Quote:
Originally Posted by hoovesupsideyourhead
will bad guys turn in their guns? then wtf is the point..   |
I don't think it's about bad guys turning in guns, but then, the real problem with guns is that there are too many of them in the hands of people who shouldn't have them, and I don't even mean people who use them to commit crimes. There are plenty of perfectly law-abiding American citizens who are just not responsible enough to own a gun. And plenty of men who can't control their tempers enough to be trusted with one, and yet they can buy them legally.
Some stats on firearms and domestic violence:
http://smartgunlaws.org/domestic-vio...olicy-summary/
Stats on children killed in unintentional shootings:
http://everytownresearch.org/reports/innocents_lost/
And guns and suicide:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine...e-hidden-toll/
And before the, "But if they don't have a gun, they'll kill themselves some other way" starts- no. The thing with suicide attempts is that if a person fails, there is a 90 percent chance they will not ultimately kill themselves (risk is highest in the first year, when 15 percent try again). People using guns for suicide are successful 85 percent of the time, compared with drugs, the most common method attempted, which are successful a whopping THREE percent of the time. Basically, if a suicidal person has a gun, there's a good chance they will succeed, and so won't have an opportunity to get help, while if they try ANY OTHER method, there's a good chance they won't succeed and have a second chance to get help. In fact, people are spectacularly bad at successful suicide- unless there is a gun involved. Then they're really good at it.
The NRA has made a lot of gun manufacturers a lot of money by convincing gullible Americans that the world is a dangerous, scary place and the only way to protect oneself from danger is to own a gun. Never mind that owning a gun makes a person less safe, not more. But rather than let that information get out, the NRA lobbies Congress to block research into gun violence. Read the article I linked to earlier, about the CDC being blocked from researching it. People are afraid to lose their careers over it. It's really depressing.