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Life expectancy at ages 20 and up haven't changed all that much...

It's interesting that [the rate of cancer] started to decline in 1991. I wonder what happened then???

A number of things. One of the more interesting here in the US was the ban on EDB (ethylene dibromide) back in 1983. This was a bit of a political fuss at the time, with farmers and commentators using the argument that "scientists hadn't been able to measure the danger" of this compound.

This has turned into a useful textbook example of "spin". I heard an article from NPR (National Public Radio) in which they talked about being curious about the claim, so they tracked down some of the scientists who had attempted to do such measurements. It turned out that they had done the usual tests to measure the concentration that killed 50% of their test animals. They failed. At one part per trillion, the lowest level that they could reliably produce, they lost nearly 100% of the animals. Autopsies showed that the critters died of multiple cancers. They commented that EDB was possibly the most powerful carcinogen yet discovered.

This wasn't exactly new news in 1983. Information on the biological efects of EDB date back to the early 1950's. There's a report online from 1974 that was obviously a preliminary study, of only 93 rats and 94 mice, some treated for only 12 days. The death rate of around 80% in this tiny study was a red flag that triggered further studies. It took another decade before a ban went into effect.

The farmers (or at least the farm-supply companies) really wanted to continue using EDB. Their PR depended on the fact that people would hear "scientists have been unable to measure the danger level" as meaning "EDB is so safe that ...", when the proper interpretation was "EDB is so dangerous that ...".

Decreasing this one compound in our food supply could well explain the slight decrease in overall cancer rate in the past decade. EDB is rather persistent in the environment, and underground water in a lot of farming areas was contaminated with it. But by the 90's, the concentration was starting to drop, and it's believed to be much lower now.

This story seems to be known in medical and statistical circles. It's generally unknown to the public. I never heard any hint of this part of the story from the mass media, where the story was generally presented as "controversial". The right-wing talk-radio types really publicised this as an example of heavy-handed government over-regulation of The Market. I've wondered occasionally whether the growing rabidity of their opposition to NPR had anything to do with stories like this.

Anyway, if you want a good example of how you can phrase things so that people make exactly the wrong inference, you might remember "scientists have been unable to measure the danger level".

This may not fit the example of SARS, but diploid viruses like HIV can recombine with other strains in vivo.

I bet there will turn out to be other totally epigenetic mechanisms for a virus to be changed by the vector it travels though as well.

Is this a joke? These are the worst "arguments" (if you can call them that against gay marriage I've heard yet.

- The primary purpose of a marriage is to grant legal status to a man and a woman for the purpose of raising a family. Same sexed couples cannot have children on their own, therefore they should not have be entitled to the protections of marriage.

First of all, same-sexed couples CAN adopt kids and raise a family. Many mixed-sex couples CANNOT have kids due to sterility or do NOT WANT kids. Moreover, many same-sexed couples already HAVE kids from previous relationships. Are you sanctioning gay marriage where one couple already has a child? Are you against hetero marriages where one or both couples are sterile or too old to raise children?

This argument is completely without merit.

- Marriage is 'special'. Places that have allowed same sexed marriages have seen increased divorce and infidelity. Same sexed marriage takes away the 'specialness' of marriage.

I'm not sure what "special" means, but you offer no statistics as far as divorce and infidelity. According to the Center for Disease Control, about 43 percent of straight marriages end in divorce. (further discusson here. Regardless of whether this percentage is higher or lower in gay couples, what relevence does this have? Do you want to ban all marriage because they have a high chance for failure? "Specialness" is not an argument.

- Marriage is not a right, it is, at best, a tradition or custom. Marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman.

Big whup. Slavery was also tradition and custom for the early part of our country's history, and not many people still argue for it. In case you hadn't noticed, traditions and customs tend to change over time.

As far as your "definition"-- defined by whom? The whole debate is about what the word "marriage" can encompass, so using your conclusion ("it's not for gay people") as the premise for your argument is ridiculous. I will argue back, "Marriage is defined as a union between two people who love each other, regardless of their gender". Hence, you are wrong.

The doctor laughed her off and used conventional blood, and the woman got infected with HIV

Can you provide some documentation for this anecdote? In the United States, the blood supply has been screened for HIV since 1985 and I assume all other 1st world countries have done the same. The risk of contracting HIV from a blood transfusion is about 1 in 90,000. With 4,000,000 transfusion recipients a year, there have probably been fewer than 1000 cases of HIV contracted through blood transfusions in the United States in the past 18 years.

~Philllip

If you live in a country where 30% of the country is infected with AIDS, the fact that the disease is preventable is not going to do you a whole heck of a lot of good.

There are towns of children because all the adults have died, there are countries that can not produce food because everyone is either sick or caring for the dying. These people need help. Even far right Senator Jesse Helms agrees.

That said, I don't know why NASA is the agency we have to cut.

If you live in a country where 30% of the country is infected with AIDS, the fact that the disease is preventable is not going to do you a whole heck of a lot of good.

There are towns of children because all the adults have died, there are countries that can not produce food because everyone is either sick or caring for the dying. These people need help. Even far right Senator Jesse Helms agrees.

That said, I don't know why NASA is the agency we have to cut.

Many more young people than you might think have cancer, and it's typically not due to HIV. I've had the unfortunate experience of visiting my 20-something brother in the cancer ward (he got better, thankfully) and there was a surprisingly large fraction of people there who had cancer and were 30 or younger. At a page at the CDC, I found in the Summary Health Statistics for U.S. Adults, 1999, table 5 (don't download--8 MB!) that the percent of cancer among adults age 18-44 is a whopping 1.9%, far more than at that age who have HIV. For comparison, the other age brackets: 45-64 7.9%, 65-74 17.4%, 75+ 22%. That's for cancer of some kind, but some kinds of cancer strike primarily at specific age groups. My brother's Hodgkin's disease, a lymphoma, typically strikes men in their mid to late twenties. Leukemia also frequently strikes the young, for example the incidence of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL) is 10 times greater for the 1-4 years old bracket than the for those in their early 20's. The point being cancer's not just for the very old, or rather that some cancers aren't.

3 quick ways to reduce oil consumption:

1. Get everyone to drive at or below the speed limit, instead of well over it.
2. Stop producing mini-tank SUVs like the one Arnold "The Gropenator" Schwartzenegger drives.
3. Encourage people to walk more (with the added benefit of reducing obesity, - 2/3 of all americans are overweight Centers for disease control)

Did you know that around 2,000 American's die EVERY DAY from heart disease?

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/heart.htm

The median height for American white males is 69"(5'9") while 72"(6'0") is the 75th percentile. (NHANES III 1988-94)

Recent Presidents' heights:

G.W.Bush: 6' 0"
Clinton: 6' 2-1/2"
G.H.Bush: 6' 2"
Reagan : 6' 1"
Carter: 5' 9-1/2"
Ford: 6' 0"
Nixon: 6' 0"
Johnson: 6' 3"
Kennedy: 6' 0"

8 of the last 9 above the 75th percentile not even accounting for lower heights in the past.

Yuppers, over 60% of Americans are overweight or obese according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention!

If you don't believe me feel free to check for yourself.

Actually it's the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

about .31% of the US population is HIV positive.
about .66% of the Earth's population is HIV positive.

This disease has not been around very long, and is quickly approaching 1 out of every 100 people having it. While some of your points are valid, your seeming callousness is alarming and somewhat disturbing. After all, the post you so articulately derided was only quoting a Saturday Night Live character. I tend to agree with that post's general sentiment that a study on how cookies crumble is somewhat frivolous. Especially when my Grandma has been making sturdy, delicious cookies for 70 years.

Information comes from here, here, and here.

Actually, you have a good point. There is a problem currently with doctors not sanitizing enough in hospitals. Of all the people I've known who have had surgery, a large percent of them have developed some kind of infection like staph.

This website discusses how common the infection may really be. The bacteria is often best spread through contaminated instruments during things like surgery.

NIH Statistics

New Infections
70% Men, 15% contracted from heterosexual conduct = 10.5% total population
30% Women, 75% contracted from heterosexual conduct = 22.5% total population

For a grand total of 33%, or fully one-third of new HIV/AIDS cases in America. Since there are anywhere between 10 and 20 times as many heterosexuals than homosexuals in America, odds are that the more and more heterosexual people are going to be getting HIV before things get any better.

If I read the statistics that you are using correctly, they are cumulative. In that case, your results are numerically correct, but misleading. According to the this page you get your numbers from, more than half of those people are dead. This is repeated in the page where I got my data. This means that new infections are going to considerably skew the dataset of living people with HIV/AIDS.

Your data falls prey to a different problem, also related to the fact that the numbers you use are cumulative: The disease was indeed, at first, being solely contracted by gay men and IV drug users. They had quite a head start, as it were. Any deviation towards a statistic on par with the population distribution of America would take a while. Again, going by new infections alleviates this problem.

I particuarily love this gem (emphasis mine, some removed from original):
I said, and I still do, that people with AIDS, AND people who admitted to gay sex and/or IV drug use would simply be excluded from this program as they are from current organ, blood, plasma, and bone-marrow donor programs.

I can see your point for drug users, since they aren't born drug users, though I certainly disagree they should be banned from recieving organs. However, your banning of gay men from the program is ridiculous. Under your system, a man who is born gay should:
A) Choose to remain celibate their entire life, so that in the event that they need an organ, they can be saved
B) Live normally, and hope they never need an organ, because gay people don't deserve those organs, because they engage in high-risk behaviors.

Don't 'cha love that game? Low risk, but infinite stakes.

Let's look at how many gay men there are in America. Estimates range from 5 to 10%. Let's go with the 10, for the purpose of arguement. There are roughly 292,000,000 people in America according to the US census, so about 29,200,000 gay people. Divide by 2, since gender is pretty well 50/50. 14,600,000 gay men. Let's also assume that everyone is as likely to die of AIDS once they get it. 42.6% of the patients are alive, so there are around 368,971 *.426 = 157,434 gay men with AIDS. That means that 157,434/14,600,000 = 1% of gay men have AIDS.

So you're proposing that all gay men be barred from recieving organs on the basis that 1 out of every 100 might have AIDS, and therefore be ineligible to donate an organ?

Hey, I hear that there are over 2 million people in prison (roughly .7% of the population)... does that mean that we should all be in prison?

I'm sorry, were we talking about sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world where organ transplants are pure fantasy and I failed to notice? You have my apologies. See, more than 20.8 million of those cases you cite are down there where the men think condoms are evil, raping virgins cures AIDS, and any kind of vaginal lubrication whatsoever spoils the wonderful dry sex feel. Almost as good for tearing tissue as anal sex. Or a needle.

Oh and, no, you're right, I did not cite sources. I thought my casual remark reflected pretty general knowledge. But I can, and I will. (And, ironically, you cited one for me. See below.)

Only 860,000 AIDS cases (adults and children) were in the US in 1997 when the world total was about 31 million (it's 42 million in your reference), feel free to scale up if you like, but the point remains that AIDS populations in the 3rd world are vastly different than in industrialized nations. BTW, those international numbers seem suspect, especially since they don't give any info on how this "estimation" takes place in places where you can't even get AIDS drugs in without them being stolen and sold at a profit in Europe. Note that there are many pages on who.org and who.int that do explain the estimation procedure for the US, such as the one I mentioned, but the point is we're not talking about world AIDS, we're talking about AIDS in places where organs are transplanted with some reasonable level of frequency, so we'll use your own referenced site, but a different table on the page to see what we can learn about how people get AIDS. OK?

CATEGORY MEN WOMEN TOTAL*
Men who have sex with men 368,971 - 368,971
Injecting Drug Use 145,750 55,576 201,326
Men who have sex with men and inject drugs 51,293 - 51,293
Hemophilia/coagulation disorder 5,000 292 5,292
Heterosexual contact 32,735 57,396 90,131 (riight)
Recipient of blood transfusion, blood components, or tissue 5,057 3,914 8,971
Risk not reported or identified 57,220 23,870 81,091

(Hilariously, the * is marked on TOTAL with this note below the table: Includes 3 persons whose sex is inknown. (sic) Inknown? That crazy W.H.O.!)

Now, let's take what we learned from the table above, which comes from your own referenced source page, and get back to the thing that really irritated you: my claim that most people get HIV/AIDS from gay sex or IV drug use. Now, keep in mind that we only have the sufferers's words to go on, and I'm guessing some people with AIDS/HIV will lie about how they might have caught it either way for whatever reason. I'm pretty sure that more lie by saying they had no gay sex or IV drug use than the other way around, but let's ignore that and accept the word of the sufferers at face value.

So, we'll include the women too (to your advantage, since they can't have gay sex with men), and see that of the nice 800k sample size there, the WHO chart above, your reference now, tells us that 77% of the AIDS/HIV cases are from admitted gay male sex0rs and/or IV drug users. I'm so sorry for assuming AIDS was mostly associated with these behaviors. Why, it's only 77%.

Moreover, IMHO you can throw in the 10% where "no risk was reported" and get it up to a cool 87% without any serious fight from anyone. I'd also bet some fraction of the 2% claiming medical (transfusion or hemo disorder) and the 11% calling straight-sex only are being less-than-honest to save the family some misery, but let's leave them alone. According to your W.H.O. source, 77-87% of everyone with AIDS reported that they had gay male sex, used IV drugs, or both, or refused to comment.

Finally, because I want to be done with you and cease this

To bad i couldn't find a joke to insert but ... There's currently a true tick-plague going on in almost the whole of eastern europe. People you'd better get that vacination now since it takes about three weeks to kick in. Pluspoint is the ticks concerned are not spreading the dreaded Lyme's Disease but merely Tickborne Encephalitis. English Health Information here Dutch Health Information here

Yep, it's V=IR The current (I) is dependent on the resistance (R) and the voltage (V). If your body has a healthy resistance (which it does to my knowledge) then you will not get electricuted unless you pump up the voltage.

I read in another comment that 50mA will kill you thus: V = IR
120 = 0.05R
R = 2400 Ohms

According to this site: Under dry conditions, the resistance offered by the human body may be as high as 100,000 Ohms

So you should be ok most of the time. Us in Europe with our 240V AC supplies have to offer more resistance, 4800 Ohms, although since in Britain we have earthing on all powered devices, elecution is far less likely.

People who get eletricuted must have less than 2400 Ohms resistance then - presumably - unless I've missed out some important theory..

Take a look. Also, keep in mind that most people that get west nile don't know they're sick, and we still only have a death rate in diagnosed cases of about 7.5%. On a more sensationalist note, about as many people died in 9/11 as were diagnosed with West Nile in all of 2002, and even then, less than 300 died, out of about 300 million people. The flu(!) kills about 36000 per year in the US. It's going to be another 20 years or so before I worry about West Nile, and I'm paranoid ;)

Take a look. Also, keep in mind that most people that get west nile don't know they're sick, and we still only have a death rate in diagnosed cases of about 7.5%. On a more sensationalist note, about as many people died in 9/11 as were diagnosed with West Nile in all of 2002, and even then, less than 300 died, out of about 300 million people. The flu(!) kills about 36000 per year in the US. It's going to be another 20 years or so before I worry about West Nile, and I'm paranoid ;)

Take a look. Also, keep in mind that most people that get west nile don't know they're sick, and we still only have a death rate in diagnosed cases of about 7.5%. On a more sensationalist note, about as many people died in 9/11 as were diagnosed with West Nile in all of 2002, and even then, less than 300 died, out of about 300 million people. The flu(!) kills about 36000 per year in the US. It's going to be another 20 years or so before I worry about West Nile, and I'm paranoid ;)

... can the mosquitoes infect you with the West Nile Virus? ;)

They use carbon dioxide now.

Methylene chloride is used as an industrial solvent and as a paint stripper.

Wow, had it not been for the link inside that article I wouldn't have known SARS had hit the US at all (sarcasm). 404 total cases (insert joke here). The media has suppressed all information about any US-based cases - even Google news can't find a single story about US infections. Impressive censorship for a free country.

Of course by now we all know SARS only active when it's cold, so this coming winter should be interesting... but meanwhile dozens of stories are running about SARS being wiped out completely.

Your skin is a reasonably good insulator, so this requires a high voltage (NOT CURRENT!) ... 50v isn't enough, and even 100 volts is rarely enough. Given enough voltage, this only requires a small fraction of an amp.

A stun gun may produce 100,000 volts, but it only creates a few miliamps at most, so it will wake you up, but it doesn't stop your heart.

Read that page I mentioned. It's *very* interesting. (It also mentions that voltages as low as 49 volts have caused people to stop breathing. Note that 49 volts is higher than these new batteries provide, and I doubt it actually killed the person, only stopped their breathing for a bit. Of course, if the 49 volts continued to flow for many minutes, it could kill ...)

Are the Centers For Disease Control And Prevention reliable enough?

'jfb

Also, calling anything based on the vaccinia virus "safe" in such a blanket fashion is vast overkill. Unlike most vaccines, vaccinia-based ones are live virus and cause severe complications if they get into the bloodstream--rather like the difference between cutaneous anthrax and pulmonary anthrax. Check out the CDC for just how nasty vaccinia can get if it escapes the vaccination site.

I have friends who bought a "vacation" home in Death Valley, CA [actually it's just a party house for a bunch of vector ecologists and related people] and it used to be overrun with rodents. Nervous about Hantavirus see here [note also has a few good links to help you out on your quest] they tried one out, one of the middle priced ones I believe, and it works great. One of their neighbors doesn't use one and he gets drowned rats and mice in his toilet all the time. As one of the above posts mentions eliminate the point of entry and you are halfway there.

HIV can't be transmitted through mouth to mouth contact, especially not during CPR where you're *blowing* into the other person's lungs. (Shoving your tongue down someone's throat may be slightly riskier, but how often do you ask the girl at the bar if she's been tested?)

linkage

Okay idea; bad example. It is estimated by various* sources* that the annual death toll due to smoking in the United States is on the order of half a million per year.

The CDC estimates that of the six hundred thousand cancer deaths per year in the United States, one third are the direct result of cigarette smoking, costing $60 billion per year in direct health costs and loss of productivity.

How about a "war on smoking"? Tobacco use costs the United States almost as much each year as invading Iraq did--if we only count the costs of cancer care. You want to protect American lives? How about a Tomahawk or two for Philip Morris?

*PDF links.

Because when some script kiddie roots your webserver, nobody dies. Comparing automobiles (which are, according the National Center for Health Statistics, were the fifth leading cause of death for Americans) with Microsoft software (which has yet to cause a single fatality) is a spurious analogy.

No matter how much some people wish it were otherwise, in the grand scheme of things, software is pretty inconsequential. Should software companies be immune from product liability? No, but neither should they be held to the same standard as people who have human lives riding on their products.

You get 50 times as much radiation from background sources like the sun, the earth (plants & minerals),etc. than from any man-made source like consumer electronics.

But don't take my word for it, read the CDC study.

Infectious Disease

In Toronto, huh? Enjoy your high-speed internet connection while you can!

Here is an excellent read on type one diabetes and stem cell research, and a comment on why study sjogren's in conjunction with diabetes (namely, the organ being damaged is much easier to get at and assess.)

Here is a great site for info- the CDC genomics site, which includes info on common and rare genetic diseases, and can give a greater array of background info. NCBI offers another set of info- an explanation of human mouse homology (thus answering the question... why mice?

I hope this helps put some extra info out there for those of you who are interested. And frankly, as one who has had to deal with the sudden "switching on" of not just one but a whole array of diseases- since my DNA happened to include the lucky strands- I'm now having my stance on animal testing completely revised...

That was totally outrageous.

The reason the government doesn't like phrases like "sex workers", "anal sex" and "men who sleep with men" is because they indicate that AIDS discriminates, which is not what the government would like you to believe.

No, the government thinks those phrases look bad on a list of official government-funded projects. That's the obvious explanation, but I guess it doesn't play into your political view of the issue.

If people stopped doing the things that spread AIDS (it's not exactly airborne), it would eventually go away.

Yes, but what are the things that spread AIDS? Other posters have pointed out that blood transfusions and childbirth spread AIDS. It's also spread by sex. That includes non-anal heterosexual sex with a non-prostitute. If you're married and have 2.5 kids, you've done something that spreads AIDS. There are wives who have gotten AIDS from their husband and children who have gotten it from their mother. I'm sure they'd love to hear a little sermon from you about personal responsibility.

Of course, some activities are riskier than others, but we could never starve the disease of victims without killing off the human race.

Consequently, politicians and activist groups would lose a manipulation tool to siphon tax dollars away from issues that are a lot less preventable and affect more people.

You've just accused a whole lot of people of hiding the facts on a fatal disease in exchange for money. Why don't you type "AIDS" into Google and see what these people are actually saying?

Since you're a fan of common sense, consider this: If the government wanted to hide the fact that certain groups are at higher risk, they would reject requests to study those groups, regardless of the wording.

Quarantine, in contrast, applies to people who have been exposed and may be infected but are not yet ill. Separating exposed people and restricting their movements is intended to stop the spread of that illness. Quarantine is medically very effective in protecting the public from disease.

2 deaths per thousand cases does not make 4%. It makes 0.2%. That's a very different number. You're pretty silly to be correcting someone when you're willing to take one person's blind assertion over another's without any validation.

Another SARS claim predicting SARS is a pandemic, will start trading this evening.

Perhaps because Measles has a mortality rate of only about 0.2%? CDC Reference. There is also a vaccine for measles (which I'm sure contributes to the mortality rate listed on that page)

With SARS we're also dealing with something we don't entirely understand yet. I'm personally impressed with how serious it's being treated. If anything, it helps us practice in case of a more significant situation.

Better safe than sorry, you know?

And the 4% mortality rate is probably inflated from the true mortality rate given modern medicine: the majority of the deaths occurred in the rural Chinese province from which the bug first emerged. For the life of me I can't figure out why everyone worldwide is so concerned about SARS.

That said, the CDC is doing a tremendous job of keeping the public informed about the state of the art where SARS is concerned.
-j

About ten years ago, I was doing some statistical investigations of the incidence of homicides in urban centers. I came across some discrepancies between the reports from the Bureau of Justice Statistics ("BJS"), the database referred to in the parent of this post, and the National Center for Health Statistics ("NCHS"). Homicides are reported both by administrative arms of the courts and law enforcement, and by county and state pathologists, although using different reporting channels. In theory, they should agree. There are really no different standards used in one versus another, since pathologists determine cause of death.

I was startled to see significant discrepancies. Indeed, when I looked into the matter further, I found there had been entire research papers written on the subject. (Don't have time to find those now, but those interested can e-mail me.) Further study indicated I needed to know something about how BJS obtained their numbers, so I called BJS.

I spoke to a representative there for a long time. Now, this charcterization is, as I said, ten years old, and perhaps it has improved. But the rep said contribution of numbers and classification of crime incidents were voluntary programs from state and county authorities. In contrast, y'see, reporting from pathologists is mandatory and they are audited for accuracy. No such auditing is done for BJS or states or counties. When I asked why, the rep said that they needed to cooperate with local law authorities on a wide range of programs involving enforcement and otherwise, and they did not want to alienate them.

So, at least as of ten years ago, if a local sherriff or state wanted to make their official track record look better, they could "administratively misclassify" a set of crimes and there is no mechanism for finding them out. It is only detectable in the case of homicide because both BJS and NCHS have the same events recorded in their databases.

*sigh* for sure.(:-(}

US Center for Disease Control


World Health Organization (United Nations)

Hmmm, guess governments do something useful after all.

I keep thinking Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). With the topic being spam, it would make sense.

This is not particularly surprising: viruses in that family cause a lot of "common colds" and other URIs (among them, parainfluenza is in that family). See here and here.

How many people die from guns each year

Well, for the year two thousand, it was 28,663 deaths.

776 were accidental. This is entirely dwarfed by the 97,124 total accidental deaths that were not firearms related, and by the 3,482 accidental deaths by drowning, and the 13,322 accidental deaths by fall.

10,801 were homicides. For comparison, there were 5,964 homicides that were committed without a firearm. Also, 'homicide' includes justifiable homicide, the stats page I'm looking things up at doesn't let you split them apart. Some percentage of the perpertator of homicides that were not justifiable, would have found a different means to kill the intended victim.

16,586 were suicides, some percentage of which would have probably found a different way to kill themselves. In fact, 12,764 people did manage to kill themselves without a firearm, and I find it ludicrous the notion that the ones that did used firearms would have been entirely prevented if no firearms were available, considering that almost half the suicides were without a firearm.

226 were 'Legal Intervention', which does not include justifiable homicide, but is only 'legal executions and deaths caused by law officers in the line of duty.'

If you'd gladly wave your right to bear arms, move to a different country. Say, England, where the crime rate has been rising since the firearm ban, and they're now banning pellet and BB guns as though that would help.

If your motivation is to save lives, you've also got to consider the lives you'll take by removing the ability of people to own a firearm. Firearms are equalizers, a 210 pound man attempting to rape a 120 pound woman isn't going to get to use his size advantage if she's packing, a young man attempting to rob an elderly man is going to have a rough time as well, if the elderly man has a gun.

I'm not a 'selfish jerk that thinks it's cool to own a Glock'. I'm the 'selfish jerk' that will have the means to defend my family should a criminal attack them. You can call 911 and wait for the cops to show up, with no effective means to stop the criminal from hurting you, if you'd like, especially since the police are under no obligation to protect you; You are responsible for your own protection. I am responsible for mine, my wife will be calling 911 while I'm shooting the bastard, if I have to shoot him (If he decides to bug out, he'll have the chance to exit unharmed - It'll be his decision at that point).

Making guns illegal will not remove guns from the hands of criminals, it will only remove them from the hands of law-abiding citizens, leaving them less able to defend themselves when the criminals, who will have guns regardless of their legality, attempt to take advantage of them.

Statistically, half of the households in the United States own a firearm. If firearms are the huge problem that the anti-gun organizations would have you believe, we'd all be dead already. Also, I find it somewhat interesting that HCI (Now the Brady Campaign) was apparently founded by a man who allegedly kept two handguns buried in his back yard, and owned a rifle as well (no it was not founded by Sara Brady)

Hit reply on the wrong post. :/ By the way, in 2000 in the USA more people were killed by cars than guns. See for yourself.

No it wouldn't. In 2000 in the USA more people were killed by cars than guns. See for yourself.

xant, this post is not necessarily aimed entirely at you, I have no idea if you have a swimming pool ... your post just happened to be the one that made me want to post.

Do you realize how few children actually accidentally shoot themselves?

http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10.html

Check unintentional under 1.
Check 'firearm' under 2.
Select custom age range, put seventy million children were accidentally killed with firearms.

For 2000, the number is 150.

Each one of those deaths was tragic, true, but children killing themselves with guns is not the huge problem the anti-gun groups would have you believe it to be.

In fact, in 1999, one thousand one hundred twenty seven children accidentally drowned - Almost ten times the number of accidental firearms deaths for the same age range.

If you teach your children the dangers of firearms, the chances of them being involved in an accident will be reduced, whether you own a firearm or not.

If my guns are not under my immediate control, they are locked up in the safe. My kids will be taught gun safety as soon as they're old enough to understand.

Does your swimming pool have a cover?