I don't think anybody has suggested that people without guns can't kill a lot of people. As already mentioned, Rwanda's genocide was mainly machetes, clubs, assorted blades and fire.

This guy killed a lot of people with a knife. I wonder how many more would have died had he been armed with kalashnikov.

Maybe none. Maybe more. Who is to say?

Look, getting murdered isn't exactly part of the English culture either. Nor is being obliged to submit to murder. Guns readily trump knives.

Some have raised the notion of an "arms race," implying destruction and impoverishment. However, this quite misunderstands the actual components of a bigtime arms race: these happen in national and military contexts, not in the civil and criminal. Sufficient firepower available to the good guys amounts to a violence suppressant. The bad guys, simply enough, can't rely on surviving any violence if the good guys are sufficiently equipped. Put another way, you can end a knife fight if you bring a gun.

And if everybody has a gun?

If everybody has a gun, people are very polite. In fact everyone doesn't need to have a gun. Just make it easy for regular people to conceal weapons. If criminals don't know who is or isn't armed they are less likely to attack. In 100% of the states where concealed carry permits were made legal, crime dropped dramatically (more than 10%). In the states with the strictest gun control laws, we see the most crime and the most gun violence. This is because the government has made people easier victims for those who would prey on us.

Criminals love gun control laws. Al Capone did, and so did Hitler.

Oh, bullshit.

Facts aren't bullshit just because you don't like 'em.

Facts aren't facts just because you spout them.

I'm not saying these are facts because I spouted them. I "spouted" them because they are facts.

As can be evidenced by their reluctance to shoot fellow, armed criminals ?

As can be evidenced by the sharp reduction in crimes in the states that have adopted concealed carry permits, especially when compared to states that have strict gun control laws like California, New York, or territories like Washington D.C.

http://www.ncpa.org/ba/ba246.html

http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactShe...=206&issue=007

This information is verified on the American government's BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms website.

http://www.atf.gov/firearms/ycgii/1999/index.htm

http://www.nraila.org/Issues/factsheets/read.aspx?ID=18

The FBI reports that the nation’s total violent crime rate declined every year between 1991-2004, to a 30-year low in 2004, and that it has risen slightly in the last two years. By comparison, the most recent Bureau of Justice Statistics crime victim survey found that “at the national level crime rates remain stabilized at the lowest level experienced since 1973,” when the first such survey was conducted.

The FBI’s data show that since 1991, when the violent crime rate hit an all-time high, and 2006, total violent crime has decreased 38%, murder 42%, rape 27%, robbery 45%, and aggravated assault 34%. During 2004-2006, total violent crime was lower than anytime since 1974. For the last eight years, the murder rate (fluctuating between 5.5 and 5.7 per 100,000 annually) has been lower than anytime since 1965. Studies by and/or for Congress, the Congressional Research Service, the Library of Congress, the National Institute of Justice, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found no evidence that “gun control” reduces crime.

http://bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonline

http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=406797

As anyone with one hour's time on a shooting range knows, that's the very definition of a polite society. It's because normal persons, engaged in disposing lethal force -- let's face it, guns, swords, and stone axes do that -- desire not to alarm or upset anyone while they're doing it. If you want to see good manners universally on display, hang out on a firing line for a while and people-watch.

Shawnee, your opinion is disproven by the universal experience of each and every state in the Union that has liberalized concealed carry of weapons, from 1987 to today. With the exceptions of the large urban areas, particularly NYC, DC, Detroit, and L.A., the U.S. murder rate per 100,000 persons compares with England's. (The big urbs do skew things.) We guns-and-freedom people know this; you do not. Even worse, what you are doing is harboring progenocide views. Don't do that; it's not just immoral, it's fucking gross, see?

Time for you to do some homework and become enlightened. You know -- kind of like me. I mean, I get it -- and where were you?

Uh... dead criminals are:

A. a Good Thing
B. a Bad Thing

Check one. No trying to fudge about wild shots and innocent bystanders hit; that really amounts to incontrovertible evidence of the badness of criminals overall, does it not?

Really, DanaC. That you posted such a posting indicates you do not really know. Now do you have the remotest clue why I think the Left is the habitation of the stupid?

I'm so mad I could shoot you in the face. But, but, but...luckily my reasoning takes over and I realize you might shoot me in the face back.

Puh, just penis substitutes for you big mocko men. You bore me silly. You and your "statistics."

Speaking of gross, looked in your mirror lately?

:lol2: