wrote:
On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 15:43:51 -0500, Jeff Morris
wrote:


Leanne wrote:

I don't carry a gun on me or my boat, but guns on boats

discussions


should be made with a bit of discretion.


We just went through this discussion a bit ago on alt.rv. Should
we or should we not carry firearms in our RV. I wonder how many
gun owners have killed with their weapon. It takes a lot of
nerve to actually do it. Talking is easy.

Leanne



Of the 30,000 gun deaths in the in 2002, only 300 were "legal
interventions." I would guess most of these were professionals (police,
etc.). Over 750 were accidental. About 12000 were homicides and more
than half were suicide. Over 600 were 14 years of age or under.

Its pretty clear that if a gun is fired and kills someone, its far more
likely that the victim will be a family member, friend, or child, than
than a criminal.

Of course, these stats don't tell us how many crimes were prevented by
the threat of a gun. In some neighborhoods, and for some businesses,
this is clearly a factor, but for the average family, I think a gun is a
liability.

http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html


back in the 80's, a suburb of Chicago, Morton Grove, outlawed handgun
ownership. In response to this, a suburb of Atlanta, Kennesaw, passed
a law requiring gun ownership. In the 2 decades since this happened,
Morton Grove has maintained the rate of increase in violent crime of
any Chicago suburbs. At the same time, Kennesaw has had the lowest
rate of property and personal crime and violence. The only 2 handgun
murders in Kennesaw were at hotels there, not in homes in the
community.


You should get your fact straight before you parrot the arguments of
others. Kennesaw has a low crime rate, but not lower than many other
"bedroom suburbs" around Atlanta. If you compare to Massachusetts,
which gun advocates decry as a failed experiment in ultra liberal gun
control (we require a license for ownership), the Kennesaw crime rate is
rather high - double that of many towns in the state. Burglaries, for
instance, are much more common than in the city I live in.