On 7/21/2015 11:32 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Tue, 21 Jul 2015 08:01:06 -0500, "David R. Birch"
wrote:

On 7/20/2015 3:36 PM, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Mon, 20 Jul 2015 15:07:21 -0500, "David R. Birch"
wrote:

More likely we want to be able to defend ourselves.

See above.

I did. You don't think people should be able to defend themselves? My
reluctance to kill is less than my reluctance to be killed.

No, you have a perfect right to defend yourself. And if you have to,
it's time to move.

Easy to say assuming unlimited funds and options.

No, you don't need unlimited funds and options. What you need is the
good sense not to plant yourself and your family in a shooting
gallery.

It was what I could afford.


In the real world, not
so much. For that matter, the number of safe places to move to is
dropping rapidly.

I can suggest a few if you're interested. Crime rates for nearly every
town in America are published online.

Oh, good, and you're willing to help subsidize this move of course, or
should I just use money I don't have?


The rest of the world can do what it wants with DDT.

Not if the program gets US funding, which many do.

WTF? So we're responsible for malaria in Africa? We're supposed to
fund their mosquito repellants because of our domestic decisions? Let
them get their DDT from India -- they still make it -- and have China
pay for it.

We already give millions for malaria abatement. Bill Gates gives
millions more.

But not using DDT, which had almost eradicated malaria until Rachel Carson.


Of course, this ignores that the
vast majority of legal purchases are never used in crime.

Gee, ya' think? How did this ridiculous idea become part of the
discussion?

"The point is that you aren't paying attention to the stats. According
to the FBI, the average time between a legal gun purchase and its use
in a crime is 2-1/2 years."

The way you state this, it implies that any legal purchase is used in a
crime on the average 2-1/2 years later. I know that's not what you meant
to say, but that's the first inference I made.

I would have said "According to the FBI, the average time between the
legal purchase of a gun used in a crime and that use is 2-1/2 years."


Among our many stupid laws, we have practically none regarding
responsibility to keep guns safe. Contrast that with Switzerland, for
example.

I'm sure that guns illegally owned by criminals are always safely stored.

It's not the criminals' storage methods that we have to worry about
it. It's the dimwits who make it easy to steal their guns.

This depends on what you mean by easy. No security system will stop a
determined thief, the best it can do is slow him down or make it too
much trouble.

David