Obviously you are fibbing because better alternative HAVE been shown. They just do not have the effect you desire: death.    The flaws of your ideal defense weapons have already been pointed out. Obviously you have not had any experience with any of them to conduct a rational discussion.  Far be it from anyone to interject facts into your fairytale beliefs. You also, conveniently, ignore the number of times guns are used to stop a crime without a single shot being fired and the number of lives potentially saved as such. The flaws of these weapons, according to you, is that they do not kill the victim.  You conveniently ignore the fact that for every criminal stopped or killed by a gun, 130 other people die for other reasons: 63 commit suicide with firearms 60 are killed in homicides by firearms 6 die in firearm accidents 1 firearm death is undetermined Brian M. Ragle This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it True power is knowing you can, but don't.

February 19, 1997, Bethel, Alaska Sixteen year-old Evan Ramsey opens fire with a shotgun in a common area at Bethel Regional High School, killing the principal and a student. Two students are wounded. Authorities later accuse two other students of knowing the shootings would take place. Police report that the firearm used in the shooting belonged to Ramsey's foster sibling and was stored openly in the home when it was taken by Ramsey. Evan Ramsey was sentenced to two 99-year terms. Firearm used: Mossberg 12-gauge pump shotgun. I'm beginning to feel like a broken record.

:This is a simple scare tactic.  Fatal firearm accidents are less frequent :than many other types of accidents.  Such as automobile, falls, poisoning, :fire suffocation, drowning, and medical. : :Out of 88,000 deaths in 1991 (National Safety Council), only 1400 (1.6%) of :those deaths can be attributed to firearms. :A person is 2.0 times as likely to choke, 3.0 times as likely to die by :fire, 3.3 times as likely to drown, 4.0 times as likely to dir from poison, :8.7 times more likely to die from falling, and a staggering 31 (Thirty One) :times more likely to die by an automobile accident than by firearm accident. : :Also, in my opinion, firearm accidents is a misnomer.  An unwanted :discharge of a firearm is due to ignorance and stupidity at least 99.9% of :the time. : : This is a simple diversion tactic.  By comparing guns related : accidents to a completely unrelated statistic, these deaths are : trivialized and made to seem small by comparison. Congratulations - you get it. They ARE small by comparison. But rather than a 'diversion' it is a method of assessing risk _base_d on some data. Do you not agree that such data-_base_d risk assessment is appropriate?

There is a concept known as gun safety which can be taught to children quite easily. But using that to lower deaths would remove one reason for you to ban guns, right? It hasn't worked to lower deaths so far, has it? Homicide rates in states with CCW, down. Gun deaths in children, down. Accidental gun deaths in children, WAY down. Percentage of children whose parents gave them guns and taught them to shoot who use those guns for illegal purposes, zero. Crime rates in states with strict gun control, up. Crime rates, including and especially violent and/or interpersonal crime in England and Australia since strict gun confiscation, skyrocketing. Go and be civilized with Kevin. A real paladin would spit on you. *plonk* Dreamer

]The point is that these _object_s and devices have original purposes ]other than to destroy something. Oh, I thought it was about the death of children. Of course you would think that.  Anything but gun control, right? Does anyone really care if they are killed by something whose 'original purpose' isn't something you find icky? Hmm, finding the idea of killing someone icky ?  Funny how you trivialize that concept.  Hardened to violence already, aren't you? ]Also, these comparisons serve only to draw attention away from the ]subject which is GUN control, not automobile of jetski safety. More like point out holes in your theory. Oh well. My theory as you put it: guns are weapons a weapon's purpose is to destroy there is no other purpose than to destroy many many people are killed by these weapons each year gun advocates continue to defend their ownership of these weapons despite rulings by the Supreme Court, liklihood of dying by their own weapon, and probability of killing a loved one I invite you to read the article found at the following URL: http://www.2ndlawlib.org/journals/dowdesp.html

:Obviously you are fibbing because better alternative HAVE been shown. :They just do not have the effect you desire: death. : :    The flaws of your ideal defense weapons have already been pointed out. :Obviously you have not had any experience with any of them to conduct a :rational discussion.  Far be it from anyone to interject facts into your :fairytale beliefs. You also, conveniently, ignore the number of times guns :are used to stop a crime without a single shot being fired and the number of :lives potentially saved as such. : : : The flaws of these weapons, according to you, is that they do not : kill the victim.  You conveniently ignore the fact that for every : criminal stopped or killed by a gun, 130 other people die for other : reasons: : 63 commit suicide with firearms : 60 are killed in homicides by firearms : 6 die in firearm accidents : 1 firearm death is undetermined On average in 1987-92 about 83,000 crime victims per year used a firearm to defend themselves or their property. This is from U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief Guns and Crime: Handgun Victimization, Firearm Self-Defense, and Firearm Theft, April 1994, NCJ-147003, (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/hvfsdaft.txt) This is widely regarded as the -minimum- with-gun self defenses; anti-gun researchers Jens Ludwig and Phillip Cook report in Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms., Series: NIJ Research in Brief Published: May 1997, NCJ 165476 (http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/165476.txt) that the floor should be 108,000: On the basis of data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data, one would conclude that defensive uses are rare indeed, about 108,000 per year. They examine their own survey data, and discover Forty-five respondents reported a defensive gun use in 1994 against a person (exhibit 7). Given the sampling weights, these respondents constitute 1.6 percent of the sample and represent 3.1 million adults. In order for your claim to be true there would need to be 108,000 * 130, 14,040,000 firearms deaths annually.  Yet we know from the Centers for Disease Control that firearms deaths from all causes and kinds of uses were only 32,436 in 1997. (http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/data/us9794/Ofarm.htm) Perhaps you would care to explain the 43,285% difference between your claim and reality.