The only reliable study would be more on the lines:
what proportion of women carrying guns have prevented a crime against themselves by 'using ' it [which is hard - assessing intent, belief, meaning of 'use' etc], against the proportion that *has* had a violent crime committed against them.
That wouldn't be very useful. Your comparing all violent crimes against women against the percentage that have prevented violent crime through the use of a gun. If gun control laws where easy to make near 100% effective and if no violent crime would be committed in the absence of guns then your comparison would make sense but neither of those things are true.
"3) Mass killings would NOT be avoided if guns were not available; "
3. Nope - but there'd be a damn sight less.
If you're sufficiently skilled and motivated, I suppose you can make bombs. The Columbine killers did. Trouble is, only one went off and it didn't kill anyone.
If we had more gun control in the US the Columbine killers would probably have still been able to get guns. They planned for a long time. Mass killings are most likely when guns are not incredibly difficult to get but are not common. If guns are almost impossible to get then the killers probably wont get them. If guns are common the killers can be stopped by some one with a gun long before the police get there. When states have passed liberal concealed carry laws crime in general went down but mass killings went down more then other crimes.
press.uchicago.edu
"I have studied multiple victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1995. These were incidents in which at least two or more people were killed and or injured in a public place; in order to focus on the type of shooting seen in Arkansas, shootings that were the byproduct of another crime, such as robbery, were excluded. The effect of "shall-issue" laws on these crimes has been dramatic. When states passed these laws, the number of multiple-victim shootings declined by 84 percent. Deaths from these shootings plummeted on average by 90 percent, and injuries by 82 percent.
4. Oh, goody. So? It's OK if it's only the second-commonest cause of children dying?
No its not the second, or the third, or the fourth...
again from
press.uchicago.edu
"The total number of accidental gun deaths each year is about 1,300 and each year such accidents take the lives of 200 children 14 years of age and under. However, these regrettable numbers of lives lost need to be put into some perspective with the other risks children face. Despite over 200 million guns owned by between 76 to 85 million people, the children killed is much smaller than the number lost through bicycle accidents, drowning, and fires. Children are 14.5 times more likely to die from car accidents than from accidents involving guns."
Another study showed that very young children in the US are more likely to die by drowning in buckets of water then by accidental gun shot wounds.
Tim |
