Date: 04 Oct 96 11:55:18 EDT
From: Barbara j. Beier <[73622 1250] at [compuserve.com]>

Subj:  Guns OK for Kids!                Section: Political/Legal
  To:  All                              Thursday, October 03, 1996 6:31:13 PM
From:  John Rich/TX, 70764,1135         #193256

 A new report with an interesting finding!

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 Department of Justice
 National Institute of Justice
 Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
 NCJ-143454, August 1995

                "Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse"

 This study did annual interviews of boys and girls of various ages
 from a random selection of 20,000 households.  The purpose was to
 identify crucial factors that lead children into delinquency and
 crime.

 Here is one interesting finding they came up concerning the relation-
 ship between guns and delinquency.

 Figure 13:  Relationship between type of gun owned and percent
             committing street, drug and gun crimes.

             Illegal gun -  Street crimes = 74%
                            Drug use      = 41%
                            Gun crimes    = 21%

             No gun      -  Street crimes = 24%
                            Drug use      = 15%
                            Gun crimes    =  1%

             Legal Gun   -  Street crimes = 14%
                            Drug use      = 13%
                            Gun crimes    =  0%

 "The socialization into gun ownership is also vastly different for
 legal and illegal gunowners. Those who own legal guns have fathers who
 own guns for sport and hunting. On the other hand, those who own
 illegal guns have friends who own illegal guns and are far more likely
 to be gang members. For legal gunowners, socialization appears to take
 place in the family; for illegal gunowners, it appears to take place
 "on the street".

 "Boys who own legal firearms have much lower rates of delinquency and
 drug use and are even slightly less delinquent than nonowners of guns."

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 Teach your son the shooting sports, and there is a better chance that
 he will turn out "all right"!  :-)