"Guns don't kill people." Possibly the most stupid meme ever to be floated by the NRA.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Therefore running away from a thug armed with a handgun is not necessarily a bad idea. Four or five steps might just be enough unless your attacker was skilled with his weapon.
However I see your point.
The question I was replying to was:
""Is there any other device that is designed specifically to kill people?"
Which is why I mentioned a sword such as the Roman gladius.
There is absolutely no doubt that firearms are far more effective at a distance than a sword.
?w=640
I will make several comments:
You can sell a firearm in a parking lot in Florida to another Florida resident. I personally wish my firearms to end up with responsible owners. Before I sell a firearm I have to personally know the buyer and he has to have a valid Florida concealed weapons permit which means he has had safety training and a background check. I usually take the buyer out to the range and let him try the weapon which gives me the opportunity to be certain that he does practice the basic gun safety rules.
The article mentions the legal accessory that allows an AR-15 to be bump fired. While I have never seen this item I am amazed that it is legal to own. Fortunately it has not been widely publicized by the media or one might have been used in some recent massacres.
I suspect that the writer of the article is not a "true" reporter. Any reporter worth his salt would never mention that violent crime in Florida is at a 41 year low. Instead they would point out that Florida is filled to the brim with paranoid individuals who fear home invasions and have an arsenal of firearms in their home for self defense. Also mentioned would be the fact that many Floridians have carry permits and are actually cold blooded vigilantes who wander down dark streets late at night hoping to find an excuse to blow some poor thug away.
(Of course this is just 
)
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Your second link must come from a more main stream source as while it does contain some valid points it largely ignores how gun owners feel.
For example:
"None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control," says language added to the CDC appropriations bill in 1996.
Perhaps the NRA and knowledgeable gun owners oppose reports by the CDC as it has a mixed record on reporting facts.
CDC: Vaccine Study Design "Uninformative and Potentially Misleading"
Posted: 06/20/08 07:43 PM ET
CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding has delivered a potentially explosive report to the powerful House Appropriations Committee, in which she admits to a startling string of errors in the design and methods used in the CDC's landmark 2003 study that found no link between mercury in vaccines and autism, ADHD, speech delay or tics.
Gerberding was responding to a 2006 report from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), which concluded that methodology such as that used in the CDC's flagship thimerosal safety study is riddled with "several areas of weaknesses" that combine to "reduce the usefulness" of using the data in such a way.
***snip***
Read that sentence one more time. The head of the CDC is saying that its most powerful and convincing piece of exonerating evidence for thimerosal was based on anecological analysis of data whose methodology would be, in effect, "useless" for future study
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/cdc-vaccine-study-design_b_108398.html
CDC Reports Unexpected HIV Infections in Hispanics
By Robert Ruiz
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is national organization that is trusted for its accuracy and reliability in tracking public health statistics in regard to such things as life expectancy rates and HIV rates across various cultural groups. A report recently published by the CDC omitted pertinent information that may show that Hispanics do not live longer lives than other cultural groups as was previously reported. The misleading CDC report was written by Dr. Elizabeth Arias entitled “United States Life Tables” in which it was argued that Hispanics lived longer than Caucasians. This report failed to include 2008 HIV statistics along with a professional review that would have added shed some light on the argument being made in this CDC report.
After this initial omission for their report, the CDC later reported new findings that contradict these previous statistics that Hispanics / Latin Americans have longer life expectancies than Caucasians. The HIV statistics are being examined more closely for how they add contradicting information to the CDC’s claim that Hispanics have longer life spans.
New studies now being published by the CDC are shedding light on the previous findings, by reporting an unexpectedly higher rate of HIV infections within the Hispanic population. Hispanics / Latin Americans are being shown to contract the HIV virus at three times the rate of Caucasians. It is now being discovered that CDC reports published over the past couple of years have included inconsistent statistics, in addition to having used a faulty scientific model creating even more inaccuracies when discussing the realities public health issues affecting the Hispanic community.
The CDC is now publishing contradicting statistics from what was originally published and admitting to the inaccuracies of previous reports. The CDC’s “2010 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report” stated, “The annual rate of diagnosis with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection in the United States for Hispanics / Latinos . . . was approximately three times that for whites.”
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The article also mentions the Tiahrt Amendment.
Many gun owners support the Tiahrt Amendment as they oppose any backdoor effort to federally register firearm in civilian hands.
This is a fairly complicated issue and good points can be made on both sides.
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The NRA and many gun owners oppose a requirement to install safe gun technology and also the microstamping of ammo as these are unproven and unreliable at this time. This is another complicated subject with points to be made on both sides.
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The article states:
+ Even though the NRA got laws passed that make it legal for employees to bring their guns to work and leave them in the company parking lot, that is not enough. Now the rapacious NRA has made it illegal in some states for employers to even ask if the employee brought a gun to work! Even if a dispute is brewing. Let's hear it for workplace shootings.
I'm retired so this has no effect on me but let's assume I do decide to go back to work. Since I have a Florida concealed weapons permit I can legally leave a hidden firearm in my locked vehicle in my employer's parking lot (with some exceptions). My employer asks me if I have a handgun in my car because he finds out I have a carry permit. I answer honestly. He finds any excuse to fire me.
To me and the state of Florida this would be discrimination. To those who dislike gun owners this is only the employer's right.
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Finally the article mentions the fact that gun manufacturers can't be sued for the misuse of the weapons they make. Clearly this was an effort to sue gun manufacturers out of existence. If failed largely because it would set a bad precedent and Ford might be sued because it manufactured a car that could reach speeds of over 120 mph and some fool tried to see how fast the car would go and a tragedy resulted. A company that made hunting knives could be sued if one of its blades was used to kill.
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Finally you mention:
say, if you had to show ID and there was a code on the ammo or chip in the gun, you'd be a LOT more careful about what happened with those items...
I have no major problems with showing a photo ID to buy ammo. Years ago in Florida we had to do this and the purchase was recorded in a log at the store. It accomplished nothing and eventfully was repealed,
My idea is to require anyone buying a firearm or ammo to have a card proving they had firearm safety training. It could also include a background check similar to the one I had run in order to get my carry permit. Sky and SCUBA divers have to show such a card.
Of course the price for the card would have to be reasonable and not be required to be renewed every six months or a year. This could present a financial burden to the poorer members of our society and effectively limit gun ownership to the middle and upper classes.
I'm not sure exactly what a code on a gun or a chip would accomplish. If you are taking about using the firearm to micro stampi the ammo this can be defeated easily with a file.
In order for bullet microstamping to work, a weapon must be fitted with a special firing pin which has been etched with a unique serial number. When the gun is fired, the firing pin strikes the casing of the bullet, marking it with the serial number. While the microstamp is generally too small to read with the naked eye, it can be identified on a microscope, allowing investigators to cross-reference the serial number with a database of registered weapons.
There are several problems with bullet microstamping. In the first place, if a criminal picks up his or her shell casings, the microstamp will not be recoverable. For this reason, some people argue that microstamping would be more effective if it marked the actual bullet, not the casing. Bullet microstamping also does not address the issue of stolen and unregistered weapons, and a large number of gun crimes are committed with such weapons. Gun owners could also potentially replace the firing pin or file the microstamp off to avoid microstamping when the gun is fired.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-bullet-microstamping.htm
According to FBI analysis, the homicide drop would mean that nearly 280 fewer Americans were murdered last year, which would be the lowest homicide death toll since the mid-1950s.
LaFree said a combination of factors – from a weak economy and an aging population to increased immigration and a more robust police presence across the country – have contributed to the drop.
“One of the responses of society is to pull together when there’s a huge crisis and a feeling of great difficulty,” LaFree said, adding that the economic climate may have contributed to this peaceful trend.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/06/11/12170947-fbi-violent-crime-rates-in-the-us-drop-approach-historic-lows?lite
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Another possible reason for reduced crime is that potential victims may have become better at protecting themselves by equipping their homes with burglar alarms, putting extra locks on their cars and moving into safer buildings or even safer neighborhoods. We have only the faintest idea, however, about how common these trends are or what effects on crime they may have.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304066504576345553135009870.html
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also, check the NY Times for medical tech. improving.
the smart money says mass killings, accidental shootings, and suicides all go up with more guns.
as well as gun makers profits.
the AWB did nothing - sales of semi-automatic rifles actually peaked in 1999.
This rifle was legal during the AWB:
http://www.coltsmfg.com/Catalog/ColtRifles/ColtCaliforniaCompliantRifles.aspx
"Assault weapons" were flying off the shelf during the AWB.
that chart says we've gone from 3.2 assaults A MINUTE to 2.3 A MINUTE.
so what?
More recently, Donohue co-authored a paper in 2012 that concluded “aggravated assault rises when RTC (right to carry) laws are adopted. For every other crime category, there is little or no indication of any consistent RTC impact on crime.”
http://factcheck.org/2012/12/gun-rhetoric-vs-gun-facts/
There are two reasons why the effects of CCW laws on crime are likely to be negligible, the authors wrote. First, only a tiny percentage of the population seeks to obtain a concealed weapon permit. And those who do tend to be from groups who are at relatively low risk for either crime perpetration or victimization. They are generally older, higher-income, rural whites.
Much.
What’s more, deaths may be a misleading statistic that minimizes the true breadth of gun violence. Another report this year by the Violence Policy Center, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that while gun deaths remained relatively flat from 2000 to 2008, the total number of people shot went up nearly 20 percent since 2001. Why the difference between rates of shootings and deaths? “Advances in emergency services — including the 911 system and establishment of trauma centers — as well as better surgical techniques,” the report said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/22/opinion/blow-guns-smoke-and-mirrors.html?_r=0
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11,078 gun homicides (NCIPC, 2010);
55,544 gun injuries from assaults treated in emergency rooms (NCIPC, 2011);
337,960 firearm victimizations reported in crime surveys (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010, p. 8);
136,371 gun assaults reported to police (Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Table 15);
122,300 gun robberies reported to police (FBI, Table 15);
201 legal self-defense killings by private citizens with a firearm (FBI, Expanded Homicide Data, Table 15).
ummm.... 
they don't say anything- that is the problem-
as if a couple of ramdom charts could prove such a complicated issue... 
