Can I ask, what happened to "More facts and less emotion?" Seems to me the emotions are running a bit high right now. Maybe everyone should take a moment to calm down, reflect on what has been posted, and maybe decide if they should maybe edit some of their responses?
I agree Al. Let me start here are some facts to start. Source:
http://gunowners.org/fs0404.htm
Highlights
* Guns are used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year—or about 6,850 times a day.(1) This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.(2)
* Even anti-gun Clinton researchers concede that guns are used 1.5 million times annually for self-defense. According to the Clinton Justice Department, there are as many as 1.5 million cases of self-defense with a firearm every year. The National Institute of Justice published this figure in 1997 as part of "Guns in America"—a study which was authored by noted anti-gun criminologists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig.(3)
* Concealed carry laws have reduced murder and crime rates in the states that have enacted them. According to a comprehensive study which reviewed crime statistics in every county in the United States from 1977 to 1992, states which passed concealed carry laws reduced their rate of murder by 8.5%, rape by 5%, aggravated assault by 7% and robbery by 3%.(4)
* Anti-gun journal pronounces the failure of the Brady law. One of the nation’s leading anti-gun medical publications, the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that the Brady registration law has failed to reduce murder rates. In August 2000, JAMA reported that states implementing waiting periods and background checks did "not [experience] reductions in homicide rates or overall suicide rates."(5)
* Twice as many children are killed playing football in school than are murdered by guns. That’s right. Despite what media coverage might seem to indicate, there are more deaths related to high school football than guns. In a recent three year period, twice as many football players died from hits to the head, heat stroke, etc. (45), as compared with students who were murdered by firearms (22) during that same time period.(6)
* More guns, less crime. In the decade of the 1990s, the number of guns in this country increased by roughly 40 million—even while the murder rate decreased by almost 40% percent.7 Accidental gun deaths in the home decreased by almost 40 percent as well.(8)
* CDC admits there is no evidence that gun control reduces crime. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has long been criticized for propagating questionable studies which gun control organizations have used in defense of their cause. But after analyzing 51 studies in 2003, the CDC concluded that the "evidence was insufficient to determine the effectiveness of any of these [firearms] laws."(9)
* Gun shows are NOT a primary source of illegal guns for criminals. According to two government studies, the National Institute of Justice reported in 1997 that "less than two percent [of criminals] reported obtaining [firearms] from a gun show."(10) And the Bureau of Justice Statistics revealed in 2001 that less than one percent of firearm offenders acquired their weapons at gun shows.(11)
* Several polls show that Americans are very pro-gun. Several scientific polls indicate that the right to keep and bear arms is still revered—and gun control disdained—by a majority of Americans today. To mention just a few recent polls:
* In 2002, an ABC News poll found that almost three-fourths of the American public believe that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the rights of "individuals" to own guns.(12)
* Zogby pollsters found that by a more than 3 to 1 margin, Americans support punishing "criminals who use a gun in the commission of a crime" over legislation to "ban handguns."(13)
* A Research 2000 poll found that 85% of Americans would find it appropriate for a principal or teacher to use "a gun at school to defend the lives of students" to stop a school massacre.(14)
* A study claiming "guns are three times more likely to kill you than help you" is a total fraud. Even using the low figures from the Clinton Justice Department, firearms are used almost 50 times more often to save life than to take life.(15) More importantly, however, the figure claiming one is three times more likely to be killed by one’s own gun is a total lie:
* Researcher Don Kates reveals that all available data now indicates that the "home gun homicide victims [in the flawed study] were killed using guns not kept in the victim's home."(16)
* In other words, the victims were NOT murdered with their own guns! They were killed "by intruders who brought their own guns to the victim's household."(17)
* Gun-free England not such a utopia after all. According to the BBC News, handgun crime in the United Kingdom rose by 40% in the two years after it passed its draconian gun ban in 1997.(18) And according to a United Nations study, British citizens are more likely to become a victim of crime than are people in the United States. The 2000 report shows that the crime rate in England is higher than the crime rates of 16 other industrialized nations, including the United States.(19)
