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

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (30577)	2/12/1999 9:59:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

<The Centers for Disease Control is staffed by notorious gun haters. Heck, remember when they tried to get the Gov't to mount a full-court attack on gun injuries as a public health crisis? Know your sources - don't be a pawn of the antis. >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.< I get the uneasy feeling you're okay with this. I'm not. Those police raids are an awful price to pay for the phantom of security. I don't want to get embroiled in the same old tired debate. But please know this. If you're going to consent to being a mouthpiece for HCI agitprop, I'll be here to gently remind the readership that it just ain't so. Nothing personal -> Well, Lather, nothing personal here, either. Having said that, you are using an AD HOMINEM argument of sorts--attacking the source of information. This doesn't really work very well here, because the statistics on gun deaths are gathered by each country independently, and simply put together by the Centers for Disease Control. So your argument that I am not accurate when I say that gun deaths in America are WAY out of proportion to the rest of the civilized world is fallacious. Am I misunderstanding something you are saying? On your other point, yes, gun-related injuries are a public health crisis. How could they not be? There is an enormous number of them, young black males in particular seemed to be killed so often there is just a one-paragraph story in the paper, and the cost to the government to maintain trauma centers which treat gunshot wounds is hugely expensive. If you take the Japanese statistics you have quoted at face value, if there are 124 gun-related attacks a year and less than 1% end in death, that seems to be about one death a year from guns. This is a wonderful result, sparing many thousands of families the sorrow that many American families experience every day. I have no problem at all with the police raiding houses to confiscate guns, and would duly note that the Japanese government does not seem to be taking away from its citizens any basic freedoms simply because everyone is not armed to the teeth!