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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (1151)	1/8/2001 8:08:28 PM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 59480

I'm outta here myself. JLA

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (1151)	1/8/2001 8:27:45 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 59480

With respect to the issue you were discussing when you were so rudely interrupted by the ladies of the fevered brow, I have been doing a little digging through Justice Department statistics. I have statistics on how many mothers and fathers were murdered in 1998, but haven't been able to drill down to the weapon of choice for matricide or patricide - but I'm working on it. In the meantime, of 14,088 people murdered in 1998, 99 (.007%) of the victims were the mother of the perpetrator, and 120 (.0085%) of the victims were the father of the perpetrator. I don't know about you, but I have a real problem with determining public policy about handgun control based on children killing parents when it's such a rare offense. I think it's just an hysterical emotional reaction - which is why you were unable to discuss it rationally with the counterparty to your dialogue.

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (1151)	1/8/2001 8:58:19 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 59480

As for children being murdered by handguns, the breakdown is similar - of 14,088 people murdered in 1998, drilled down to victims of handguns, 3 (.02%) were infants aged 1 year or less; 43 (.3%) were aged 1 to 4 years; 30 (.2%) were aged 5 to 8 years; 45 (.3%) were aged 9 to 12 years; and then it takes a big jump and keeps jumping - the age most likely to be murdered by a handgun is age 20 to 24 - that's 2,516, or 17.8% of people murdered. I may be presenting the statistics in a misleading way - to clarify, as an example, in 1998, 220 infants were murdered - of those, 3 (1.3%) were murdered with handguns. 323 children aged 1 to 4 were murdered, of those 43 (13.3%) were murdered with handguns. Jumping ahead to people aged 20 to 24, in 1998, 2,516 were murdered, of those 2,050 (81.4%) were murdered with firearms. Throughout the later age cohorts, the use of firearms as a percentage of murders declines, but is never as low as it was for children. For people aged 75 or older, 295 were murdered in 1998, of whom 79 (25%) were murdered with firearms. And it should go without saying that these deaths should never have occurred. But let's put it into perspective, by comparing the number of people who used a weapon to defend him or herself in 1998. In 1998, 8,116,000 people were victims of crimes of violence - 2,564,000 were victims of completed acts of violence, 5,553,000 were victims of attempted acts of violence. Roughly 70% of victims tried to protect themselves from violence - of those 1.4% of men used a weapon to attack the offender in self defense, 1.3% of men threatened the offender with a weapon in self defense. 0.5% of women used a weapon to attack the offender in self defense, while 1% of women used a weapon to threaten the offender in self defense. I haven't drilled down to the numbers but my rough estimate is that 80,000 people used a weapon (unspecified) for self-defense against a violent attack in 1998 - vs. 9,143 people who were murdered with a firearm in 1998. Frankly I am on the side of the person who wants to use a gun for self-defense. I have done so once in my life - I didn't have to threaten the person, I just held on to the gun for comfort while I waited for the police to get there - and it was a great comfort, indeed.