Guns

one in six is close enough to every woman ever

you seem to think that there's no real threat of rape. do you know six women?

Its so easy to blame it on the gun itself rather than where the blame really lies-- the person wielding it incorrectly.

Why on earth should we depend upon the person wanting to buy the gun to be truthful?

especially because of the (still unnumbered, thanks to nuggin) incidence of "accidental" killings.

your arguments are against an enemy you have constructed inside your own brain. try joining us here in this debate.

Statistically, the United States is not a particularly violent society. Although gun proponents like to compare this country with hot spots like Colombia, Mexico, and Estonia (making America appear a truly peaceable kingdom), a more relevant comparison is against other high-income, industrialized nations. The percentage of the U.S. population victimized in 2000 by crimes like assault, car theft, burglary, robbery, and sexual incidents is about average for 17 industrialized countries, and lower on many indices than Canada, Australia, or New Zealand."The only thing that jumps out is lethal violence," Hemenway says. Violence, pace H. Rap Brown, is not "as American as cherry pie," but American violence does tend to end in death. The reason, plain and simple, is guns. We own more guns per capita than any other high-income country”maybe even more than one gun for every man, woman, and child in the country. A 1994 survey numbered the U.S. gun supply at more than 200 million in a population then numbered at 262 million, and currently about 35 percent of American households have guns. (These figures count only civilian guns; Switzerland, for example, has plenty of military weapons per capita.)"It's not as if a 19-year-old in the United States is more evil than a 19-year-old in Australia”there's no evidence for that," Hemenway explains. "But a 19-year-old in America can very easily get a pistol. That's very hard to do in Australia. So when there's a bar fight in Australia, somebody gets punched out or hit with a beer bottle. Here, they get shot."In general, guns don't induce people to commit crimes. "What guns do is make crimes lethal," says Hemenway. They also make suicide attempts lethal: about 60 percent of suicides in America involve guns. "If you try to kill yourself with drugs, there's a 2 to 3 percent chance of dying," he explains. "With guns, the chance is 90 percent."Gun deaths fall into three categories: homicides, suicides, and accidental killings. In 2001, about 30,000 people died from gunfire in the United States. Set this against the 43,000 annual deaths from motor-vehicle accidents to recognize what startling carnage comes out of a barrel. The comparison is especially telling because cars "are a way of life," as Hemenway explains. "People use cars all day, every day”and 'motor vehicles' include trucks. How many of us use guns?"Suicides accounted for about 58 percent of gun fatalities, or 17,000 to 18,000 deaths, in 2001; another 11,000 deaths, or 37 percent, were homicides, and the remaining 800 to 900 gun deaths were accidental. For rural areas, the big problem is suicide; in cities, it's homicide. ("In Wyoming it's hard to have big gang fights," Hemenway observes dryly. "Do you call up the other gang and drive 30 miles to meet up?") Homicides follow a curve similar to that of motor-vehicle fatalities: rising steeply between ages 15 and 21, staying fairly level from there until age 65, then rising again with advanced age. Men between 25 and 55 commit the bulk of suicides, and younger males account for an inflated share of both homicides and unintentional shootings. (Males suffer all injuries, including gunshots, at much higher rates than females.)

The ways in which people die by guns would not make a good television cop show. Rarely does a suburban homeowner beat a burglar to the draw in his living room at 3 a.m. Few urban pedestrians thwart a mugger by brandishing a pistol. "We have done four surveys on self-defense gun use," Hemenway says. "And one thing we know for sure is that there's a lot more criminal gun use than self-defense gun use. And even when people say they pulled their gun in 'self-defense,' it usually turns out that there was just an escalating argument”at some point, people feel afraid and draw guns."Hemenway has collected stories of self-defense gun use by simply asking those who pulled guns what happened. A typical story might be: "We were in the park drinking. Drinking led to arguing. We ran to our cars and got our guns." Or: "I was sitting on my porch. A neighbor came up and we got into a fight. He threw a beer at me. I went inside and got my gun." Hemenway has sent verbatim accounts of such incidents to criminal-court judges, asking if the "self-defense" gun use described was legal. "Most of the time," he says, "the answer was no."

Most murderers are not hired killers. Instead, killings happen during fights between rival gangs or angry spouses, or even from road rage, and leave deep regret in their wake. "How often might you appropriately use a gun in self-defense?" Hemenway asks rhetorically. "Answer: zero to once in a lifetime. How about inappropriately”because you were tired, afraid, or drunk in a confrontational situation? There are lots and lots of chances. When your anger takes over, it's nice not to have guns lying around."Many suicides, similarly, are impulsive acts. Follow-up interviews with people who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge reveal that few of them tried suicide again. One survivor volunteered this epiphany after jumping: "I realized that all the problems I had in life were solvable”except one: I'm in midair." In the United States, suicide rates are high in states with an abundance of guns”southern and western mountain states, for example”and lower in places like New Jersey, New England, or Hawaii, where guns are relatively scarce. Nine case-control studies have shown that guns in the house are a risk factor for suicide. Firearms turn the agonizing into the irreversible.

Virtually all industrialized nations have stronger firearms laws than the United States. We have no national law, for example, requiring a license to own a gun (though some states require one). Almost all other countries have licensure laws, and many demand that gun owners undergo training, also not required here. Hemenway scoffs at the rote objection, "A determined criminal will always get a gun," responding, "Yes, but a lot of people aren't that determined. I'm sure there are some determined yacht buyers out there, but when you raise the price high enough, a lot of them stop buying yachts."In most of these United States, many types of gun sale trigger neither a background check nor a paper trail. "You can go to a gun show, flea market, the Internet, or classified ads and buy a gun”no questions asked," Hemenway says. It is illegal to sell a firearm to a convicted felon or for criminal purposes, although sting operations have proved that some licensed vendors flout even this proscription. "In 1998, police officers from Chicago (where possessing a new handgun is illegal) posed as local gang members and went firearms shopping in the suburbs," Hemenway writes. "In store after store, clerks willingly sold powerful handguns to these agents, who made it clear that they intended to use these guns to 'take care of business' on the streets of Chicago."

It is the ease of killing from a distance that is the issue with guns, juggs.It is quite difficult, more intimate, and far more risky to the attacker to stab or bludgeon a victim to death.

Cho was insane.

He lied on his application to buy the guns, saying that he was never involuntarily committed to a mental instution.

Why on earth should we depend upon the person wanting to buy the gun to be truthful?

Cars are not manufactured for the sole purpose of killing other people.

Can you show statistics that support the contention that many crimes are prevented with guns used in self-defense?