In article >,
"gloria.p" > wrote:

> argus tuft wrote:
> > * 10,177 guns were used in murders in the U.S. in 2006 while in the same
> > year, Canada reported 190. That's over 5 times a higher rate in the US.
> >
> > * Around 32,000 people have been shot in America so far this year.
> >
> > * 300 Americans are shot, on average, every day.
> >
> > * For adults, keeping a gun in the home quadruples the risk of dying of an
> > accidental gunshot wound.
> >
> > * In 2008, 17,215 people in the U.S. were wounded in unintentional
> > shootings
> > but survived.
> >
> > * For kids ages up to four years old, the mortality rate is 17 times higher
> > in states with high number of guns, versus states with a low number of
> > firearms.
> >
> > * 33% of U.S. households contain a gun, and half reportedly don't lock up
> > their weapons.
> >
> > * A gun in the home is four times more likely to be used in an
> > unintentional
> > shooting than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense.
> >
> >
>
>
> For some of us, you're preaching tot he choir. For others, those are
> fighting words.
>
> gloria p

<lol> Too true!

According to statistics, guns save 20 times as many lives as they take:

<http://gunowners.org/sk0802.htm>

Fact Sheet: Guns Save Lives

A. Guns save more lives than they take; prevent more injuries than they
inflict

* Guns used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding
citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5
million times every year -- or about 6,850 times a day.1 This means that
each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect
the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.2

* Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend
themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their
gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8% of
the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker.3

* As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves
against sexual abuse.4

* Even anti-gun Clinton researchers concede that guns are used 1.5
million times annually for self-defense. According to the Clinton
Justice Department, there are as many as 1.5 million cases of
self-defense every year. The National Institute of Justice published
this figure in 1997 as part of "Guns in America" -- a study which was
authored by noted anti-gun criminologists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig.5

* Armed citizens kill more crooks than do the police. Citizens shoot
and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1,527
to 606).6 And readers of Newsweek learned that "only 2 percent of
civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as
a criminal. The 'error rate' for the police, however, was 11 percent,
more than five times as high."7

* Handguns are the weapon of choice for self-defense. Citizens use
handguns to protect themselves over 1.9 million times a year.8 Many of
these self-defense handguns could be labeled as "Saturday Night
Specials."

I could go on, but Google is your friend...
--
Peace! Om

Web Albums: <http://picasaweb.google.com/OMPOmelet>
*Only Irish *coffee provides in a single glass all four *essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar *and fat. --Alex Levine