if they think their intended victim is armed. Makes me wonder how many of those 15,241 murders would have been prevented if the victims, or someone nearby, had been armed and willing to defend them.

You also suggest that private citizens (you call them amateurs) are more likely to be shot. I’d have to disagree. As a bystander to a crime, you’re twice as likely to be accidentally shot by a cop than by a private citizen (the police hit their target about 37 out of every 100 shots fired, citizens 72 out of 100). In the case of an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal, the police error rate is 11%, citizens 2%. That means you’re more than 5 times as likely to be shot by a cop.

Did you know that the homicide rate went down in Florida and Oregon after those states passed laws allowing citizens to carry weapons? Yet you think if you disarm the law abiding population the criminals will stop killing?

What GT doesn’t mention is where was the homeowners house? Which is, what state. What are the gun laws like there. Also, considering that gun ownership is a constitutional right, it would be very difficult for firearms to be banned completely.

Holy Cow !!!

humans will fight over anything. pshaw.

…I am pro-gun:period!I think everyone in this country should have at least one:IF NOT MORE.What we need to do is teach gun safety in schools.(no,that would not get rid of both the bad students and the bad teachers…bad reader…no cookies).I think the better idea is to get rid of the people that say guns have to go.Put them either in jail or insane asylums,because,if you aren’t crazy about guns:you have to be crazy!I bet more people die each year from alcohol than they do guns…we outlawed that:see what happened!Gun sales went out the roof.People want to legalize pot to get rid of crime.same with guns…you outlaw them,only the Mexican druglords would have them.Do we want that?John Lennon sang that happiness is a warm gun..and he was a peace-nik.More people should think like him.if you take away our guns,soon people will be marrying their donkeys.Do the math!Catholics believe that babies can not be baptized until they are eight days old…and if they aren’t baptized they suffer in limbo for all time.So how is that any worse then abortion?And doesn’t that make the five day gun waiting law seem obscene by comparison?Are you still here?Why are you reading this?There are guns to buy,man!

palin drome – “Conflating the aborting of a fetus with deliberately murdering a fellow-human being is insane. It shows mindless confusion about the value of a life.” Perhaps. But confusion on whose part? Not yours, surely. I hope you have the honesty to admit that the point at which a pre-born person is in fact a person is at least an open question, and that you might not possess the absolute answer.

The polls you cite, correct in the gist if not the actual numbers, reflect the difficulty of crafting a public survey question in a neutral, objective, useful way. Repeated studies have shown that the same questions, worded differently, elicit completely opposite responses. (For example: “pro-abortion” or “pro-choice”; “anti-abortion” or “pro-life”.) Polls have to be taken with a huge grain of salt.

“A fourth possibility is to reject both abortion and capital punishment. I can’t think of anyone who takes this unrealistic position, except for the pope and naive teenagers (including those who never grow up).” Or those who have a morally and intellectually consistent world-view – a hallmark of maturity rather than the opposite, I would think. You might save your disdain for those who cherry-pick their moral values and decisions on a whim.

And why, exactly, is it an unrealistic position? I doubt it will ever be adopted in this country; our society is much too fond of taking a life in vengeance, or for our own self-absorbed convenience. But unrealistic should never be confused with unwise, or undesirable as a guidepost – if it’s unrealistic, so much the worse for us as a humane society.

56 comments, 2 pages. I think GT just wanted to fill up his comments section today.

Didn’t change anything when on of them became a huge domestic terrorist named Timmy and used the gun shows to finance his bomb, either. I guess you can’t lump all gun nuts together like the right lumps all Muslims together because that would be WRONG!!! ;-)

Pavlov: what state do you live in, the one where you can get a car ” without a license, background check, age restriction, or a mental health exam”? While it’s technically true you can purchase a car without having a license, you can’t get plates or drive it on the street without first having to demonstrate that you can operate it without harming yourself or those around you, either by intent or accident. And should you subsequently demonstrate that you aren’t capable of driving safely, you can have your license pulled, for a period of time or for life.

At least that’s how it works in ever state I’ve lived in or visited. What state do you live in? Sounds like a place to avoid…

@ pavlov “@Alabama_Al First off handguns are by definition a defensive tool, and many people use them for that purpose as well as target shooting, and hunting and assault rifles are by definition select fire weapons and are highly restricted and federally licensed.”

What did you just say here pavlov? I see that you say that hunting and assault rifles are by definition select fire… ?????

@SCAATY—

I appreciate your thoughtful response. The logical conundrum I’m pointing to does not come from formal polls, only hearsay evidence. If the nation’s opinion regarding abortion and capital punishment is evenly divided, that logically means that neither side can be right. This lack of consensus shows our moral confusion over what value we put on a human life.

Nobody who is intellectually honest would pretend to know when the life of a fetus begins. (Asked that question, Obama was more honest than McCain: “That’s above my pay grade to decide.”) Nonetheless, we base our society on every citizen’s innate right to a “life” that we cannot define.

Conflating abortion with murder is morally and politically insane because it gives an unborn fetus the same right to life as a murder victim. You might as well complain that aborting the fetus takes away its liberty or its pursuit of happiness.

The fetus does not inherit rights or come under the protection of the state until it becomes a viable infant. Up till that point, it is protected solely by its mother, to whom the state quite properly cedes its executive powers of life and death.

My opinion, or yours or McCain’s, do not affect the political reality. The state has decided when the fetus becomes a rights-bearing infant. But its stand on capital punishment is less consistent than its ruling on abortion. By abolishing capital punishment (it hasn’t yet done so), the state would be protecting the right to life of a murderer who took that right away from his victim.

As you say, we can dream of a society where nobody’s right to life ever falls into jeopardy, even the life of a murderer (who will be spared so that he may repent) or a deformed embryo (whose mother and society will ensure his pursuit of happiness). God does wonderful things sometimes, if she’s able to. But most of the time, she needs all the help she can get in bringing justice to this chaotic world.

Did GT pick today to recycle this old chestnut in response to today’s referendum in Switzerland?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/13/swiss-reject-gun-law-reform

Today, the most heavily armed (and one of the least crime-ridden) country in the world rejected new gun control legislation.

http://www.swissinfo.ch/media/cms/images/keystone/2010/12/13665916-29076082.jpg

Americans are a frightened people. Despite all their guns and weapons of war they still fear each other and foreigners. If they became brave and peacable they would soon save tens , even hundreds of thousands of lives a year worldwide, and would no longer be making enemies. The best defence is no enemies.

But this is logic. Americans don’t do logic.

palin, two points.

“If the nation’s opinion regarding abortion and capital punishment is evenly divided, that logically means that neither side can be right”.

That’s only true if might makes right, and that morality is decided via majority rule. Many Americans believe that morality is left up to a majority of One. If you’ve been watching “Godfather Weekend” on AMC today, perhaps you will remember the scene where the funeral director is commenting to the Don about why he seeks a favor from him. To paraphrase, he said “The boys who beat up my daughter got justice from the court, but I did NOT receive justice”

“My opinion, or yours or McCain’s, do not affect the political reality”

True, but they do affect the political reality of the future, and so those opinions still have great value. Young people today consider the political climate of the 60’s to be very old fashioned, and many more of them than in the recent past believe that abortion is a human rights issue. It is the extension of human rights to the almost-born that will mark progressivism in the 21st century, and I suspect that the movement will get under way again in earnest once the baby boomers die off or at least get out of public office.

.

Nemesys,

I can’t tell where you find progressivism among “young people today.” I teach about 100 young adults every year in my university classes, and I’d say they’re more conservative on the two moral issues as I’ve formulated them—the right to life of the murder victim and the mother’s right to decide on the viability of her fetus—on these issues, students today are more conservative than the 60s generation, who in my judgment were too impatient to define historically the just society they envisioned.

palin, I’m speaking of the many recent polls where high school and college aged people are expressing that abortion is morally wrong. I’ll cite them if you like.

But my point is that from a youth standpoint, right-to-life is not a religious-based Right of God conservative viewpoint, but represents a natural progressive Rights of Humans advance that redefines once again what is a human being and to what rights they are entitled.

In each case where human rights have emerged, they have done so at the expense of existing rights enjoyed by others. If the trend continues, I strongly suspect that subsequent generations will no longer hold that Roe vs. Wade was the last word in how we define humanity.

Of course, scientific advances that allow the harvesting of developing viable infants at much earlier time periods may make the legal issue moot. If it becomes technologically possible to give mother a choice between an abortion and a harvesting for adoption at the same gestational age, will the Right to Choose become exposed as a Right to Kill?

I resigned my NRA voting membership when NRA voted FOR including the fully automatic “weapon” as legal “hunting” equipment. D’ya ‘suppose it matters WHO you are hunting, not WHAT? ~~~~ Also - consider the possibility that ET is out there in the Mother Ship - not to invade Earth, but to restrict the “human” race from invading the rest of the Universe.

How about how many lives have been saved through the use of arms? Want to factor in all the facts next time?

There’s a thousand people a week murdered, not necessassarily with guns. Many with knives , hammers. shovels, whatever is handy. As for outlawing guns, wouldn’t that be like outlawing drugs and we’ve seen how well that works.

I want to see the evidence that “most of these are suicides” and I would also like to know why that makes any difference at all.

Over 1 million people have died by gunfire in this country since MLK & RFK were both shot in 1968. We really should be proud (and unfortunately some of us are).

Richard S Russell, The Suicides do make a huge difference (to the friends and family left behind). What no-one can never know, because the successful suicides can’t tell you (obviously) and you can’t survey unsuccessfully suicides, as how many people considered suicide and didn’t go through with it. The critical point being, if you have to walk/run 3 miles to the nearest railway bridge, the time might just let you reconsider, if a gun is just there, you don’t have that time! Of course as US citizens you have a democratic right to keep guns. Luckily for my family, in the UK we are not allowed guns. I think I know where my son would prefer to live. PS re link in your first post, the table of countries that restricted gun ownership appeared to all be unstable dictatorships, what about stable democracies?

Mike British (and alive)

Deaths and Mortality (Data are for the U.S.)

Number of deaths: 2,423,712 Death rate: 803.6 deaths per 100,000 population Life expectancy: 77.9 years Infant Mortality rate: 6.75 deaths per 1,000 live births

Number of deaths for leading causes of death:

Heart disease: 616,067 Cancer: 562,875 Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 135,952 Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 127,924 Accidents (unintentional injuries): 123,706 Alzheimer’s disease: 74,632 Diabetes: 71,382 Influenza and Pneumonia: 52,717 Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 46,448 Septicemia: 34,828

Source: Deaths: Final Data for 2007, tables B, D, 7, 30

Life causes death.

“Michael Moore’s movie “Bowling for Columbine” took a serious, honest look at”

Michael Moore and Serious, Honest do not belong in the same post. Look at his healthcare piece on Cuba. The CUBAN govt won’t let it be shown internally because it’s so innacurate it sets up unreal expectations!

Here are some Citable facts:

In a recent report by the non partisan Congressional Research Services on Gun Control in America ( http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL32842_20100827.pdf )

Page 10: Firearms-Related Deaths for All Ages 1993-2006 1993 Homicides: 18,253 Legal Interventions (Police) 318 Suicides 18,940 Accidents 1,521 Unknown 563 Total 39,596

2006: Homicides: 12,791(-30%) Legal Interventions (Police) 360 (+13%) Suicides 16,883 (-11%) Accidents 642 (-58%) Unknown 220 (-61%) Total 30,897 (-22%)

Note: Japan has NO guns to speak of but an incredibly high Suicide rate. Perhaps the conditions and problems contribute more to the suicides than the method used?

What can we gather from this change, encompassing the time of the strictist Gun Control laws in our nation and a renewed understanding of the fundamental right of self defense and recent Supreme court rulings?

Deaths have gone down in all categories. Homicides AND accidents ….. One is probably due to education and attention, the other a correlary of John Lott’s book More Guns, Less crime.

If you look at Gary Kleck, “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-defense with a Gun,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, vol. 86, issue 1, 1995, available at http://www.guncite.com/gcdgklec.html. You’ll find that it’s estimated firearms are used 2.5 MILLION times a year for self defense.

In less than 1 in 7 (14%) are shots even fired. The mere presence of some kind of equalizing force and the willingness to use it to defend self, family, etc is enough 6 out of 7 times.

Not that I expect the facts to get in the way of GT’s writing Cabbal

Here’s a little discourse on how honest Michael Moore’s “Bowling For Columbine” is. Also consider that the two Columbine shooters broke more than 15 state or Federal gun laws in order to achieve their purpose. Would one more or fifty more gun laws have stopped them? Not likely.

http://www.hardylaw.net/TruthAboutBowling.html

Ok, you may have to manually enter the web address. I can’t access tiny url or those sites from work.

Dr. Gary Kleck, FSU criminologist, estimates that victims use guns for protection 2½ million times every year. So in those ten years, that’s about 25 million times that victims used guns for protection vs. Trudeau’s questionable 270,000 deaths. In other words, for every person killed, 100 defended themselves.

Every time a concealed carry law passes, the crime rate in that area drops. Of course Trudeau calls that “weakening” our gun laws.

Mtnbass: Your devotion to accuracy would be admirable, if you followed your own advice. Did you wonder how data on “crime prevention” by civilians is collected? Who reports it? Who evaluates it for accuracy? Every police shooting - in fact, every discharge of a police firearm - is investigated intensively: shell casings collected, witnesses interviewed, written reports and testimony evaluated. Do you imagine that Joe Blow, creeping downstairs in his underwear one night with the handgun from his nightstand, reports events with this accuracy?

The 2 million/year figure you cite comes from a notorious telephone survey in which fewer than 5000 self-selected respondents reported how many “crimes” they had “prevented” during the past year. The resulting figure was then extrapolated to the entire population of the United States. The intrinsic error rate with this kind of methodology is stunning, especially considering the fact that a single respondent claimed to have repelled three home invasions in a single year! How objective is that data likely to be? Yet gun advocates continue to cite it year after year.

Your claims about wounding are equally suspect. Police officers must practice with their firearms on a regular basis and demonstrate minimal shooting skills. Private citizens have no such requirements. Yet we’re supposed to believe that they’re twice as accurate as the police and one fifth as likely to shoot people by mistake? That seems absolutely absurd to me! What’s your sourcing?

Gary Kleck is a disingenuous hack, who’s found an easy way to supplement his income by feeding pro-gun statistics to gun nuts. His dishonesty is stunning. Can anyone identify a single field of social inquiry in which every outcome study unequivocally supports the same overwhelming conclusion? They don’t exist! Human behavior is far too complex and ill-defined. But, according to Kleck, there’s NO DOUBT regarding the “benefits” of guns.

As for claims about the number of crimes/ murders/ etc. prevented by gun ownership, we’re supposed to believe that one can measure reliably the frequency of events that did not occur, based on the judgement of observers with a demonstrated bias. That’s not science; it’s polemics!

If gun owners could actually hit what they were aiming at, the figure would be closer to 3 million deaths.

For example, the baggie massacre in Tucson … 31 shots fired, only 6 dead. 4 NYC policemen fired 47 shots at point blank range and hit unarmed Amado 11 times. The crazy who shot up Va Tech unleashed over 200 rounds killing only 31 people.

Thank god people with firearms can’t shoot straight.

Wowie …. I am extremely fair skinned. I have NEVER been accused of being a racist … but then .. nothing racist has ever come out of my mouth.

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms…disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes… Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” (Quoting Cesare Beccaria)

The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.