Subject:  Lets Talk Gun Control, NOT BANNING GUNS |
Author:
Ray
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Date Posted: 17:37:01 12/18/02 Wed
In reply to:
Admin
's message, "Current News Events" on 21:24:33 08/01/02 Thu
“The right to bear arms.” What arms and bear them where?
Does it mean side-arms or any kind of arms? During the time of the drafting of the constitution side-arms consisted of a muzzle-loader type gun, a knife, and maybe a sword if your were well-to-do. I can’t be sure if the “founding fathers” meant to include cannon or not. Personally, a guy going whacko with a muzzle-loader doesn’t scare me nearly as much as one with an automatic weapon. He might take down one person in a crowd, but the rest of them would cream him long before he could re-load.
How do we decide where to draw the line on what type of weapons are covered under the second amendment? Automatic weapons with armor piercing bullets are OK with the NRA. What about rocket launchers? How about small nukes? Should we be able to bear our arms anywhere? To school, work, the mall?
Why have a gun in the house if you’re not a hunter? Self-defense? That is covered below. The one that always stops me is, “to protect myself from our own government”. The first time I heard that one my jaw dropped almost to the floor. I never, ever considered the possibility of having to use a firearm to protect myself from the government. I keep seeing myself with a rifle against a tank. (Maybe THAT’S what the armor piercing bullets are for.) I will use lawyers to protect myself from my own government, thanks. This isn’t Bosnia.
Lets look at a few facts shall we?
“…research has shown that a gun kept in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a member of the household, or friend, than an intruder.(Arthur Kellermann and Donald Reay. "Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearm Related Deaths in the Home." The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 314, no. 24, June 1986, pp. 1557-60.) The use of a firearm to resist a violent assault actually increases the victim's risk of injury and death(FE Zimring, Firearms, violence, and public policy, Scientific American, vol. 265, 1991, p. 48).
“Research by Dr. Arthur Kellerman has shown that keeping a gun in the home carries a murder risk 2.7 times greater than not keeping one. That is, excluding many other factors such as previous history of violence, class, race, etc., a household with a gun is 2.7 times more likely to experience a murder than a household without one, even while there was no significant increase in the risk of non-gun homicides!
“FBI Crime Reports sources indicate that there are about 340,000 reported firearms thefts every year. Those guns, the overwhelming amount of which were originally manufactured and purchased legally, and now in the hands of criminals. Thus, the old credo "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" is silly. What happens is many guns bought legally are sold or stolen, and can then be used for crime. If those 340,000 guns were never sold or owned in the first place, that would be 340,000 less guns in the hands of criminals every year. Part of the reason there are so many guns on the street in the hands of criminals is precisely because so many are sold legally. Certainly, there will always be a way to obtain a gun illegally. But if obtaining a gun legally is extremely difficult, the price of illegal guns goes way up, and availability goes way down. Thus, it is much more difficult for criminals to obtain guns.
“A study of 743 gunshot deaths by Dr. Arthur Kellermann and Dr. Donald Reay published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that 84% of these homicides occurred during altercations in the home. Only 2 of the 743 gunshot deaths occurring in the home involved an intruder killed during an attempted entry, and only 9 of the deaths were determined by police/courts to be justified (FE Zimring, Firearms, violence, and public policy, Scientific American, vol. 265, 1991, p. 48). The evidence revealed in the Kellermann study is consistent with data reported by the FBI. In 1993, there were 24,526 people murdered, 13,980 with handguns, yet only 251 justifiable homicides by civilians using handguns. (FBI, Crime in the United States: Uniform Crime Reports 1994, 1995).
“Residents of homes where a gun is present are 5 times more likely to experience a suicide than residents of homes without guns (Arthur L. Kellermann, MD, MPH; Frederick P. Rivara, MD, MPH; Grant Somes, PhD; Donald T. Reay, MD; Jerry Francisco, MD; Joyce Gillentine Banton, MS; Janice Prodzinski, BA; Corinne Fligner, MD; and Bela B. Hackman, MD, Suicide in the Home in Relation to Gun Ownership, The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 327, No. 7, August 13, 1992, pp. 467-472.)
“"People kill with knifes, too. Do you want to ban knifes?" From Dr. Roth's study: The overall fatality rate in gun robberies is an estimated 4 per 1,000--about 3 times the rate for knife robberies, 10 times the rate for robberies with other weapons, and 20 times the rate for robberies by unarmed offenders. (Cook, Philip J., "Robbery Violence," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 78-2, (1987):357-376.) For assaults, a crime which includes threats, the most widely cited estimate of the fatality rate is derived from a 1968 analysis of assaults and homicides committed in Chicago. The study, prepared for the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, reported that gun attacks kill 12.2 percent of their intended victims. This is about 5 times as often as in attacks with knives, the second most deadly weapon used in violent crimes.(Newton, G.D., and F.E. Zimring, Firearms and Violence in American Life: A Staff Report Submitted to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, Washington, D.C.: National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, 1969.)"
Can gun control do anything about gun crime? It already has helped some, in the time since the Brady bill was passed 500,000 purchasers were denied a gun thanks to background checks. I would guess that a lot of those half million would be purchasers found other ways to obtain their weapons, but I’m guessing that thousands didn’t. How many lives has the Brady bill saved? There is no way to tell for sure. But the rate of gun related violence has dropped since it’s institution.
How many more lives could be saved by requiring instant back ground checks at gun shows, by providing trigger locks with every gun sale, by requiring gun education before purchase, and by instituting a national gun registry?
And how many lives will be saved if parents remove guns they don’t really need from their homes?
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