In These Times

To gunsarejustbadok, why do you want African Americans to be defensless? An African American can't defend their family in their home with a deer hunting rifle too well, that is what handguns are for. An African American woman, woman of all ethnicities actually, are easy targets for violent criminals and a handgun is an equalizer. Why do you want to deny women the best self defense tool available? Gun control nuts must actually believe that a 110 pound woman can fend off a 210 rapist every time. You want to see what some lawful gun owners look like? Look here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/C-A-F-E/ …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Even if Lott and the other researchers were wrong about crime being reduced in states where gun control was more liberal like easier total access to carry permits in "shall issue" states, and even if there is no reasonable evidence that states with less restrictive gun control laws have less violent crime because of the laws, there is one thing that we ALL have to recognize. Gun bans have been proven not to work anywhere near as promised and have actually often resulted with the opposite results to the claims the laws were sold to the public with. Washington DC's total …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Most recent Gallup poll from just a few days ago: http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?ci=28978 From the report... Various localities around the country, including Washington, D.C., have passed bans on the possession of handguns by ordinary citizens. However, since 1975, Gallup has found a solid majority of Americans disagreeing with laws. And, public opposition has expanded in recent years. The current 68% saying handguns should not be banned is similar to the 66% last year, but significantly higher than the 50% in 1987. Bottom Line Gun control has not surfaced as a major -- or even a minor -- issue thus far in the 2008 …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Canada has 20% of all housholds with firearms in them and about one handgun per every 30 people. Washington has 0% of civillian households with a handgun and an estimated less than 1% of people with a shotgun or rifle permit. Canada's murder rate where there are many legally owned guns is 2 per 100,000 people. Whasnington D.C.'s murder rate with no legally owned handguns and almost no legally owned firearms of any kind is 29.1 per 100,000. "Gun free" Washington DC has FIFTEEN times the murder rate as gun prolific Canada.....'nuff said! In Canada they are allowed to own so …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Major Major, The United Kingdom had handgun registration and owner licensing as well for many decades much more strict than in Canada. The United Kingdom then banned all handguns just over ten years ago. The United Kingdom banned handguns under the premise that doing so would lead to no, or less gun violence and gun murder too just like the slanted propaganda you posted about Canada. Guess what, the strict gun control, efforts just like they have in Canada now DID NOT WORK....and even a total handgun ban REALL did not work. The only thing we know for sure is that …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Firearms registration and ownership licensing is a fallacy. In the UK there are no handguns legally owned, yet they have more handgun murders now than the year they banned all handguns. If there are more murders with no handguns to even be registered compared to when they had legal ownership, then what fool will fall for the promise of less murders with registration, licensing or outright banning? The gun cannot be uninvented and they will be smuggled or simply made no matter what and those illegally existing guns will be completely untraceable no matter how many law abiding gun owners are …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Replace the firearms stats with automobile stats (about as many cars in the US as guns). "Automobiles are the leading cause of traumatic death related to a consumer product in the United States and is the most frequent cause of death overall for Americans ages 15 to 24. Since 1960, more than two million Americans have died in autombile suicides, homicides, and unintentional injuries. Public health research has shown that automobile violence is directly related to automobile availability and density. What separates America from other Western, industrialized nations is not our overall rate of violence, but our rates of lethal violence—which …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Besides mentioning the fact that many deaths are caused by unlicensed and unregistered drivers driving illegally in public, car licensing and registration is only required when driven on public roads. You and I can own a car and drive it on our own property in most states without licensing or regisration. If someone owns a gun and never wears it loaded in public, then that is no different. Most murders occur in public. Your argument about Japan with a culturally accepted practice of suicide....well that argument can just as easil used here now can't it! It would be a culture of …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Major Major, If the logic that the prevalance of handguns affects the suicide rate is true, and because there are no handguns in Japan, nor legal ones in the UK, then more legally owned handguns in Japan should save thousands of lives every year. Now of course to suggest that more handguns in Japan will stop suicides is ridiculous.....just like it is it is preposterous to suggest more handguns in the US leads to more suicides. The people who did the "study" with the intent to find the conclusion they already determined before the "study" even started, ignored some perspectives they …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

When guns are banned, then the law abiding will have none and the criminals will have these: http://www.thehomegunsmith.com/introduction.shtml In inner cities where the law abiding minorities are banned from owning handguns, they are made defensless from the still armed criminals. Gun control laws have a history steeped in racism. http://www.blackmanwithagun.com/site/dbpage.asp?page_id=140000780&sec_id=140000845

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Now you are just shamelessly making crap up Major Major. If there was any truth to the idea that the access to guns leads more people to commit suicide, or that they would not kill themselves if they had no access, then explain the UK, Japan and the Ukraine which all have no handgun ownership, yet much higher suicide rates than the US. The link source you cited earlier claimed the handgun and firearm regisration in Canada has had great success at reducing suicide or something like that, but my Gawd man, the suicide rates are higher in Canada than in …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

About more people kill themselves without a gun than do using a gun in this country. Even if all guns were removed from socitey and even if all those people who used a gun did not find a way to kill themselves without using a gun, then we would still have a rampant suicide rate in this country. Guns do not cause suicide, mental illness does and the inflicted will find a way if they have a gun or not. There is no way for you to prove otherwise without looking like a fool. Guns are used between a low estimate …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Doom and gloom and scary claims means nothing nowadays coming from the anti gun ownership crowd. All the fears of yesteryear of what will happen if we have more guns not only did not come true, but the OPPOSITE often actually happened. Accordin to ATF estimates, since 1993 there have been about 70,000,000 more legally owned guns in the United States. According to the FBI the murder rate is almost half of what it was about fourteen years ago. More guns did not make a smouldering fire blaze up as your analogy claims and the fear is more than unwaranted and …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

My, my, my Major Major, I knew you would try the exageration of children dying by being murdered. According to the CDC it was not "thousands" of children that die every year by being murdered by someone using a gun, it was 279 in 2004 and that includes non-gang related murders. You have no shame. The total combined children deaths a year where a firearm was involved, including being murdered by criminals that were not even allowed to own a gun legally in the first place (which is the majority) is in the low hundreds (358 in 2004). The number of …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Major Major, your obsession with Lott has rotted your brain . Not one of my figures has come from Lott and he did not conduct any of the surveys I referenced. The low estimate of 108,000 defensive gun uses a year was conducted by the United States Department of Justice........they funded another study that estimated 1,500,000 defensive gun uses a year. The 2,500,000 defensvie gun uses a year estimate came from a survey Gary Kleck, a well respected researcher for Florida State University, conducted. Gary Kleck is a card carrying member of the ACLU by the way, and a liberal too. …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

My oh my Major Major, once again you failed to double check the "facts" you copy and pasted. "The study shows that children living in the five states with the highest levels of gun ownership were 16 times more likely to die from unintentional firearm injury, seven times more likely to die from firearm suicide, and three times more likely to die from firearm homicide than children in the five states with the lowest levels of gun ownership.... ....Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and West Virginia. The five states with the lowest levels of gun ownership were: Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Oh my Major Major, you are following the persistent pattern the antis always have. They never think for themselves and they just repeat what some gun prohibition group repeated some extremely anti gun biased doctor group claims. Think for yourself and do some basic and extremely simple research on your own. For instance, your unchallenged by you link mentions himicide using guns in Jamaica in the years of 1998-2002. News flash oh unthinking one, firearms have been prohibitted in Jamaica since the 1970s and so every single person with a gun in Jamaica that is not a cop is a criminal …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Major Major said. "Stop trying to obfuscate the issue with your selective reliance on misleading statistics (check out the previous citation to Disraeli)." ....and then he goes and dumps a bunch of figures he copied and pasted directly from the anti gun VPC websight without checking on a single one to see if they are guilty of being selective and/or misleading. You talk about discreditting Lott because he supposedly used a small sampling size, and here you go repeating studies that did what you accused Lott of doing. You are either fooled, or a hypocrit thinking everyone who sees what you …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Major Major, I will tell you once again what the British have learned the hard way. The gun cannot be uninvented. Disarm the law abiding and the criminals will still have guns, but now the law abiding are defensless. To disarm law abiding minorities in the inner cities will cause more death, rape victims by armed rapists and maiming attacks by armed robbers infictied upon American minorities. Once again, the gun cannot be uninvented. It used to be zip guns and sawed off shotguns and cut down rifles, but now with the internet and/or a few entenpreneurial criminals, they will have …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Waypasthadenough, A good portion of the conservatives are also for radical control of all our lives. For instance, the right to die by euthanasia if terminally ill has been attempted to be denied on a national level by the theocons as one example. Or the continuing illegalization of personal drug use is another. In my experience it is the Libertarians that are for personal freedoms with minimal government involvment and it is the far left as well as the far right that want to impose their opinions of how we should all live by increasing government controls and power.

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Major Major......the UK. I repeat, the UK. Got it? The UK tried your experiment and it failed proving your theoretical ideas and assertions are wrong....very well proven to be wrong as a matter of fact. Can't argue with the blaringly obvious failure of incredibly higher gun crime in the UK ten years after a ban. In 1996, the year they started the handgun ban there were 200,000 legally owned handguns either destroyed or deactivated. According to studies, in 2006 there are now extimated to be from 200,000 to 2,000,000 illegally owned firearms in the UK. Remove all handguns from society and …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Major Major, you poo pooed the idea that between 108,000 and 2,500,000 times a gun is used by the law abiding in self defense. It is estimated that only about 8% of all defensive gun uses (DGU) resulted in an injury or the attacker, so for every DGU seen in the news, there are more than ten more DGUs you will most likely never see in the media. Here are a few recent DGUs: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 10/23/07 An employee of a Stone Mountain nonprofit association that helps war-torn refugees shot and killed a robber who forced his way …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

According to police reports, Lewis told police he was embalming a body when a man entered the business through a back door and demanded money. He had his face covered by a piece of white clothing, with only his eyes showing, Gault said, and white fabric wrapped around his hands. The man then told Lewis he had a gun and would kill him if he didn't give him money, Gault said. Lewis offered the man his wallet and credit cards and said he had no money, but the man demanded cash, again threatening his life, according to police reports. Lewis told …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

How many people are disarmed by the attacker and then had the gun used against them? You tell us. If you can find some examples I would like to see them because I never see them in the news.......hmm, must be another one of those gun control nut urban legends. But let's look at the numbers. There are about ten thousand murders where a gun is used a year, but between 108,000 and 2,500,000 succerssful defensive gun uses a year. Even if ALL ten thousand murders were law abiding victims that had their guns taken away and used on them, that …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

THe reason the gun control freaks are being ignored by the public these days is because the use of hysteria inducing doom and gloom scenarios and claims have eventually been shown to be false by actual results and decades of statistics. Major Major, you and people with your position are increasingly becoming the minority because anyone can google a simple fact or figure to see more lawfully owned guns did not increase the murder rate, suicide or even accidental death. http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars/ http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm The internet is your friend. Use it before you make preposterous claims that are so fricken easy to shoot …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

A famous democrat once said: "We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box."

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

waypasthadenough , Lincoln was not a socialist by any stretch of the imagination. The South's aristocracy did not call for secession from America because they did not want socialism, they did it because they were afraid slavery would be abolished. The South's soldiers were overwhelmingly fighting for their land and state and not for the preservation of slavery after the war started, but what they fought for or against had absolutely nothing at all to do with socialism. While taxes had something to do with the American revolution, it was about taxation without represntation. Jefferson even believed in taxation of the …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Some people want this elderly blind African American man to be completely defensless: . . . . . . . 12:00 am, October 27, 2007 Arthur Williams is 75 years old and blind, but still managed to shoot an intruder who broke into his southeast Gainesville home early Friday. Continue to 2nd paragraph Cevaughn Curtis Jr., 28, of Gainesville allegedly forced his way into Williams' home before being shot in the neck. Curtis was taken to Shands at the University of Florida and was listed in stable condition Friday afternoon. Curtis came to Williams' door about 3 a.m. and asked to …