On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 08:06:15PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: > On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 15:41, ScruLoose wrote: > > > > Well, when you look at the US figures on "firearm-related fatalities" > > being up in the tens of thousands per year... > > compared to (for example) Canada with a couple of hundred per year (and > > tight gun control laws, what a bizarre coincidence)... > > http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/994015/posts > > > > I realize that Canada has about one-tenth the population of USA, but > > that still gives you per-capita rates that say Americans are somewhere > > on the order of ten _times_ as likely to blow each other away. > > > > Does it take "multiple Columbines on a daily basis" to constitute a > > problem? > > Somewhere close to a hundred Americans blow each other away _per_day_ > > and you want this to lead me to the conclusion that things are okay? > > And... > - most are done with hot weapons I'll take your word for it. Of course, if guns are widely available everywhere, that provides a whole lot more opportunity for stealing them. Many people in Canada blame hot weapons for large numbers of the shooting deaths here, too. Hot weapons smuggled in from the US, that is. Also, the fact that enough guns are stolen to account for "most" of 30k murders a year should tell you something about how reliable they are as "protection". If they offered so much security, they'd be harder to steal. > - most are "criminal-on-criminal" I'm not sure what impact this is supposed to have. If the victim is a criminal then it doesn't count? > I'd rather not live in a nanny state, and take my chance, however > minimal they are, in a slightly more anarchic society. Nanny state! Hehe! And I'd rather not live in a war zone. To each his own, I guess. > "...always eager to extend a friendly claw" Or, as Neil Young put it: "a kinder gentler machine gun hand" Cheers! -- ,-------------------------------------------------------------------------. > -ScruLoose- | If we do not believe in freedom of speech < > Please do not | for those we despise < > reply off-list. | we do not believe in it at all. < > | - Noam Chomsky < `-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
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