http://splodetv.com/more-gun-laws-more-gun-crimes

It’d also be nice to know how many murders would have been avoided had a gun not been in the house since a large portion of murders are crimes of passion between people living together.

I don’t want to outlaw private gun ownership, but I think it’s in everyone’s best interest to understand it and know about gun safety. Concealed weapon permits should be very tightly controlled.

(BTW, I grew up in a small town where a lot of people hunted deer and bear. It wasn’t at all unsual to see someone walking down the street with rifle or shotgun. Someone carrying a concealed handgun, though, would have been thought batty.)

Are you sure this figure is accurate? If you go off the usual (and quite old) 190 million firearms held by 65 million people that makes America one hell of a safe nation in terms off firearms accidents. I’m pretty sure you would find that most militaries and police forces around the world would not even be able to come close to this. Not to mention contact sports, horse riding, backyard pools, accidents around the home etc. All of these would be much worse.

If the figures are accurate, then well done America!

Even you divided that number by 10 for the entire US, 250,000 is a much larger number than 1,400. Of the 1,400 accidental deaths, how many of them were with legal guns and how many of them with illegal guns? Do you think people who own illegal weapons are as careful and as trained with their firearms as legal owners?

Making something illegal inreases the cost to the people who will flout the law, often disproportionately to the danger the law was designed to save them from. Such is the case with drugs and prostitution.

However, the 1,400 accidental gun deaths per year should give us all pause for thought. Anyone who touches a gun should know a lot about gun safety. And the NRA touting that ridiculous number of 2.5 million acts of self defense with guns shouldn’t keep being repeated.

I don’t think gun-related suicide should be a factor in gun legislation. People planning on killing themselves will find a way to do it, regardless. Unless you want to legislate against razors (then we WOULD be like Europe, pew!) and tall buildings.

I was curious about such a high number and it seems rightly so:

“If the [2.5 million times and similar] numbers are in the right ballpark, millions of attempted assaults, thefts, and break-ins were foiled by armed citizens during the 12-month period. According to these results, guns are used far more often to defend against crime than to perpetrate crime. (Firearms were used by perpetrators in 1.07 million incidents of violent crime in 1994, according to NCVS data.)”

and

“For example, in only a small fraction of rape and robbery attempts do victims use guns in self-defense. It does not make sense, then, that the NSPOF estimate of the number of rapes in which a woman defended herself with a gun was more than the total number of rapes estimated from NCVS (exhibit 8).”

From the same paper:

“Of 1,356 accidental deaths by gunshot in 1994, 185 involved children 14 years old and younger.[11] For each such fatality, there are several accidental shootings that cause serious injury. Guns were also the means of destruction in 19,590 suicides, 210 involving children 14 or younger.”