Owl For President

Monday, March 21, 2011

Gun rights vs the odds

honestly, it's hard to argue with this result. There are apparently 2.5 Million "gun defense" events each year, with around 22% believing that something very bad would have ensued had not a gun intervened, which is around, if taken on face value, 400,000 deaths a year that were averted, according to this pro gun source.http://www.pul...pless.com/gunclock/stats.html

Couple recount fatal fray at their Tierra Verde home - St. Petersburg Times www.tampabay.com


WikiPedia, on the other hand, tells us that there are about 75,000 deaths by gun a year, 2/3's of which are deliberate (56,000), and the lions share (ie, more then 23,000) are SUICIDES. So almost 63% of all deaths are suicide or accident. only around 25,000 are deliberate like the story above, or murder. of the "deliberates" i'm going to just warrant a guess that more guns come out to cool things down then to hype things up, so, maybe 15,000 are guns that are being weilded by criminals? So, we have 15,000 criminals committing actual murder a year. another 10,000 stopping crime. that still leaves 50,000 deaths due to the presence of a gun in the environment, per year.

so, the argument boils down to this: are the 50,000 accidents and suicides worth the 10,000 folks that per year halt their own assaults? As I get older, I think I err on the side of the few individuals who have been saved, but I certaily still entertain the idea that the removal of ALL guns in the civic environment would be the most optimal solution.

It strikes me however, as odd, that you can go to jail for 30 years for having some drugs on you, which hurts no one but you, but you can just walk around and think screwed up thoughts with a gun in your pocket, and that's ok.

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