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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (142165)

1/28/2002 12:01:23 PM

From: TimF

Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 1578978

If the analogy is between controling guns and cureing cancer then guns are the cancer in the analogy.

No.........the analogy is not between the two subjects but between the two predicates.

And the two predicates relate directly to the two subjects. The whole analogy assumes that much greater level of control of guns is both possible in America, and desireable, apparently because it assumes that the guns themselves are bad in a way similar to how cancer is bad. We try to cure cancer because it is bad and any reduction of it is good.

Do you have statistics do back up these statements?

I don't have any stats to back up "many people still carry guns on a regular basis, but I know it to be true in many areas of the country. As for more violent crime in areas with more gun control. You might want to read the book refrenced in this link.

press.uchicago.edu

"In a county-by-county analysis of the effects of gun control laws on crime rates, Lott found that increasing the availability of concealed-weapon permits leads to a reduction of up to nine percent in the rate of violent crime."

cwn.uchicago.edu

Gunsupply, homocide and suicide
guncite.com

Gun Control: Myths and Realities
cato.org

""victims were less likely to report being injured than those who either defended themselves by other means or took no self-protective measures at all. Thus, while 33 percent of all surviving robbery victims were injured, only 25 percent of those who offered no resistance and 17 percent of those who defended themselves with guns were injured. For surviving assault victims, the corresponding injury rates were, respectively, 30 percent, 27 percent, and 12 percent."

guncite.com

GUNS AND JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE: DETERRENCE AND DEFENSE
saf.org

Guns used in self defense

guncite.com

guncite.com

guncite.com

Gun accidents

guncite.com

* Between 1977 and 1992, 10 states adopted right-to-carry laws. Dr. Lott's
study found that the implementation of these laws created:

-- no change in suicide rates,
-- a .5% rise in accidental firearm deaths,
-- a 5% decline in rapes,
-- a 7% decline in aggravated assaults,
-- and an 8% decline in murder

for the 10 states that adopted these laws between 1977 and 1992.
(7)

* Using 1995 numbers, this amounts to:

-- 1 more accidental gun death,
-- 316 less murders,
-- 939 less rapes,
-- and 14,702 less aggravated assaults

in these 10 states annually. (16)

* Florida adopted a right-to-carry law in 1987. Between 1987 and 1996, these changes occurred:

Florida homicide rate -36%, firearm homicide rate -37%, handgun homicide rate -41%

United States homicide rate -.4%, firearm homicide rate +15%, handgun homicide rate +24%

* 221,443 concealed carry licenses were issued in Florida between October of
1987 and April of 1994. During that time, Florida recorded 18 crimes
committed by licensees with firearms. (15)

* As of 1998, nationwide, there has been 1 recorded incident in which a permit
holder shot someone following a traffic accident. The permit holder was not
charged, as the grand jury ruled the shooting was in self defense. (7)

* As of 1998, no permit holder has ever shot a police officer. There have been
several cases in which a permit holder has protected an officer's life. (7)

* John Lott's crime study found mixed results regarding the adoption of waiting
periods. The data showed no overall beneficial effect on violent crime rates.
There are instances where enraged people buy a gun and quickly proceed to
commit a crime with it. There are also instances where people attempt to
purchase a gun for self protection because they have been threatened, and are
murdered during a waiting period. (7)

justfacts.com

When the National Association of Chiefs of Police asked police
commanders last year whether they agreed or disagreed ''that a
national concealed handgun permit would reduce rates of violent
crime,'' 62 percent agreed. When asked whether law-abiding
citizens should be able to purchase a firearm for sport or
self-defense, 93 percent said yes.

boston.com

__________________
"82% of homicides to children age 13 and under were committed without a gun. "
1997, FBI Uniform Crime Statistics

In 1996 there were only 21 accidental gun deaths for children under age 15. About twice as many children under
10 die from drowning in bathtubs.
* Centers for Disease Control

MYTH: 13 Children are killed each day by guns.

FACT: The statistics cited for this myth include "children" up to age 19 or age 24, depending on the source. Most
violent crime is committed by males ages 16-24, so these numbers include adult gang members dying during criminal
activity.

*FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1997

FACT: When citizens are allowed to carry concealed weapons:

* Murder rates drop 8%

* Rape rates fall 5%

* Aggravated assaults drop 7%

More to the point, crime is significantly higher in states without right -to -carry laws.

TYPE OF CRIME HOW MUCH HIGHER IN RESTRICTIVE STATES

Violent Crime ……………………81% higher

Murder ………………………….. 86% higher

Rape …………………………… 25% higher

Assault…………………………… 82% higher

Robbery………………………….. 105% higher

Auto Theft……………………….. 60% higher

* John Lott, David Mustard: This study involved county level crime statistics from all

3,054 counties in the U.S. from 1977 through 1992. During this time, ten states adopted right-to-carry laws. It is
estimated that if all states had adopted right-to-carry laws, in 1992 the U.S. would have avoided 1,400 murders,
4,200 rapes, 12,000 robberies, 60,000 aggravated assaults- and would have saved over $5,000,000,000 in victim
expenses.

FACT: After Canada's 1977 gun controls prohibited handgun possession for self defense, the "breaking and entering" crime rate rose 25%, surpassing the U.S. rate.
* Pat Mayhew, Residential Burglary: A Comparison of the United States,
Canada and England and Wales (Nat'l Inst. Of Just., Wash., D.C., 1987)

MYTH: Japan has strict gun control and a less violent society.

FACT: In Japan, the murder rate is about 1 per 100,000. In the U.S., there are about 3.2 murders per 100,000 each year by weapons other than firearms.

* United Nations data

Therefore, if all of the firearms in the U.S. could magically be eliminated, we would still have three times the murder rate of Japan.

sas-aim.org
__________________________

Myths About Gun Control
ncpa.org

"New Jersey adopted what sponsors described as "the most stringent gun law" in the nation in 1966; two years later, the murder rate was up 46 percent and the reported robbery rate had nearly doubled.

In 1968, Hawaii imposed a series of increasingly harsh measures and its murder rate, then a low 2.4 per 100,000 per year, tripled to 7.2 by 1977.

In 1976, Washington, D.C., enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Since then, the city's murder rate has risen 134 percent while the national murder rate has dropped 2 percent.

Defenders of the Washington law say it isn't working because criminals are getting guns in Virginia, where the laws are more relaxed. But just across the Potomac River, Arlington, Va., has a murder rate less than 10 percent of that of Washington (7.0 murders versus 77.8 per 100,000 population). Can the difference be explained by the fact that Washington is a large city? Virginia's largest city, Virginia Beach, has a population of nearly 400,000, allows easy access to firearms - and has had one of the country's lowest murder rates for years (4.1 per 100,000 population in 1991).

An analysis of 19 types of gun control laws concluded that not only do they fail to reduce rates of violence, they even fail "to reduce the use of guns or induce people to substitute other weapons in acts of violence." For example:

When Morton Grove, Ill., outlawed handgun ownership, fewer than 20 were turned in.

After Evanston, Ill., a Chicago suburb of 75,000 residents, became the largest town to ban handgun ownership in
September 1982, it experienced no decline in violent crime.

Among the 15 states with the highest homicide rates, 10 have restrictive or very restrictive gun laws.

20 percent of U.S. homicides occur in four cities with just 6 percent of the population - New York, Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C. - and each has a virtual prohibition on private handguns.

ncpa.org

General relevant arguments without detailed statistics

netside.com

keepandbeararms.com

Since this reply is so big I'll split the two different subjects and reply to the rest of your post serperatly.

Tim

Edit - More on the media reporting defensive gun use -

tsra.com

To: tejek who wrote (142165)	1/28/2002 12:10:32 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1578978

I don't know what you mean by a few but they are enough; they are on the rise; and they can be very violent and result in death. I dispute your contention that they are on the rise. They used to be far more common and crime in general has been declining including crimes committed against minorities. Once again, the numbers are no where near proportionate.........there are far more hate crimes against minorities than against whites......however you won't find that out by reading the conservative press. When they discuss the issue and provide information they would mostly provide accurate information but since hate crimes are only a tiny even insignificant fraction of crimes against minorities the conservative press will put more attention to crimes in general. The large amount of ordinary crime in many poor minority neighborhoods is a far more serious threat to the health and well being of minorities then the few isolated cases where some racist lunatic does something spectacularly evil. Regular crime has a lot more to do with the real world experience that minorities face. The spectacular hate crimes are usually something they see only on the news. Its affirmative action laws that are mitigating some of the disparities between whites and minorities..........for an example, national income statistics finally are improving for minorities at a decent pace although the gap between them and whites remains about the same. I am talking about discrimination and equal opportunity for individuals, not equal outcomes for groups. If 2 black people have been discriminated against, discriminating against a white person in the favor of a third black person doesn't help the first two black people any, and it does not make things more fair or just overall. Tim