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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (30525)	2/9/1999 11:57:00 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

Some societies have enormously high death rates due to knives- but I do not think that is a very good reason to do away with kitchen cutlery. Some people, for whatever reason, like to kill (well I can understand that) others are driven to it by emotions which overwhelm them- in either case guns are not necessary. They perhaps make death a bit swifter, and less messy, but many people would kill anyway. I think Britain has a very high knife and blunt instrument death rate- me, I'd rather be shot than bludgeoned thank you very much.

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (30525)	2/9/1999 11:04:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Aw, geez, Lather, I hope we are not going to get into the gun debate again, with everyone firmly entrenched in their original,long-held positions. However, I do believe I am absolutely correct. Here is a USA Today article in summation of the facts: usatoday.com U.S. leads richest nations in gun deaths ATLANTA - The United States has by far the highest rate of gun deaths - murders, suicides and accidents - among the world's 36 richest nations, a government study found. The U.S. rate for gun deaths in 1994 was 14.24 per 100,000 people. Japan had the lowest rate, at .05 per 100,000. The study, done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is the first comprehensive international look at gun-related deaths. It was published Thursday in the International Journal of Epidemiology. The CDC would not speculate why the death rates varied, but other researchers said easy access to guns and society's acceptance of violence are part of the problem in the United States. ''If you have a country saturated with guns - available to people when they are intoxicated, angry or depressed - it's not unusual guns will be used more often,'' said Dr. Rebecca Peters, a Johns Hopkins University fellow specializing in gun violence. ''This has to be treated as a public health emergency.'' The National Rifle Association called the study shoddy because it failed to examine all causes of violent deaths. ''What this shows is the CDC is after guns. They aren't concerned with violence. It's pretending that no homicide exists unless it's related to guns,'' said Dr. Paul Blackman, a research coordinator for the NRA in Fairfax, Va. The study used 1994 statistics supplied by the 36 countries. Of the 88,649 gun deaths reported by all the countries, the United States accounted for 45 percent, said Dr. Etienne Krug, a CDC researcher and co-author of the article. ''I was surprised by the magnitude of the difference between the U.S. and other countries,'' Krug said. Brazil ranked second with 12.95 deaths per 100,000, followed by Mexico with 12.69, Estonia with 12.26 and Argentina with 8.93. Japan, where very few people own guns, averages 124 gun-related attacks a year, and less than 1% end in death. Police often raid the homes of those suspected of having weapons. Also at the bottom of the list were South Korea with .12 per 100,000 people, followed by Hong Kong with .14, Mauritius with .19, Singapore with .21, Taiwan with .37 and England and Wales with .41. The study found that gun-related deaths were five to six times higher in the Americas than in Europe or Australia and New Zealand and 95 times higher than in Asia. By The Associated Press