Ipse dixit.
Exactly why prohibition doesn't work. Only the criminals are armed.

Yup, "If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have them" ... the rest of us will be targets.

Just like in DC, Maryland, and NYC.

Precisely.

In Australia, most victims of violent crime know their attacker. This is definitely true in the case of murder over and above other crimes.

How is having a gun going to save you when your husband kills you in your sleep?

It won't. How is having a gun going to save you when you start choking on your food? It won't do that either. There are a lot of ways having a gun won't be able to help you. Then again, there are also a lot of ways having a gun would be able to help you.

You people just don't seem to get that you live in a society that is fearful. You're constantly trying to protect yourselves against something that might happen.

No wonder George thinks it's ok to make pre-emptive strikes on nations which pose no threat. It seems the whole mindset is to protect yourselves against something which might just happen.

You can't control everything, and considering the murder rate in your country, I don't think all the gun toting is doing much good.

If on the other hand your country had a low incidence of gun related crime I'd agree that everyone having guns is a good idea, but until that day comes, there's no way anyone will convince me it is.

Deaths
 

It would be a hard thing to quantify, but I have a feeling that more innocent people (unfortunately lots of children) are killed by loaded, accessible guns than are attacking criminals. This whole self-defense thing doesn't fly when you look at the numbers.

You do understand how stupid those two statements sound together, right? You know, since you just said that you yourself had not looked at the numbers, and in fact implied that you believe they don't even exist.

Incidentally, it's not a hard thing to quantify at all: Gun Facts

And you're unable to protect yourself from things that DO happen.

Again, for the folks who missed it the first half-dozen times ... the majority of defensive uses of firearms involve NO SHOTS FIRED.

Some Accidental Death Stats are available here. These are numbers for 2002.

Accidental Death by Firearm ... total 776. That number is not missing any zeros.

For the same period, aggregate firearms deaths (which includes suicide, homicide, gang violence, shot by police while committing a crime, etc.) 28K and change.

Your car is still more dangerous than my gun.

I think you may be over-generalizing a bit. Most places in the US are really very safe. Some folks on this board live or work where that isn't true or they have characteristics which make them targets, so they, sensibly, arm themselves.

Bush has done a great job of rallying fear though, I have to agree with that.

mmm..... apart from Griff, most pro-ponents of the gun- lobby seem to have resorted to individual insults...... whatever happened to the 'polite armed society'?

maybe cuz you aren't armed? ;)

Griff, I agree it was a generalisation, but you did seem to get the point I was making, so that's the main thing.

Wolf, like you say, we're all more likely to be killed by a car, but I think there's a big difference between using vehicular transport because it's a necessary evil, and carrying a leathal weapon just because I might need to use it.