On Sun, 06 Jan 2013 07:11:40 -0600, David Hartung wrote:
> On 01/06/2013 06:20 AM, Robert Fitzgerald wrote:
<snip>
>>
>> How is it that gun ownership in recent years went from 190 million
>> owned to over 300 million owned, and gun deaths dropped by 50% - even
>> at a greater rate than the increase in guns-owned? One would think
>> it'd have to be the other way if more guns means more
>> accidents/deaths..
>>
>> How is it almost every male under 30 in Switzerland has a full-auto
>> military rifle in their home, with lots of ammunition, and Switzerland
>> has a very low gun crime rate? Plus, most/many people there have
>> additional guns. Many over-30's also opt to keep their military
>> rifles.. Shooting is a very popular sport in Switzerland, beyond the
>> military training.
>
> I have no trouble believing this, but as the left is fond of saying that
> the mere presence of a gun is harmful, some citations would be
> appreciated.
Here's one recent article on that. As the liberal author says, the Press
doesn't usually talk about this stuff...
For info on SWitzerland, people can just
en.wikipedia.com(gun laws
Switzerland)
Or a general web search will find tons of info on gun ownership, gun
laws, and gun crime in Switzerland...
The gun deaths figure of about 11,000 in the US doesn't include
suicides, just murders. This trend in reduced violent crime rates has
been going on for decades.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland
Gun politics in Switzerland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gun politics in Switzerland are unique in Europe. Switzerland does not
have a standing army, instead opting for a people's militia for its
national defense. The vast majority of men between the ages of 20 and 30
are conscripted into the militia and undergo military training, including
weapons training. The personal weapons of the militia are kept at home as
part of the military obligations; Switzerland thus has one of the highest
militia gun ownership rates in the world.[1] In recent times political
opposition has expressed a desire for tighter gun regulations.[2] A
referendum in February 2011 rejected stricter gun control.[3]
<snip>
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Scientific American Mag blog
http://tinyurl.com/c85qz5p
Critical views of science in the news More Guns Have Not Produced More
Killings, But We Still Need Gun Control
By John Horgan | December 21, 2012
I’ve beaten up on opponents of gun control in posts published on the day
of the Newtown massacre and again on Sunday. In both posts, I strongly
implied that more guns mean more shootings. Now I’d like to present
statistics that contradict that hypothesis, or at least show it to be
grossly simplistic. I found these stats in “Gun Control Legislation, “a
report of the Congressional Research Service published on November 14,
just a month before the Newtown massacre.
The number of guns in the U.S. surged from 192 million in 1994 to 310
million in 2009. That includes 114 million handguns, 110 million rifles
and 86 million shotguns. There are now about as many firearms in the U.S.
as people. These stats have been widely reported. What has not been so
widely reported is that the number of firearm-related homicides fell from
17,073 in 1993 to 9,903 in 2011 (up slightly from 9,812 in 2010). Per
capita, the gun-related murder rate has dropped by more than 50 percent
over the past two decades.
This is a remarkable and somewhat mysterious trend. Some scholars have
attributed the decline in gun-related homicides and other violent crimes
to rising rates of incarceration; the U.S. has by far the highest rates in
the world. But the decline has continued since 2007 as incarceration rates
have fallen slightly and as the U.S. economy has tanked. “This would also
be the last time to expect a crime decline,” legal scholar Frank Zimring
told The New York Times last year.
So am I taking back my call for gun control? No. Rates of gun-related
homicide in the U.S., in spite of the recent decline, are still
unacceptably high, much higher than in any other developed nation.
Moreover, according to an analysis by Mother Jones, there has recently
been a rise, albeit erratic, in casualties from “mass shootings,” defined
as incidents in which one or, more rarely, as in the case of Columbine,
two shooters kill at least four people. Mass shootings exclude armed
robberies and gang violence.
There have been 62 such shootings over the last 30 years, according to
Mother Jones. Within this period, 2012 already has by far the highest
<snip>
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--
Bobby