Yet you never hear all of those stories about guns saving fluffy kittens from trees.
So you have heard of cars, baseball bats, drunks, or drunk drivers saving fluffy kittens from trees? O.K.- I will give you the drunks, but just a few, I am sure someone that was drunk did so at one time or another. You also don't hear much (or anything) about crimes that were prevented because the attacker thought that someone was armed or found out the potential victim was armed, whether they had to shoot or not- but they are out there. Criminals are looking for an easy target, not someone that might be able to fight back. You also don't hear much about the millions of legally owned firearms that have millions of rounds shot through them every year without incident.
Guns are designed to kill and they have no other use other than threatening to kill someone which is just as bad. The fact that other things are used to kill people just demeans those objects, it doesn't make guns look better.
I have owned/shot guns for about 22 years ( minusing military service) and have never killed or threatened to kill anyone with them and I have shot thousands of rounds. If you consider the ammount of guns per capita in the U.S., if killing was their only purpose, our death rate by them should be in the millions every year.
No, it doesn't make them look better, but it underlines the fact that you don't need a gun to kill people and that you can take an ordinary everyday item and do it just as efficiently. You can walk into any toy store and buy a baseball bat at any age with no restriction, yet this is one of the most common non-gun weapons to kill someone, knives can be bought at most hardware and department stores they are second in line.
Canada, with it's gun resticting laws, has a lower gun related death ratio than the U.S., per capita. Of course, perhaps we're just to polite to kill
and you do so through the loss of personal liberty and freedom whether you would have killed someone with them or not, you forfeit your rights.
If you are a law abiding citizen that would not harm someone with one, then you have let the small group of people that would, scare you into giving up your right to own one if you wanted to Or maybe you believe that giving up some personal liberty is for the greater good, I see no greater good than the cause of personal liberty, and that comes with responsiblity.
I feel we don't need a government(s) to let us know what is good for us or not, what we need is responsibility for the self and responsibility for actions, if an individual cannot handle that then yes, they should forfeit those rights, but for those that can handle them responsibly, let them do as they please.
Seriously, think about it, where are these criminals going to get guns, if there happen to be no guns available to the public? Sure, they could probably get one somehow, but's it a hell of a lot harder, and more expensive. Most criminals aren't professional enough to do that. Most muggings/robberies are done by amateurs who bought a gun exactly for that purpose. It's harder to mug if you have no gun. Simple as that. I advocate, perhaps, a stun gun, that shoots those electrical "doo-hickeys", which would create a current of sufficient voltage to render the person unconscious. No fuss, no muss. And you don't have to use a gun, or rub the blood out of the carpet.
