Ok, so here I am cruising the boards and come up on a link for some brady campaign thing. Figure I'll check the site out of curiosity. I read some of the "stuff" they had posted and I want to ask some questions. This is something I've thought about over the years, and ya'll seem to be the people who have the most insight into it for me.
Why is it that the media paints a picture that implies GUNS are bad? Why do they not realize that guns are simply a tool/instrument to be used according the the wielders intent?
The brady site listed 30,000 deaths in 98 (oh, why 98 and not list stats for 01?)that were the result of firearms. Of those deaths 29,000 were either murder or suicide. If someone is bent on committing suicide they can do it without a gun just as easily as with a gun. Therefore those numbers (12,000) should not even be listed. It's pure idiocy to list them as a reason for more gun controls.
Murder is a bit more trickier of a subject though. I honestly believe that if someone wanted to kill someone else you can do it without a gun just about as easy as with a gun. If guns were outlawed murders would still be committed. I'd even say that the rate of murder will climb because of the lack of self defense guns provide people.
Now, lets say that guns were banned. Would this be a disarming of only the civilian population, or the country as a whole? If you only disarmed the civilian population then the only people with guns would be Military, Law Enforcement.......... oh, and criminals who decide to not obey the laws anyway. So, that won't be enough. Now you have to eliminate all guns. Except for the military of course. Soldiers do need something to fight with. Now you have a country where there are no guns outside of the military. Yes, you include law enforcement in that. I mean if there are no guns in the country why should LE have a need to shoot someone? This means that any gun found outside of a military base would be illegal and instantly destroyed. Now, it would take some time but pretty soon you'd have a disarmed country. This means that there is no more violence correct? After all, the big mean guns were the reason you had murders and such. Without guns you have no more violent crimes. Well except for the stabbing,muggings,beatings,raping and kidnappings. The only catch now is that your average citizen has no way to protect himself.
It just doesn't make much sense to me to remove guns from law abiding citizens. In fact, we should be promoting gun ownership every day. The brady site listed that 39% of households own guns. To me that says there are 61% of the households out there with no protection. If a thief/rapist saw this number he has a better then average chance of finding a house to rob/pillage with no way to stop him.