Newsgroups: alt.politics.british,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.guns
From: [j--u--k] at [cup.hp.com] (Jon Buck)
Subject: Re: Part 1 of 3: The Case Against Gun Control
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1993 19:35:35 GMT

[[ Followups set to talk.politics.guns ]]

Brian Lazara ([b--i--n] at [wrs.com]) wrote:

> Remember, victims are more often shot by friends/family rather than
> by criminals. 

You watch too much TV.  The only accurate statement that can be made
based on the actual statistics is that victims are more often shot by
someone they know, which includes things like drug dealers shooting each
other in territory wars.  It also includes things like abused wives
shooting abusive husbands in self-defense.  Also left out of the
equation is that most domestic shootings involve individuals who
already have criminal records and prior complaints filed against them;
it's not a case of Joe Average just offing his wife and kids one day,
because he feels like it.  The promulgators of this statistics also
like to leave out the fact that suicide accounts for more than 85% of
this statistic.

>                It is staggering to look at other countries in comparison
> to the US when it comes to hand gun deaths. I think it was about 80 thousand
> people killed last year by hand guns.

You think wrong.  The real figures stand at around 20,000
depending on what year you pick and whose statistics you use.  Note,
again, that most of these deaths are suicides; about 10,000 of them
are homicides, including justifiable homicides.  Oh, and England's
crime rates are lower across the board, not just for gun deaths; and
their homicide rate does not appear to have been affected by their gun
control laws (strange, huh?)

>                                Hand guns need to be
> collected and destroyed. They are too large of a burden on our health
> care system. Sorry if Joe Smoe can't go hand gun hunting anymore.

There is little evidence that this would do any good; locking up the
predators who use them illegally, and _leaving_ _them_ _locked_ _up_
would have a far more dramatic effect.

> And I don't want to hear any whimpering about only the bad guys having
> them. It would take time, but we could eventually cleanse
> our society of these things. Look at it as making life better for the
> next generation.

Well, excuse us for "whimpering".  Perhaps you would care to offer us
your sage wisdom on just exactly why the criminals will give up their
guns when they have already shown blatant disregard for the law?  And
perhaps you would care to explain why our drug prohibition hasn't
cleansed our society of drugs?  Must have something to do with those
darn criminals ignoring the law again, huh?

- Jon