Posted: 4/18/2007 10:49:36 AM EDT
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In a debate on another board...facebook. I wrote. 
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Dave kopel http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel051403.asp May 14, 2003, 10:20 a.m. The British Gun Closet Slowly, the country is learning the hard way. LONDON — When I arrived in London, I expected to find a very depressing situation for gun rights, as the formerly robust British right-to-arms is nearing extinction. Yet there are signs that the public is waking up to the failure of gun prohibition. To be sure, the present circumstances in Britain are awful. A world-class British rifle shooter explained to me that he never tells ordinary people that he is a marksman, for fear of their reaction. British shooters today, like homosexuals in Oklahoma in 1950, feel so intimidated by the hostility of the surrounding culture that they must be careful not to expose themselves, except to known members of their minority group. The British government is more abusive than ever to people who use force for lawful protection, and as accommodating as ever to violent criminals. The news that two Britons carried out a terror bombing in Israel has not resulted in calls from the government or from the "posh," non-tabloid press for cracking down on the clerics who incite terrorism. The tabloid Express takes a harder line. The bombers grew up in England in a secular, English-speaking, integrated environment, but then fell under the influence of hateful clerics in England, so the connection between terrorist incitement and terrorist action is clear enough. The civil-liberties merits of tolerating terrorist clerics is far outweighed by the massive loss of liberty for non-terrorist citizens that would follow the nearly inevitable advent of jihad bombings in Great Britain. Non-terrorist criminals also continue to get an easy ride from the government. Some teenagers who perpetrated an unarmed gang homicide on a random stranger were last week sentenced to terms of 2-4 years. The same week, reports the Evening Standard (4/29), "An evil young killer who stabbed a complete stranger through the ear with a hunting knife" was sentenced to seven years in prison. Meanwhile, the government is introducing a five-year mandatory minimum for carrying a gun illegally. So, merely carrying a gun merits a sentence in the same range as murdering someone. Using force to resist a crime seems to trouble the government a great deal. A businessman who hit a pair of burglars with a brick was prosecuted and called "an unmitigated thug" by the government (Daily Mail, 5/1). Yet the jury acquitted the victim, since British jurors do retain the right to acquit a morally innocent defendant who has technically violated the law. A masked man with a cape and a mask who was on his way to a costume party intervened to save someone who was being beaten by a gang of thugs. The local police spokesman was very unhappy with the man's altruism, since only the police are supposed to resist criminals (Daily Mail, 5/3). A gun "amnesty" has resulted in the surrender of about 25,000 arms, and was proclaimed a great triumph by the government. Civil-libertarian Stephen Robinson noted in the Telegraph: "The police were strangely reluctant to specify how many of the guns were handed over in inner city areas, fueling the suspicion that many of the weapons were family heirlooms. . . . Many appear to have been handed in by the elderly and law-abiding who fear becoming criminalized in a society in which private gun ownership is slowly being outlawed." The gun-prohibition lobbies and their many government and media allies, not sated by the near-destruction of mainstream firearms sports, are now setting their sights on air guns and replica firearms. Home Minister David Blunkett wants to ban public possession, whereas London mayor Ken Livingston is pushing total prohibition of replica guns. A teacher was fired for allowing a student to bring a replica gun to school as part of a science exhibit. Overall, Britain now suffers from a higher violent crime rate than the U.S., and has reverted to its medieval status of being substantially more dangerous than most of the European continent. (Continental gun laws are generally more repressive than in the U.S., but more liberal than in England.) The lesson: More gun bans, more violent crime. The 1997 extermination of Britain's pitiful minority of handgun target shooters did not directly increase crime, since existing laws made it impossible for a lawful handgun owner (or any other lawful gun owner) to use a firearm for self-defense. Rather, the handgun confiscation of 1997 was the continuation of a trend that began in the 1950s that has resulted in the destruction of the law-abiding gun culture, and the suppression of every form of non-government use of force against criminals. As a result, criminal violence and a criminal gun culture are 50 times more prevalent than they were in the early 20th century, when there were no antigun laws, and no laws against the use of reasonable force against violent criminals. And yet there are signs that the public is finally awakening to the fact that the gun-prohibition movement can deliver hatred and repression, but comes up very short on public safety. The 1997 handgun ban is perceived by many as a failure, as gun crime has risen substantially since then. An April 29 poll in the Birmingham Post reported that 68 percent of Britons believe it should be legal for householders to shoot a burglar or other criminal invader. Twenty-two percent of Britons said that they would carry a handgun for protection, if they legally could. Only 7 percent of Londoners would exercise that choice compared with 55 percent in Yorkshire. Although many recognize the failure of gun control, this does not mean that they are against licensing, registration, and background checks. But it does mean that Britons are beginning to understand that a nation without legal guns is a nation at the mercy of gangs and criminals. Peter Hitchens has just come out with a major new book, A Brief History of Crime: The Decline of Order, Justice, and Liberty in England. Hitchens, a columnist for the Sunday Mail, argues that British governments have helped cause the tremendous increase in crime over past decades by refusing to punish criminals strictly, and by making excuses for criminals. As crime has soared, the government has responded by cracking down on the law-abiding population and on civil liberties. The right to silence has been abolished, the right to jury trial has been restricted, surveillance cameras are pervasive, and wiretaps and e-mail intercepts are skyrocketing. Hitchens devotes a chapter to the failed campaign against guns, explaining how the deprivation of the means of self-defense causes more crime. Of course, there's a long way to go between the beginning of popular recognition of a problem and the repeal of the government policies that caused the problem. But the British do appear to be making the tentative first steps in the right direction, and that's a notable change from last decade. |
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According to DOT, the leading cause of death for people 4-34 or so is car crashes, lemme grab the source (found it last night). ETA: NHTSA/ DOT PDF ETA 2: for 2003, ~118 people died per day from auto accidents in the US |
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http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel012201.shtml 1/22/01 10:30 a.m. Empty-Barrel Gun Policies A legacy of nonsense from Clinton, Blair, and the Left. By Dave Kopel, Dr. Paul Gallant, & Dr. Joanne Eisen of the Independence Institute At a January 8, 2001 farewell tribute from the AFL-CIO, President Clinton offered advice to his party for regaining Congress in the next election. In doing so, he made a stunning revelation about the political clout of American gun owners. Union members who had been expected to vote Democrat in the presidential election, it seems, were frightened by the prospect of losing their guns should Al Gore win. That crucial swing vote cost Al Gore the election. According to the New York Daily News, Clinton "blamed himself for failing to make the case that tougher gun-control laws aimed at combating crime posed no threat to sportsmen." He noted that, despite New York's tough licensing laws, "there's lots of sporting clubs and nobody's missed a day in the woods in a hunting season; nobody's missed a single sports shooting event." Clinton's statement was nonsense. New York City's gun laws have nearly destroyed the shooting sports — such as indoor target shooting — for all but a few of the City's residents. The extensive paperwork, long waits, and high fees that New Yorkers throughout the state must endure to comply with the state's Sullivan Act — a 1911 handgun licensing law originally aimed at Jewish and Italian immigrants — depresses participation in all handgun sports far below normal levels. Yet, even while claiming that severe gun-control laws do not harm sport shooting, Clinton conspicuously avoided the most important reason why Americans refuse to surrender their right to firearm ownership: self-defense. Most gun owners do not want to imitate Clinton's New York utopia, where it is nearly impossible to obtain a permit to carry a handgun for lawful protection because the state law delegates nearly limitless discretion to local bureaucrats. (For details, see Susan Novak's excellent article, "Why the New York State System for Obtaining a License to Carry a Concealed Weapon is Unconstitutional," from the Fordham Urban Law Journal.) Added Clinton: "I regret that I have not been more persuasive, because I came out of that [gun] culture." In the United States, even politicians like Clinton and Gore who work assiduously to disarm the populace must proclaim their fidelity to the American gun culture. In Great Britain, it's a different story. For years, British gun control laws have become ever more severe, and every civilian handgun in the nation has been confiscated. And while about 40% of American households tell pollsters that they own guns, compare that figure to only 4% in Great Britain. (The true ownership rates in both countries are probably higher, since some gun owners are reluctant to give personal information to people on the telephone.) The confiscation of handguns, as well as the registration and regulations which set the stage for confiscation, were explicitly aimed at preventing the development of an American-style "gun culture." And the British plan succeeded. There isn't a large American-style gun culture in England. America's gun culture is comprised of law-abiding, hard-working, family-oriented people. In stark contrast, Great Britain's emerging gun culture consists of armed criminals, and of police "deploying the level of force appropriate to the threat." Signs of the new British gun culture are everywhere. According to the December 31, 2000 edition of the Guardian Unlimited, "gun crime in Britain is soaring to record levels: executions, woundings and related incidents in the past year are set to be the highest ever…. The number of armed operations by police is also at a record level." And on January 11, 2001, the Guardian Unlimited reported that "the use of handguns in crime in England and Wales reached its highest level for seven years in 1999-2000". In 2000 alone, it jumped 37% from the previous year. How can this be, when a ban on private ownership of handguns — promising to reduce violent crime — became law in November 1997 under what was characterized as "the toughest gun control laws in the world"? (The British proponents of the new gun law were exaggerating a little. Nicolai Ceausescu's Communist dictatorship in Rumania actually had tougher laws, until it was overthrown. Britain's new gun-culture has drastically and irrevocably transformed the face of law enforcement there. From 1829, when Sir Robert Peel re-organized the London metropolitan police force, and introduced "policing by consent," the British have been proud that their police do not carry firearms. Until now, armed police officers have been deployed on mainland Britain for only a few specific purposes: to carry out diplomatic duties, to deal with armed robberies or sieges, and to meet terrorist threats. But on October 23, 2000, the Guardian Unlimited disclosed that "routine armed foot patrols are now being operated in Nottingham — the first time this has happened on the streets of mainland Britain" — signaling "a further sign of a growing gun culture...a gun culture out of control." Stated Ann Widdecombe, Great Britain's shadow home secretary (the opposition party's counterpart to the head of the Home Office, which incorporates functions similar to the U.S. Department of Justice): "We have now reached a situation where police officers need to carry guns just to do their job." Some believe that British police may be routinely armed within 10 years. Their firearms are worn in open view, "a tactic intended to instill confidence in the public and act as a visible deterrent to criminals." So much for the tradition of Bobbies (named for "Bobbie" Peel), carrying only a truncheon and handcuffs. Lamented one senior police officer: "Arming officers could lead to a dangerous spiral of violence. If the police arm themselves, the criminals will stay a step ahead by obtaining bigger and better weapons. We could be heading for the sort of problems they have in America." Actually, the British would be better off if they had America's problems instead of the ones created by the British government; Britain's overall violent crime rate is higher than the American rate. In previous generations, Britain had a long-standing tradition of sporting gun use, and a long-standing tradition that both the police and the criminals would eschew guns. But now, one third of all British criminals under the age of 25 "has access" to a firearm. Delroy Brown, a community leader in a district which is racially mixed but where most of the recent violence has involved black youths, expressed different concerns. Said Brown, "this marks the paramilitarisation of the police. If they are armed, within five years you will see a disproportionate number of black youths being killed by mainly white officers." With national elections looming this spring, and the fate of Prime Minister Blair hanging in the balance, crime control is certain to be a major issue. On January 9, 2001, Blair announced a 10-year government plan to tackle crime. According to Home Secretary Jack Straw, because of "underlying economic and demographic pressures, over the next 3 years...we will have to work harder than ever to reduce the levels of crime." Jack Straw's statement indirectly puts the blame on factors such as immigration and the unemployment rate — which conveniently ignores the Blair government's role in deliberately destroying a law-abiding gun culture, and thereby fostering a criminal gun culture. (Americans may recognize "Jackstraw" as the subject of a Grateful Dead song. The original Jack Straw teamed with Wat Tyler in 1381 to lead a peasant and labor rebellion against Britain's King Richard II. The King met with the rebels, agreed to most of their demands, and once they dispersed, had them murdered piecemeal. "Jackstraw" later came to mean a man without property, worth, or influence. Today's Home Secretary Jack Straw appears to have less in common with his namesake than with Richard II.) The gullibility of our British cousins in swallowing the empty promises of politicians like Tony Blair and Jack Straw — greater safety through the limitation of civil liberties — remains a mystery. One measure proposed by the Home Office is the hotly contested Criminal Justice (Mode of Trial) Bill. If enacted, this legislation would restrict the right of defendants charged with certain offenses to choose whether their case is heard by a judge or a jury. In other words, the bill ensures that the criminal-justice process would be entirely in the hands of government employees, with no checks or balances from the people. And on October 4, 2000, Home Office Minister Charles Clarke unveiled a new package of firearm controls. Among these proposals are a national database of legal gun owners in Great Britain. The database will contain the names and addresses of all licensed rifle and shotgun holders (although, such information already exists in the licensing records of local police departments). The real value of this "new" and duplicative gun registry would appear to lie in providing political brownie points to its proponents. Gun crime is going up, so the government responds by making another list of law-abiding gun owners. Maybe if crime rises some more, the government will make a third list. In the meantime, guns flood into Great Britain from the international black market, driven and funded by the demands of Britain's new gun culture. It has been estimated that the number of illegally possessed firearms in Great Britain has doubled over the past 4 years, and has now reached the three million figure. A January 15, 2001 item from The Independent, entitled "Police Move to Tackle Huge Rise in Gun Crime," noted that "for the past 11 months, a team of officers from the National Criminal Intelligence Service has compiled details of weapons and ammunition seized by the police and has concluded that the scale of Britain's black market in firearms is 'far higher than anybody had previously thought.'" British security services revealed that, "as well as eastern Europe, America is also a foreign source of illegal weapons." Although it is impossible to know with certainty the number of guns smuggled into Great Britain, large consignments are being "brought across the Atlantic by private yachts and dropped into the sea off the Kent coast." While a no-questions-asked gun-turn-in amnesty is part of Tony Blair's anti-crime package, it's likely that hardly any owners of the 3 million illegally possessed guns will take advantage of it. Meanwhile, back in the United States, Democratic leaders attempting to woo back union and rural voters continue to promise that "sporting" and "hunting" firearms will remain inviolate. British gun owners in previous decades received similar empty promises. Probably some of the British politicians in the 1920s and 1960s who pushed gun control were sincere in not wanting to destroy the shooting sports. But these politicians naively set the stage for today's British confiscation fiats. It ought to be clear that many of the "sort of problems" we Americans face derive from the efforts of the firearm prohibitionists to create a society of unarmed victims. And if they ever succeed in removing self-defense from the firearm equation, we can be certain of one thing: America will indeed go down the British path as we are perennially exhorted to do — and straight into the "new" British kind of gun culture. Britain's gun policies have succeeded marvelously in ensuring that criminals do not obtain firearms lawfully. Only an infinitesimal number of legally-owned British guns are ever used in a crime. But these effective laws appear to be very ineffective in preventing criminals from obtaining guns. Commented Home Office Minister Charles Clarke about the new British anti-crime plan: "Our firearms controls are already among the strongest in the world, and these new proposals will increase their effectiveness." That's true. Provided, of course, that Great Britain's criminals decide to start obeying these newest regulations. |
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http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/lott_richardson200511081204.asp November 08, 2005, 12:04 p.m. Power to the People The Brazilian public has spoken, and they want their guns. By John R. Lott Jr. & Fern E. Richardson The solution to Brazil's high murder rate seemed obvious to the Brazilian government, the media, and United Nations: Ban guns. They all went to great efforts to pass an initiative doing just that last month, but in the end almost two thirds of Brazil's voters rejected the proposal. It is hard for most Americans to imagine what Brazilians are facing. For the most recent detailed numbers, the U.S. murder rate was 5.5 per 100,000 people in 2004. For Brazil it was 28.3 in 2002. That's just a little less than three times the record U.S. murder rate at the height of prohibition in 1933. Brazilians have a right to be skeptical that yet more gun control is the solution. Strict licensing laws that have been in effect in Brazil since 1940 have not solved the problem. Since 1941 it has been illegal to bring a weapon outside one's house without authorization. Eighteen gun-control laws and regulations were imposed during the period from 1992 to 2003. Many rules were extremely restrictive: For example, a 1997 law required anyone applying for a firearm license to have a psychological test and knowledge of operation of firearms, and a 1999 law limited each person to two handguns. Despite new restrictions on gun ownership being continually imposed, murder rates rose every year from 1992 to 2002, a total 41 percent increase. Indeed, given the huge differences in murder rates between the U.S. and Brazil, it is not too surprising that gun ownership in Brazil is just a fraction o that in the U.S.. Almost half of American adults live in households with guns, while just 3.5 percent of Brazilians are legally licensed to use guns. A gun ban might not matter if police were able to protect people, but in poorer areas of Brazil's major cities, police response times to even the most serious crimes are over an hour. Even in the wealthiest areas of cities, the fastest response times are not shorter than 15 minutes. Simply telling poor people to wait an hour for the police to show up is not very good advice. Everyone wants to take guns away from criminals. The problem is that the law-abiding citizens, those who have followed the licensing and registration rules, are disarmed, not the criminals. This leaves potential victims more vulnerable and increases crime. As one cab driver who voted against the ban said, "I don't like people walking around armed on the street. But since all the bandits have guns, you need to have a gun at home." Consider the case of Washington, D.C. In the five years before Washington's ban in 1976, the murder rate fell from 37 to 27 per 100,000. In the five years after the ban went into effect, the murder rate rose back up to 35. In fact, while murder rates have fluctuated after 1976, only once have they fallen below what they were that year. Robberies and overall violent-crime rates followed the same trend: Robberies fell from 1,514 to 1,003 per 100,000 leasing up to 1976, and then rose by over 63 percent, up to 1,635. These drops and subsequent increases were much larger than any changes in neighboring Maryland and Virginia. For example, the District's murder rate fell 3.5 to 3 times further than in the neighboring states and rose back 3.8 times greater. Chicago, which has banned handguns since 1982, also saw violence rise. Chicago's murder rate fell from 27 to 22 per 100,000 in the five years before the law, and then rose slightly to 23. The change is even more dramatic when compared to five neighboring Illinois counties. While robbery data in Chicago isn't available for the years immediately after the ban, since 1985 (the first year for which the FBI has data) robbery rates soared. The experience in the U.K., an island nation whose borders are much easier to monitor, should also give gun controllers pause. The British government banned handguns in 1997 but recently reported that gun crime in England and Wales nearly doubled in the four years from 1998-99 to 2002-03. Crime was not supposed to rise after handguns were banned. Yet, since 1996 the serious-violent-crime rate has soared by 69 percent; robbery is up by 45 percent, and murders up by 54 percent. Before the law, armed robberies had fallen by 50 percent from 1993 to 1997, but as soon as handguns were banned the robbery rate shot back up, almost to 1993 levels. Yet, hopefully Brazilians are not the only ones who have learned these lessons. San Francisco has an initiative on its November ballot to ban handgun ownership, and to ban the sale of all guns within the city. It would be a welcome sight to see both these measures struck down. Brazilians are desperate about their crime rates, but apparently not desperate enough to wait passively for police the next time they are confronted by a criminal. Brazilians have experienced firsthand how the very gun-control regulations that they already have may in fact be the problem. |
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Thanks guys! I posted this and some of the articles above
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http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/lott200508190817.asp August 19, 2005, 8:17 a.m. Canada Blames Us Gun-control folly here, up north, across the pond... By John R. Lott Jr. If you have a problem, it's often easier to blame someone else rather than deal with it. And with Canada's murder rate rising 12 percent last year and a recent rash of murders by gangs in Toronto and other cities, it's understandable that Canadian politicians want a scapegoat. That at least was the strategy Canada's premiers took when they met last Thursday with the new U.S. ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, and spent much of their time blaming their crime problems on guns smuggled in from the United States. Of course, there is a minor problem with the attacks on the U.S. Canadians really don't know what the facts are, and the reason is simple: Despite billions of dollars spent on the Canada's gun-registration program and the program's inability to solve crime, the government does not how many crime-guns were seized in Canada, let alone where those guns came from. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported in late July that they "cannot know if [the guns] were traceable or where they might have been traced." Thus, even if smuggled guns were an important problem, the Canadian government doesn't know if it is worse now than in the past. Even in Toronto, which keeps loose track of these numbers, Paul Culver, a senior Toronto Crown Attorney, claims that guns from the U.S. are a "small part" of the problem. There is another more serious difficulty: You don't have to live next to the United States to see how hard it is to stop criminals from getting guns. The easy part is getting law-abiding citizens to disarm; the hard part is getting the guns from criminals. Drug gangs that are firing guns in places like Toronto seem to have little trouble getting the drugs that they sell and it should not be surprising that they can get the weapons they need as well. The experiences in the U.K. and Australia, two island nations whose borders are much easier to monitor, should also give Canadian gun controllers some pause. The British government banned handguns in 1997 but recently reported that gun crime in England and Wales nearly doubled in the four years from 1998-99 to 2002-03. Crime was not supposed to rise after handguns were banned. Yet, since 1996 the serious-violent-crime rate has soared by 69 percent; robbery is up 45 percent, and murders up 54 percent. Before the law, armed robberies had fallen 50 percent from 1993 to 1997, but as soon as handguns were banned the robbery rate shot back up, almost to its 1993 level. The 2000 International Crime Victimization Survey, the last survey completed, shows the violent-crime rate in England and Wales was twice the rate of that in the U.S. When the new survey for 2004 comes out later this year, that gap will undoubtedly have widened even further as crimes reported to British police have since soared by 35 percent, while those in the U.S. have declined 6 percent. Australia has also seen its violent-crime rates soar immediately after its 1996 Port Arthur gun-control measures. Violent crime rates averaged 32-percent higher in the six years after the law was passed (from 1997 to 2002) than they did in 1995. The same comparisons for armed-robbery rates showed increases of 74 percent. During the 1990s, just as Britain and Australia were more severely regulating guns, the U.S. was greatly liberalizing individuals' abilities to carry firearms. Thirty seven of the fifty states now have so-called right-to-carry laws that let law-abiding adults carry concealed handguns after passing a criminal background check and paying a fee. Only half the states require some training, usually around three to five hours. Yet crime has fallen even faster in these states than the national average. Overall, the states in the U.S. that have experienced the fastest growth rates in gun ownership during the 1990s have experienced the biggest drops in murders and other violent crimes. Many things affect crime: The rise of drug-gang violence in Canada and Britain is an important part of the story, just as it has long been important in explaining the U.S.'s rates. (Few Canadians appreciate that 70 percent of American murders take place in just 3.5 percent of our counties, and that a large percentage of those are drug-gang related.) Just as these gangs can smuggle drugs into the country, they can smuggle in weapons to defend their turf. With Canada's reported violent-crime rate of 963 per 100,000 in 2003, a rate about twice the U.S.'s (which is 475), Canada's politicians are understandably nervous. While it is always easier to blame another for your problems, the solution to crime is often homegrown. |
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I'd reply something like this: Here's the difference between how it is in the US and England Scenario: You are in your home, with your family, and a crazed lunatic who is armed starts trying to forcefully break in. There is no doubt he means you and your family serious harm. You have enough time to ring the police, and retreive something, say, a golf club, with which to defend yourself. The crazed madman gets in. You either 1. attack him and defend youself and your family OR 2. do nothing, and end up seriously injured or dead, as well as your wife and kid(s). In England, if went with 1. you'd be charged with assault if the madman lived. Murder if he died. If you went with 2. Madman would probably escape and commit other crimes. IN AMERICA - same situation Madman trying to break in. Enough time to call the police and retreive a weapon. Madman breaks in. I put several 9mm rounds into him until he is stopped. Police respond. They give me a pat on the back for stopping a violent criminal. My family is SAFE and UNHARMED. Do you see the difference? This is a pretty extreme hypothetical situation, but it has happened, and will happen. Which home would you rather be in? See how he responds to something like that. |
In 1997 England banned all handguns, and afterwards the crime rate shot up. Here is some data from the early 2000s:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3195908.stm One thing to note is that while English gun crime rose, the gun homicide rate was comparitivly low. So English gun control isn't effective, but cultural reasons keep the homicide rate relatively low (don't expect that to continue). Also, the cause of the crime isn't gun control, it is immigration from the third world. Gun control and the inability of the English to defend themselves does make it worse, but it isn't a root cause. (edited to add: google is your friend. There are other articles out there describing the English rise in gun crime late 90s early 2000s.) |
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So, let's make the debate really boring and take all of the emotion out of it. Let's look at this debate purely from a numbers perspective. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwR/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm Of 28,663 firearms-related deaths in 2000 --- an average of 79 per day---16,586 (57.9%) were suicides, 10,801 (37.7%) were homicides, 776 (2.7%) were unintentional, and an additional 500 (1.7%) were legal interventions or of undetermined intent. The above stats taken from this study/report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr50/nvsr50_15.pdf Now, compare the above stats with this: http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/FastFacts.htm In the United States, cigarette smoking is responsible for about one in five deaths annually, or about 438,000 deaths per year. Thats 1200 deaths per day from tobacco use. That's a little over 15 times the number of people killed with firearms each day. Even just second hand smoke kills more people per day than firearms: An estimated 38,000 of these deaths are the result of secondhand smoke exposure. Also, this site has good info/stats: http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=35422 Secondhand smoke is especially harmful to young children. Secondhand smoke is responsible for between 150,000 and 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections in infants and children under 18 months of age, resulting in between 7,500 and 15,000 hospitalizations each year, and causes 1,900 to 2,700 sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) deaths in the United States annually.11 Also, another good site for stats: http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate.html In 2004, there were 1,385 firearm deaths of children aged 0 - 17. So there were even fewer firearm deaths of minors than the lowest estimate of SIDS deaths (which affects only infants) caused by second hand smoke. So, in looking at the numbers, if you are really serious about preserving the health and lives of people, wouldn't it make much more sense to ban tobacco/smoking? I've effectively shut down several debates with stats from these sites. 
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The argument has been that the UK, Australia, etc. are so much safer because they ban guns. This does not seem to be the case. The data from this Australian report/study seems to indicate that the USA has a much lower violent crime rate per capita than Canada, the UK, and Australia. http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi115.html Trends in recorded violent crime in England and Wales, the United States, Canada, and Australia, rate per 100,000 persons, 1962-2004  And from Australian Institute of Criminology 2006. Australian crime : facts and figures 2005. Canberra: AIC. http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/facts/2005/ Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006. Recorded crime, victims, Australia [various issues]. ABS cat. no. 4510.0. Canberra: ABS http://www.aic.gov.au/stats/crime/violence.html Violent crime (In Australia): assault, sexual assault, robbery and homicide, rate per 100,000 persons, 1993-2005 
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