Washington Post Feature, "The Hidden Life of Guns"

[Hap35]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sp ... l?hpid=z11

Today's edition of the Washington Post has a major online collection of articles on guns, gun control, crime and guns, the NRA, lobbying, politics, etc. Some new articles here, plus a large collection of a bunch of past articles. Makes for some interesting reading, especially the "Tell Your Story" collection of stories by people who have used guns to defend themselves or loved ones. Here's a link to that section too:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/co ... 239f78cfb3

One thing I take from reading this stuff is that a lot of the criticism of guns used in connection with a crime, and of dealers who sell guns that may end up in the hands of a criminal (despite background checks and efforts to avoid proxy sales), should properly be directed to the perpetrators instead, not the gun dealers. It's not the gun dealers who are using guns in support of criminal activity. But as long as there are criminals who are willing to use weapons in connection with the commission of a crime, it seems to me only reasonable that a reasonable man would take reasonable efforts to defend himself and his family. I can't think of a better way to do that than the .357 in my nightstand. Thoughts?

Hap

[AJMD429]

Government regulation of guns ('gun control') facilitates genocide, which would be nearly impossible without registration to precede confiscation to yield a disarmed group to prey upon. Genocide has consistently resulted in around 5,000 innocent lives lost per DAY for the past century, making it the largest human-induced cause of human death, greater than violent crime, gun accidents, suicides, terrorism, and even war itself.

Therefore, in would be entirely impossible for the 'benefits' of even the strictest gun regulations to exceed the risk of even merely 'registering' firearms.

Gun control is dangerous and counterproductive, and those who promote it are either ignorant fools, wannabe tyrants, or those who feel they are in a position where they will be favored by those who rule. See Don Kate's "Guns & Public Health - epidemic of violence, or pandemic of propaganda?" from Tennessee Law Review around 1985 for a well-referenced 80-plus page law review journal article on the topic, which has page after page documenting the "overt mendacity" and fraud and deception on the part of the MEDICAL community which supports 'gun control'.

[Hap35]

Government regulation of guns ('gun control') facilitates genocide, which would be nearly impossible without registration to precede confiscation to yield a disarmed group to prey upon. Genocide has consistently resulted in around 5,000 innocent lives lost per DAY for the past century, making it the largest human-induced cause of human death, greater than violent crime, gun accidents, suicides, terrorism, and even war itself.

Therefore, in would be entirely impossible for the 'benefits' of even the strictest gun regulations to exceed the risk of even merely 'registering' firearms.

Gun control is dangerous and counterproductive, and those who promote it are either ignorant fools, wannabe tyrants, or those who feel they are in a position where they will be favored by those who rule. See Don Kate's "Guns & Public Health - epidemic of violence, or pandemic of propaganda?" from Tennessee Law Review around 1985 for a well-referenced 80-plus page law review journal article on the topic, which has page after page documenting the "overt mendacity" and fraud and deception on the part of the MEDICAL community which supports 'gun control'.

Thanks for the reference, AJMD. It's a good article. For a more recent analysis by the same author, see "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide: A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence", 30 Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, at 630 (2007). Here's a link:

http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/org ... online.pdf

In this article, Kates, along with a co-author from Canada, looks at international data and finds no correlation between murder rates and gun ownership. Some of the Scandinavian and central European countries (Germany, France) have high gun ownership rates and very low murder and violent crime rates. Violent crime has drastically increased in England after they banned gun ownership. The bottom line is that murder and violent crimes correlate with criminals who have a history of past criminal activity - big surprise.

The problem is that the false claim that gun control reduces violent crime has been repeated so often that the validity of the statement is incorrectly assumed and then repeated again, regardless of the fact that available data does not support the claim.

Hap

[Cimarron]

It's hard to believe anything worthwhile is printed in the Washington Post.