"Dave" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:38:00 -0700, Hawke wrote:


Then add the fact that if there were no guns whatsoever violent people
would
simply use knives, clubs, fists, and other available weapons to prey on
the
weak.

Thats an interesting point that ive brought up to my Euro friends in the
past. They are constantly comparing gun related deaths where they live as
to where I live. (An example was the Seattle rave shooting). I would also
like to see a general comparison of violent crimes between there and here
to show if its guns that are the problem or is it that there are just more
violent people.

There have been numerous studies about American violence. They show it's not
really about guns themselves. If you look at gun deaths in this country you
have to break them down into categories to understand what is going on.
First off, accidental shootings have declined considerably over the years
and as I recall there are somewhere around 5,000 accidental deaths by guns
per year. That is not a lot in a country this big. More people die in home
swimming pool accidents, which should give some perspective on the problem.

The second category is suicide by guns, which for some reason is calculated
in gun violence statistics. Most cases are old white men who kill
themselves. Then you have the killings by people under 25 years old, who are
mainly young males. Most of these killings are gang related. I've heard
there are 50,000 gang members in L.A. alone so fights over turf will make
for a lot of violence. So you can see that if you break it down gun violence
isn't all that prevalent except in a couple of specific areas.

Cliff is right in that aside from the examples I just mentioned it is rare
for a stranger to kill someone. At least 85% of the time when someone is
killed it is by a friend or relative. In those cases, many of which are
domestic violence, the absence of a gun isn't going to prevent a man from
killing his wife or girlfriend. When all is said and done there are a number
of sociological reasons why America is a violent place. Some say it's
because of the level of socioeconomic inequality. The point is different
societies are more or less violent and the weapons they use don't really
matter. Take away American's guns and they won't turn peaceful, they'll just
pick up something else to do the job.

The most violent people on record are primitive tribal people in New Guinea,
or Borneo, or some place like that. The kill each other at the highest rate
per 100,000 of any people in the world and they have no firearms. I think
it's just that Americans act more like those people than they do Europeans.
In other words, we have a long way to go before we shed our violent
tendencies. As someone said; it's not a perfect country...that's why we have
guns.

Hawke