But I'm glad to see you are OK, my friend.

All the gun crimes I've been near enough to have to call and tell people I'm okay have involved legally registered firearms. Fuck that argument.

I'm with Draugnar on this.

Geo, if someone is intent on killing...they will do so, regardless of the gun laws. Period. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. It doesn't get any more simple or true than that.

...glad you are ok. :)

Only 40% of prison inmates who used or possessed a firearm during the offense for which they were incarcerated obtained the gun from the illegal market. A high number, but definitely not a majority. One also wonders also what 'legal' source these illegal vendor obtained their guns from in the first place

- Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, U.S. Department of Justice
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/fuo.pdf

Tragic, and horrible after the 2007 incident. But I think guns are supposed to be in a locked case within 1000ft of any school, so the shooter clearly wasn't following at least one gun control law.

A lot easier to kill people with guns that shoot hundreds of bullets in a couple of seconds. Try committing a massacre with a knife. And anyway there is knife control, so that argument doesn't work either.

That's such BS Darwyn, sorry. Many murders are committed in the heat of the moment. If you don't have a gun during that moment, you're a lot less likely to shoot somebody.

A lot less likely to shoot somebody, but not necessarily less likely to kill somebody. While there is a definite correlation between firearms ownership and firearms crime (no surprise there), homicide rates have not been conclusively linked to same.

It's also a lot easier to prevent crime happening against you if you have a gun. http://www.rense.com/general76/univ.htm Private guns apparently stop crime 2.5 Mil times a year. If true, this is difficult to argue against.

Gun control is the tool of the tyrant.

Nothing...and I mean nothing is worth the government taking away the means to protect yourself. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Nothing.

On the other hand, santosh, there is the large number of negligent discharges to take into account as well.

Actually Darwyn I agree... what annoys me about gun-right advocacy people is that they make stupid arguments (like your previous one, and Draugnar's original) rather than stand by that one cold hard fact (for lack of a better word).

Stop pussyfooting around trying to pretend that, 'oh they aren't so dangerous.' Admit that guns are dangerous. Admit that we need to be safe and sane with them - even if that includes some regulation. And stand by your right to keep them till death.

@d31 - But how many of those "negligent discharges" resulted in injury and how many in loss of life? How many of those 2.5 million crimes stopped would have resulted in injury or loss of life had the gun not been present?

I don't know either of those answers, but they are pertinent to the comparison if it is to be a valid comparison.

@YJ - They absolutely are dangerous. And I'm not against a level of control and requirements for ownership, I am only against an outright ban, despite the fact I do not and have no desire to own one.

Draug: accidental injury/death with a registered firearm is FAR more likely to occur than use of said firearm to stop a crime from commencing.

Fair enough Draug, sorry if I read your intent wrong.

"http://www.rense.com/general76/univ.htm"

A really terrible website, but anyway. Private guns are far more likely to be used to accidentally shoot someone than for self-defense. Of the 13,636 Americans who were murdered in 2009, only 215 were killed by firearms (165 by handguns) in homicides by private citizens that law enforcement determined were justifiable. There are 30,000 + firearm related deaths per year (70% of all murders) and 70,000 firearm related injuries per year. All for what?

"Gun control is the tool of the tyrant."

Opposition to gun control is empowering murder for the profit of big gun companies.

Obviously guns are dangerous, and I almost always argue from the philosophical perspective of gun rights being a liberty not to be infringed upon. But to argue that gun rights advocates using statistics is a stupid argument is fallacious. There are as many studies stating more guns improves safety as there are stating more guns takes away safety. And the argument that people who own guns are more likely to hurt themselves with it really doesn't make sense to me. If people are making a choice to buy a gun and potentially hurt themselves that really is their choice, you can't expect the government to institute laws to protect people from themselves. People can kill themselves accidentally with alcohol, but there aren't too many calls to restrict the liquor trade further.

I'd just like to see the numbers, YJ. I'm not saying you or d31 are wrong. But what are the stats? We have 2.5 million crimes stopped, but how many of those might have resulted in injury or death? We weren't even given a number on the discharges so have no way of knowing how many of those *did* result in injury or death. On the scales of life, we need to balance the good and the bad. We know part of the good, numerically (crimes stopped) and we know the bad exists (no denying that some of those discharges resulted in someone hurt or dead). Butwe haven't go the numbers to be able to weigh them.

The 2.5 million number is ridiculous. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1730664/pdf/v006p00263.pdf

I've had difficulty finding numbers. I did find a study showing a lower that crime victims were less likely to be injured or lose property if they defended themselves using a firearm, even though they tended to find themselves in more dangerous situations.

In 2003 in the United States, 0.15 per 100,000 men and 0.10 per 100,000 women died of negligent discharge of a firearm.

I don't know why you put that term in quotes, Draugnar. An 'accidental' discharge is always the result of poor firearms safety.

"Opposition to gun control is empowering murder for the profit of big gun companies."

Putin...don't worry. The police will save you.

"Putin...don't worry. The police will save you."

Your stockpile of guns really helped prevent the detainment law from being passed, didn't it?

@d31 - "An 'accidental' discharge is always the result of poor firearms safety. "

Really? No such thing as a malfuntion? A spring breaking? I'm sure Jason Lee would like to know that he died as a result of negligence when the wadding frfom a previous blank remained jammed in the barrel and came out when the next blank was fired. That was an intentional discharge on equipment setup by a professional yet he accidently died and there was no negligence involved.

I'll accept that 99.9% of accidental discharges are from negligence, mostly in securing the firearm but often in handling it. But one can never say *all* accidental discharges are negligent. People make mistakes. But that doesn't mean those mistakes are always negligent.

@Putin - which detainment law do you refer to? I know of a bill that hasn't yet passed and will be vetoed if it does (well, Obama says he will), but no recent detainment law was passed. In fact, the only thing involving the detainment law I am aware of is an amendment to correct a serious problem with the bill which failed, unfortunately. But that isn't law as the bill hasn't had a full vote yet.

Putin, I don't think that people who make this argument are saying the bills won't be PASSED because of guns. The suggestion is not that we should storm Congress, armed.

^