[geeks] [rescue] Guns - what are they good for? - was Re: TME and Apple II and other Drive emulator questions.

[Mike Meredith]

On Wed, 21 May 2014 09:50:08 -0400, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> As I already pointed out, from the violent crime perspective that's
> the wrong question.  The key statistic there is not *guns* per 100,000
> population, it's gun *owners* per 100,000 population.  Very, very few

I suspect the more useful statistic is how many people have trivial
and/or easy access to a firearm; neither guns per capita nor gun owners
per capita answer that question, but are attempts to approximate it. 

> gun collectors are criminals.  If I own 27 firearms, and I murder my
> neighbor in a fit of jealous rage, I don't carefully make sure to
> shoot him once with each.  

What has your neighbour been up to? Personally I prefer a more intimate
form of violence ... I wonder how that auction for the battleaxe is
going?

> being used as a murder weapon in a given year.  You will find that the
> US compares *VERY* favorably with most of Europe; in fact, in some
> European nations, a randomly chosen gun is more than 20 times as
> likely to be used as a murder weapon in a given year than a random
> gun in the US.

Oh, I don't know ... you could argue it the other way. Europeans lead
the way in using firearms for what they were intended for - killing
people <evil grin>

More seriously, I suspect that what that analysis shows is that illegal
firearms are used for crime; the risk is too much to hang on the wall,
or practice.



-- 
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
  One test is worth a thousand opinions.