A (DU) minority view on guns.

[otohara]

161. High Gun Ownership Makes Countries Less Safe

Can't say that about baseball bats or swimming pools.

Guns do not make a nation safer, say US doctors who have compared the rate of firearms-related deaths in countries where many people own guns with the death rate in countries where gun ownership is rare.

Their findings, published Wednesday in the prestigious American Journal of Medicine, debunk the historic belief among many people in the United States that guns make a country safer, they say. On the contrary, the US, with the most guns per head in the world, has the highest rate of deaths from firearms, while Japan, which has the lowest rate of gun ownership, has the least.

The journal has fast-tracked publication of the study because of the shootings at the Washington navy yard. It was originally scheduled for later this week.

It follows an emotional appeal from a doctor at the trauma center in Washington where the victims of Aaron Alexis' random violence were taken. "I would like you to put my trauma center out of business," Janis Orlowski, chief medical officer at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, told reporters in the aftermath of the massacre. "I would like to not be an expert on gunshots. Let's get rid of this. This is not America."

The fraught question of whether gun ownership protects populations from crime or makes them less likely to be killed has been debated for 200 years, say the authors, Sripal Bangalore of NYU Langone Medical Center, and Franz H Messerli of St Luke's Roosevelt hospital, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York. They say the arguments began as soon as the second amendment stating "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" was passed in 1791.

At one end is the argument that gun control laws are an infringement on the right to self-defense and on constitutional rights, and that there is no evidence that banning assault weapons would reduce crime. At the other end is the view that fewer firearms would reduce crime rates and overall lead to greater safety, they say.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/18/gun-ownership-gun-deaths-study




Something tells me you will chose to ignore study after study and continue on with the pathetic attempt to compare gun violence to baseball bats.