Date sent: Sun, 06 Jun 1999 17:52:39 -0700 To: extropians@extropy.com From: James Rogers <jamesr@best.com> Subject: Re: Re: Fear of Guns Vs. Fear of No Guns Send reply to: extropians@extropy.com
> At 08:05 PM 6/6/99 EDT, QueeneMUSE@aol.com wrote:
> >In a message dated 6/6/99 4:00:43 PM, EVMick wrote:
> >
> >>Something to the effect that the media only reports the unusual ...if it's
> >>commonplace it isn't news so it's not reported..
> >
> >Nobody put that thing about my nephew killing a neighbor boy accidentally on
> >the news..
>
>
> Of course not. Thousands of fatal accidents happen every day, and most due
> to ignorance or carelessness. Accidentally shooting someone is a
> combination of the two and not worth reporting.
>
> *Nothing* is safe as long as ignorance and carelessness abound; fix these
> and you've solved the problem. Deaths due to pathological individuals are
> negligible when compared to deaths caused by ignorance and carelessness.
> In this light, pretending that violent individuals are a major threat in
> the bigger picture is ridiculous, particularly if you discount state
> sponsored killing. Saying that violent people having guns is a major
> contributing factor is even more ridiculous, since only a small fraction of
> murders are commited with guns in the U.S. despite cheap availability on
> the black market.
>
> Perhaps intentional gun killings are news because they are (statistically)
> an extremely unusual way to die for the average citizen. If you discount
> violent criminals killing each other (e.g. drug cartels), the odds of you
> being murdered with a gun are vanishingly small.
>
Yet one out of every five handguns purchased in the US is used in
the commission of a crime within four years of purchase...strange.
>
> -James Rogers
> jamesr@best.com
>
>
>