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Originally Posted by PhilB
This is an attitude that is destroying this country. The whole elitist idea that most people are not competent to run their own lives and need to be guided/nannied/protected from themselves is eating away the independence and freedom this country was built on. And of course those who claim that most people are idiots and need all this "help" never include themselves among the idiots; it's always those *other* people. Crap. Most people are adequately competent to make their own decisions. And most of those who aren't would be if they knew they were expected to be (and that they would be allowed to experience the natural consequences of their own decisions).
As for your latter claim, it is false. Most murders (in this country) are connected to the trade in illegal drugs, and are connected directly to the huge amount of money involved therein. Most people with guns never commit any crimes with them. Eighty million gun owners in this country didn't shoot anyone today. And didn't yesterday. And won't tomorrow. More guns in the hands of such people will not increase gun violence.
If peaceable law-abiding people were not kept disarmed, some of the VT shootings may still have happened, but the odds are much better that someone might have been in the position to reduce the size of the problem through self-defense. This happened at a law school not too long ago; a shooter showed up, and two other students ran to their cars and got their own guns and stopped the shooter. That part of the story somehow got left out of most of the news accounts, though.
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Elitist, no sir. But lets look at why one would be weary of an armed publis:
1) Who buys the billions in lottery tickets? You will never win, yet this tax on the poor/uneducated rakes in hundreds of millions for states each year
2) Those who ride without helmets, drive without seatbelts after decades of being told of the safety benefits
3) Families that let children ride in bed of pickups
4) millions of junior high and high school drop outs.
And I am an elitist because I am against the wholesale distribution of handguns to the likes of these??? For Christ sakes, the first thing you were taught about how to handle a gun is that it's not a toy and the harm it can cause if not treated with respect.
Here is how gun related deaths break down:
Deaths from Gun Violence
Annually, about 30,000 people die of firearm injuries.
In 2000, guns claimed 28,663 lives in the United
States, the majority from suicides. Firearm deaths,
2000, by cause:
Suicide—16,586
Homicide—10, 801
Unintentional Shootings*—1,276
*includes causes: accidental, undetermined and legal intervention
Miniño AM, Arias E, Kochanek KD, Murphy SL, Smith BL. Deaths:
Final Data for 2000. National vital statistics reports; vol 50 no 15
Hyattsville Maryland: National Center for Health Statistics. 2002
As for guns combating crime:
Guns in the Home and
the Myth of Self-DefenseGuns are rarely useful for self-defense. They only
increase the risk of death and injury and create a
false sense of security. A gun kept in the home is 4
times more likely to be involved in an unintentional
shooting, 7 times more likely to be used in a criminal
assault or homicide, and 11 times more likely
to be used to commit or attempt suicide, than to
be used in self-defense.
Arthur L. Kellermann, MD, MPH; et. al. “Injuries and Deaths Due
to Firearms in the Home.” Journal of Trauma 1998 vol. 45 p.263.
Even police officers, who are trained in handling
weapons, are at risk of having their gun used against
them. A study published in the American Journal of
Public Health found that twenty percent of police
officers shot and killed in the last 15 years were killed
with their own firearms. Research also shows that
the use of a firearm to resist a violent assault actu
and finally, why owning a gun will not make you safer:
Guns are ubiquitous consumer products.
About 35% of all U.S. households contain at least one firearm and nearly one in every four households
contains a handgun.1 Handguns are used in the vast majority of gun violence. For example, of all the
firearm homicides in 2002 in which the type of gun was known, 77% were committed with handguns.2
Health effects versus personal safety benefits.
Many people who own guns keep them primarily for hunting or recreation; many keep them for selfdefense.
This is particularly the case among handgun owners.3 Although many gun owners keep a gun in
the home for protection, studies have shown that guns are rarely used for this purpose4 and that the risks
of keeping a gun in the home outweigh the benefits. In fact, in homes with guns, the homicide of a
household member is almost 3 times more likely to occur than in homes without guns.5 The risk of a
family member’s suicide is increased by nearly 5 times in homes with guns; the risk of suicide is higher
still for adolescents and young adults.6
Having a gun in the home also increases the risk that incidents of domestic violence will result in
homicide. Family and intimate assaults involving firearms are 12 times more likely to result in death than
nonfirearm-related assaults.7
Some argue that guns are an effective and necessary method of self-protection. Gun manufacturers have
advertised their products with the promise that a handgun in the home will provide protection.8 The U.S.
Bureau of Justice Statistics, however, estimates that there are an average of about 108,000 defensive uses
of guns each year compared to about 1.3 million crimes committed with guns.9, 10
Guns in the home also result in unintentional death and injury. Guns kept loaded and accessible for
protection are often within reach of curious young children who may unintentionally shoot themse
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