Quote:
Originally Posted by Paft
To be fair I was sort of having a bash at the gun advocates and showing my feelings towards guns.
Sure, a knife, a heavy object or a vehicle can be a weapon...but c'mon they're not the same. Guns sole purpose are to kill, and this is something you don't want in the wrong hands, which sadly too often is. Point and pull a trigger. Congrats! You've just killed someone. Minimal effort. As soon as someone raises a gun at you you're instantly fucked.
2pence.
As you were.
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Firearms are about the ability to kill quickly and efficiently. There are also competitive and amateur shooting competition.
To zero in on it as this horrible blight on society you are sadly mistaken.
As all countries do not collect and slice their data the same way it's difficult to make one to one comparisons. But lets look at violent crime. Quick google search (as this has been a common point of discussion in the past) turns up this article:
2009 Article Britain is the most violent Country
And a graphic from the article:
From the article the following is stated "The U.S. has a violence rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents"
For the US here is the most recent I can find that are from "final data":
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
Citing from the 2009 faststats:
Number of deaths for the top 10 leading causes of death:
Heart disease: 599,413
Cancer: 567,628
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 137,353
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,842
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 118,021
Alzheimer's disease: 79,003
Diabetes: 68,705
Influenza and Pneumonia: 53,692
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 48,935
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 36,909
Expanding to include the top 15 causes from that report (linked in the link I provided above)
- Diseases of heart (heart disease)
- Malignant neoplasms (cancer)
- Chronic lower respiratory diseases
- Cerebrovascular diseases (stroke)
- Accidents (unintentional injuries)
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Diabetes mellitus (diabetes)
- Influenza and pneumonia
- Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis (kidney disease)
- Intentional self-harm (suicide)
- Septicemia
- Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis
- Essential hypertension and hypertensive renal disease (hypertension)
- Parkinson’s disease
- Assault (homicide)
So...firearms deaths?
All homicides 16,799
Firearm homicides 11,493
If you continue digging you're going to find that a significant portion of those deaths are gang related.
So what would I suggest this tl;dr wall of might show? That firearms deaths are not this big spectre that those opposing firearms would want you to believe. Further more, you could save far more live by encouraging people to stop eating fast fucking food and get your lazy ass off the couch and go for a walk.
Additionally, while the UK may boast fewer firearms deaths and crimes it has NOT made anyone living or visiting there safer. Fact is, I'd far rather have the ability to carry a firearm for the defense of myself, my loved ones and my friends than to leave that to law enforcement. Most of the the time law enforcement isn't going to stop what happens....they're going to investigate and file away papers after trying to figure out WHAT happens.
Edit:One last note. I did try to align the year interval for all citations but the dailymail article while posted in 2009 does not cover 2009 stats. In the graphic the Dailymail does provide a lead for their source so feel free to chase that should you feel so inclined.