The UN is not trying to take away anyone's guns. Why do the paranoids keep writing these fictional articles as if they were fact???

[url]www.excite.com.au/news/story/aap/20010629/12/international/norway-un-arms-eur.inp[/url]

Guns kill 500,000 people each year: report
                        12: 33 PM AEST June 29
                           The 550 million firearms in circulation around the world kill at least half a million people each year,
                           according to a report presented on Thursday that placed a large part of the blame on industrialised
                           countries.

                           Described by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as "weapons of mass destruction in slow motion",
                           firearms kill about 300,000 people each year in armed conflicts and another 200,000 in
                           "disorganised violence", according to the report "Small Arms Survey 2001 - Profiling the Problem".

                           The report, produced by the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva and the first of its
                           kind, will be presented at the first UN international conference on small arms to be held July 9-20
                           in New York.

                           Some 56 percent of the firearms in circulation belong to private people and are "legal", 44 percent
                           are in the hands of armed forces and police, while just 0.2 percent are in the hands of "insurgents
                           and non-state forces."

                           The number of "illegal" weapons in circulation is not known.

                           "Ninety states have some capabilities to produce small arms and ammunitions. Between 10 and
                           20 states account for the overwhelming majority of production and most of them are within the
                           Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe or Euro-Atlantic area," project director Keith
                           Krause told a press conference.

                           Trade and use of firearms -- the two are strictly correlated -- has grown since the mid-1990s as a
                           result of the break-up of the former Soviet Union and end of the Cold War, Krause said.

                           Firearms are defined in the publication as handguns, machine guns, submachine guns and assault
                           rifles such as Kalashnikovs and M-16s.

                           Krause listed the major producers as the United States, Russia and China, while medium-sized
                           producers included Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Britain, Bulgaria, France, Germany and South Africa.

                           But, he insisted, legal firearms production was not a lucrative business, estimating it at four to six
                           billion dollars annually.

Kofi Annan was just given another term as Secretary General.  We will have another 5 years of peace under his glorious global leadership.

I don't know, but if they could just ban those high capacity semi-automatic bolt action assault sniper rifles I'd feel a whole lot safer.

If there were no 3 rd world countries there would be no violence! Let's ban  them.

Let's see:  550,000,000 guns, 500,000 victims.  Figuring 1 gun per victim, that means 0.091% of the guns kill someone.

I personally own 10 guns right now.  0.091% of 10 guns is .0091 guns.  That means I have a 0.91% chance this year of one of my guns actually killing someone.

Boy, I'd better keep a close eye on them.  I always thought they were inanimate objects.

WAIT!  300,000 of the dead die in "armed conflicts"!  This means "war" unless I read it wrong.  I'm not a member of the military (unorganized militia, but not standing army).  So that reduces the odds to 200,000/550,000,000 or .036% and the odds of one of MY guns going out and killing someone to only 0.36%.

I feel much better.  But I'll still keep all but one locked up.  And I'll watch that one like a hawk.

[sleep]