zxcvbob wrote:
> On 4/25/2010 5:32 PM, Dave Bugg wrote:
>> Dave Smith wrote:
>>> Omelet wrote:
>>>> In >,
>>>> > 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:
>>>
>>>
>>> That takes a huge leap in logic. Given that the US has five times the
>>> per capita rate of firearms homicides, you have to ask how they could
>>> have saved 20 times as many lives. Gun use (against humans is not as
>>> prevalent here as in the US. By your logic, we should have had a lot
>>> more people murdered.
>>
>> You didn't read the entire post, Dave. I fail to see where the leap in
>> logic
>> exists. BTW, on a per capita basis, do you know which country has the
>> highest level of violent crime?
>>
>
> It *might* be South Africa, but I think it's Great Britain. I read about
> that in the _London Times_ last year. (that's why the gun banners like
> to qualify the statistics as "gun crimes", which could mean as little as
> an expired permit, instead of "violent crimes")
>
> It is easy to get statistics about how many people died from gunshots,
> then sift the numbers to support whatever point you're trying to make.
> It is very difficult to get meaningful statistics (maybe impossible)
> about how many crimes *didn't* happen because the victim was armed or
> whatever. (How do you prove a negative? So then how can you count it?)
>
> The _American Rifleman_ magazine has a column every month with accounts
> of criminals who were stopped by armed victims. They are pretty
> compelling stories, of course they probably don't publish the hundreds
> of boring stories. ;-)
>

Like the people who hear a noise in the back yard and go out with a gun
to investigate and it turns out to be a raccoon in the garbage.