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Total expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools in the United States in 2013â"14 amounted to $634 billion, or $12,509 per public school student enrolled in the fall (in constant 2015â"16 dollars).

(Discrepancy with the OECD stats is due to being from different years, and the OECD stats including post-secondary non-tertiary education, while the NCES stats are for only K-12).

Spending per student has about doubled in inflation-adjusted dollars over the last 40 years. and tripled since the 1960s. It peaked around 2007, and the people trying to get even more money put into education have been abusing that by using 2007 as the start of their spending graphs.

Where is all the money going? I don't have time to find it again, but the Education Department's own stats are contradictory. If you take the amount of spending it lists in teacher non-salary benefits, and divide it by the number of teachers they give, it ends up something like $50k/yr per teacher. What's going on is the number of non-teaching administrators has exploded since 1970, far outpacing the growth in number of students. These administrators have been hiding it by shifting some of their salary expenses into those of teachers in the stats. Every time education receives a spending increase, the administrators sop up most of it and let only a trickle get through to teachers. Every time education receives a spending cut, these administrators pass it all on directly to the teachers and students, while protecting their own jobs and salaries. As a result, the teachers are constantly complaining of not having enough money despite the huge increases in education spending over the decades.

OK, humoring you for a moment... name ONE credible conservative fact-checking site. Seriously. Just one.

Does Just Facts count? They're a little different than the sites listed in TFS, but they're conservative and typically accurate.

My wild-ass-guess is that everything we buy costs at least double due to taxes all along the way that accumulate.

That would be true with a straight revenue tax but almost nobody does that. Let's say you charge a 20% tax rate. That's not 20% of the ore that's 20% of profit on the ore. So if your margin is 5% on mineral extraction your effective tax on the ore is actually 1%. Add up say 20 steps and that's only 20% not 50%. That's where your logic fails. The next place to do a quick sniff test on your assumption is total taxes / GDP. Thankfully someone has already done that.

http://www.justfacts.com/image...

It's around 25% of GDP. So about 33% of the price of goods and services is tax. But that's the maximum not the minimum. A lot states like mine charge a 10% sales tax. So you can't double count that tax. It would be 15% of GDP or about 17% more expensive.

Why is it that animals have lived on this planet for BILLIONS of years without any money yet MAN is the ONLY STUPID creature who hasn't figured out how to do this yet???

Robbing Paul to pay Peter is a shitty way to run the country, and not sustainable. Instead of **wasting** money on killing other people -- which solves NOTHING in the long run, we should be educating our selves and our children. When we prioritize genocide it shows us what we value -- not investing in ourselves.

We have two choices:

* Direct Tax, aka, the Gasoline Tax
* Voluntarily

It people are unwilling to help out their fellow man, voluntarily, then they don't _deserve_ any of those things. Your society is already a morally bankrupt one -- adding laws won't fix that. Sustaining it will just be a footnote in history.

The fundamental problem is this:

We don't have a income problem, we have a spending problem.

Trying to enforce morality, by forcing a Socialist Slave Number on everyone, just doesn't work long term. The economic collapse of 1935 was socially engineered to make everyone an economic slave. Are people taught to save for themselves? No, they would rather suck the teet of the government "hoping" that someone else will provide for them.

Guess what? Social Security will be BANKRUPT in 2033.

Hell, The Treasury in 2013 owes $2.8 trillion to the "Social Security Trust Fund"

> First prove how society wouldn't fall apart by eliminating taxes.

The fact that other advanced civilizations do it proves that money isn't needed. It is only man in his immature greed and myopic stupidity that won't allow it.

The whole country is bankrupt, being help up by wishful thinking.
One day the house of cards is going to collapse.

This is why First Contact in 2024 is such as game changer -- to help us look beyond our petty, myopic problems and gain a cosmic perspective. God help us all until then if Korea doesn't nuke somebody.

You're missing the point. Bad guys (ie gang members, drug dealers, etc) will do what they want no matter what the law says. Take Chicago for example. Until very recently (last year) Illinois had NO carry program meaning it was impossible to legally carry a gun unless you were LE. We all know about all the crime problems Chicago has. The bad guys (gang members, drug dealers, etc) would carry anyway and not only that they would commit crimes too (armed robbery, murder, etc). So the fact that there's laws against carry and in Chicago's case even possession (ie you can have a gun but it must stay locked up at home) didn't stop all the violence there. Now, Illinois was told by the courts that they had to institute a carry program (along with DC). Now we've seen stories like this stating that Chicago's crime rates are starting to drop. It could be a coincidence but I doubt it. Now, carry permit holders are some of if not the most law abiding group/demographic nationwide. Crimeresearch Stats (PDF warning) JustFacts Those are just a few sources from a quick search. As far as anecdotal evidence goes, I remember when Minnesota was debating the passage of the carry law there (I live in MN). There was no shortage of people saying that it was going to be the wild west, normal arguments would turn deadly, there would be bar fights with guns, and that road rage incidents would end in shootings. That has not happened. There's only been a few incidents and MN has more carry permit holders by percentage than Texas (3% TX vs 3.3% MN, my own calculations). Minnesota Carry Permit Holder Crime Stats I'm sorry, but carry permit holders are law abiding citizens. Add to all the supporting evidence the supreme court cases (Heller, McDonald, etc) where the court affirmed the 2nd amendment and it's pretty clear that carry is safe, effective, and legal.

And, in the decades since England banned guns, violent crime has gotten much worse. Did banning guns lead to increased crime? Can't say because correlation does not prove causation. But definitely we can't say that banning guns made England less violent.

I was curious about this so checked out the homicide rates.

First hit was a pro-gun site with a really damning looking set of graphs. Knowing how easy it is to play with numbers I dug a little deeper.

This site looks a little more unbiased. Long story short the homicide rate had been increasing for decades, after guns were banned the rate continued to increase. Maybe the increase is slowing down but there's too much noise in the data.

We look forward to you sharing your "evidence", thanks.

I tend to ignore people who can't be bothered to use google on their own, and instead ask for everything to be handed to them...

We're talking about half a century of gun control laws and increasing crime rates. There's no single link to ALL that information.

There's a few quick ones:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/02/21/disarming-the-myths-promoted-by-the-gun-control-lobby/2/

http://people.duke.edu/~gnsmith/articles/myths.htm (See #10)

http://www.liveandlocalenc.com/proof-gun-control-increases-crime/

http://archive.lewrockwell.com/orig7/lemieux1.html

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/22/do-strict-gun-laws-really-stop-gun-crime/

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp#right-to-carry

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/weekinreview/29liptak.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2013/02/04/gun-crimes-increase-massachusetts-despite-tough-gun-laws/XjlDQLZlUDvsf3KS8PqyGK/story.html

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2010/06/25/stossel-argues-gun-control-increases-crime-i-was-once-clueless-senator-schumer

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/02/17/the-nation-toughest-gun-control-law-made-massachusetts-less-safe/3845k7xHzkwTrBWy4KpkEM/story.html

You want science, I can't supply that. I can only show the empirical evidence. Not one city can show a decline in crime in general, or violent crime specifically, as a result of passing gun control laws or ordinances. Not one. Various cities and states do, however, have statistics that violent crime decreased, along with crime in general, after relaxing gun control laws.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/02/17/the-nation-toughest-gun-control-law-made-massachusetts-less-safe/3845k7xHzkwTrBWy4KpkEM/story.html

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/24/states-crime-rates-show-scant-linkage-to-gun-laws/?page=all

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt1Zy_ASNyA "I think that's just an invitation to somebody with a gun!"

There is no science that I'm aware of that explains it - but it is obvious that gun control laws FAIL TO GIVE THE DESIRED RESULTS!!

No, the problem pretty much is guns. There are more guns than citizens in the US; it's the fucking supply of guns and the easy access to them that is the problem, not the culture that glorifies them. I can buy a gun legally 24/7 in my state without ever disclosing my identity to the seller, and pretty soon I'll be able to print a durable, functional version of my beloved Mac 10. Until the gun-show and private-sale loopholes in gun laws are closed, and 3D-printing gets the draconian regulation it needs, easy access to guns is what you need to be worrying about. The existing supply of guns in the US is enough to meet any foreseeable demand for them in our violence-saturated culture, even if Glock, Beretta, Sig, and S&W go out of business tomorrow.

A measly Trillion dollars for removing Saddam, fighting and defeating Al Qaeda branches in Iraq and Afghanistan, kicking out the Pakistani puppet Taliban, installing some loss-hostile regimes, scaring Gaddafi into giving up his WMD, killing bin Laden himself, and *best of all* turning much of the Muslim world from cheering 9/11 into realising that jihadis are also as hazardous for their health as ours. Then there was employment for a million US servicemen for over a decade. Then there was the huge technology spin offs that keep US companies in the forefront of innovation and keep talented US citizens employed.

These days the US will spend a little less on defense but has reduced influence because of its increasingly introspective geopolitical strategy (set by the politicians, not the military). Rather than supporting allows it sells them out (eg. Poland and Romainia on missile defence), and arms jihadis hoping to curry influence (Libya, Syria), refuses to listen to please for liberty (Iran 2009), and sells out its own values (apologizing shamefully in Cairo in 2009; Hiliary Clinton disgracefully working against the 1st Amendment rights of US citizens in UN HRC Resolution 18/18).

The Trillion dollars on wars that made not only the US but the whole world safer (imagine the chaos of the world at the moment if the jihadis had not been drawn and destroyed to the honeypot in Iraq - and don't be fooled by pop analysis, Iraq created far fewer jihadis than it destroyed).

Instead, the new leftist Administration is planning to spend 60 trillion in unfunded entitlements. Please see *the numerical facts*
http://www.justfacts.com/nationaldebt.asp

So for those around the world who believe the lie that the US is bankrupting itself because of the wars it waged I would like you to examine the *figures* closely. The US military is not the source of the problem. The source of the problem are social programmes. These are large bribes made by politicians to get votes. Mostly made by the Democratic Party. The transfer of wealth from the productive sector of the US economy to the non-productive is what allows for wealth distribution and social programmes. So of this is necessary. However, the promises made far exceed the ability of those in the US who work and pay taxes (government employment is a non-contributor to this, sorry). This is what some Republicans and all Libertarians have been saying for years. Some think the conservatives are against social programmes because they are "mean, greedy old white men". No, the truth is the conservatives are numbers based (rather than primarily ideologically based like progressives/Democrats). That means the conservatives have been trying to stave off that bankruptcy. The Obama Administration has been accelerating spending far beyond what was needed for the bailout of the great recession. From a conservative point of view it looks like Obama is trying to crash the economy so that the US can be made in the image he wants (no surprise if you know who Obama's Marxist political mentors were).

So, the whole "expensive wars" and "cut the military and increase social programmes" is a diversion to keep those who are not numerically and fact focussed occupied. Please also note that while defense spending and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are massive in absolute terms, they are among the cheapest wars the US had ever fought in relative terms. This is because the US free-market economy had grown so much faster than defence spending that it made it cheap for the US to wage wars that other countries simply could not afford. You see, that is the secret to power (which China has learned). Focus less on redistribution of wealth and more on creating it for everyone (with sensible and adequate regulation and protections from exploitation, of course). As (Democratic) President Kennedy once stated in his speech, "A rising tide lifts all boats" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_rising_tide_lifts_all_boats). To bad

No, actually not. A number of studies suggest that increasing gun controls lead to higher crime rates, while relaxing gun control laws lead to lower crime rates.

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp
http://www.justfacts.com/images/guncontrol/dc.png

Are the numbers on that page slanted somehow? I'm not certain. But, I've seen a number of similar studies and graphs that suggest that site is accurately recording history.

Let's think, a moment. Say that you're a criminal type. You've found it more lucrative to burgle homes and businesses, than to work for a wage. Stupid, yeah, but obviously some people arrive at just such a conclusion.

You live on or near a state line. On one side, guns are legal. On the other side, guns are illegal. On the first side, burglarizing a home could result in a face-to-face meeting with an armed home owner. On the other side, that likelihood is almost infinitesimal. If you have the bad luck of meeting the homeowner, he/she will likely be armed with a shoe, or a hammer, or at most, a butcher knife.

So, which direction are YOU going to go, in search of potential victims? How much risk of being shot during a burglary are you willing to accept?

No, actually not. A number of studies suggest that increasing gun controls lead to higher crime rates, while relaxing gun control laws lead to lower crime rates.

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp
http://www.justfacts.com/images/guncontrol/dc.png

Are the numbers on that page slanted somehow? I'm not certain. But, I've seen a number of similar studies and graphs that suggest that site is accurately recording history.

Let's think, a moment. Say that you're a criminal type. You've found it more lucrative to burgle homes and businesses, than to work for a wage. Stupid, yeah, but obviously some people arrive at just such a conclusion.

You live on or near a state line. On one side, guns are legal. On the other side, guns are illegal. On the first side, burglarizing a home could result in a face-to-face meeting with an armed home owner. On the other side, that likelihood is almost infinitesimal. If you have the bad luck of meeting the homeowner, he/she will likely be armed with a shoe, or a hammer, or at most, a butcher knife.

So, which direction are YOU going to go, in search of potential victims? How much risk of being shot during a burglary are you willing to accept?

Nor are you likely to ever need one for self defense if you're not doing stupid things.

Facts. Guns are used for self defense about 989,000 times a year around the year 2000 in the US. Guns are used for murder about 10,000 times a year. Don't make up statements that the facts clearly show are wrong.

This is EXACTLY my point, hedwards is litterally making stuff up to deamonize law abiding citizens and claiming they should have no right to protect themsleves. This is the reason the NRA is attacking video games and the movie industry, but people are demanding something gets done and the NRA is providing the least resistance and most likely to be held up in court. They can back up their claims about self defense with guns with decades of facts, but the video game industry has no such history or facts.

I'll just leave this here for you: http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp#accidents

You asked for stories:
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/10559641/ (WRAL TV)
http://www.vladtv.com/blog/80199/14-year-old-kills-intruder-in-gang-of-four-trying-to-break-in/ (link confirming the aforementioned)
http://www.amren.com/news/2013/01/woman-hiding-with-kids-shoots-intruder/ (mom defends herself and her kids from asshat hellbent on getting his hands on her)

You can find these stories all over the internet... just google "______________ defends themselves with a firearm" (fill in the blank) and you'll find plenty of stories like these.

Another thing that you'll find (if you do some research and ignore the lamestream media and BS talking points from both sides) is that the gross majority of these mass killings are done by deranged individuals with histories of mental illness, criminal actions, terrorist connections, and the like. Very few of the weapons used to perform these horrid actions were acquired legally, and even fewer were legally allowed to even possess a firearm.

Here's a link to some no bullshit firearms statistics:
http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp (justfacts.com)

http://www.justfacts.com/socialsecurity.asp#financial

The social security program, if you assume the US Treasury prints the money (inflates) they already spent to cover Social Security payments that they are required by law to cover, will still be out of money by 2033. When do you plan on retiring? Or should the government continue printing money to cover Social Security payments in excess of what they collect in Social Security taxes?

And I wasn't being serious about your sig either, just trying to point out that people blaming the failure of capitalism generally fail to realize that we don't have capitalism, and haven't had it for a long time. We are more capitalist than most places, but definitely not the most capitalist... http://www.heritage.org/index/default

>>The fact that gun ownership is relatively common in the US and yet they still have one of the highest murder rates per capita in the world (for a 1st world country at least) pretty much stabs the "everyone having guns makes everyone safer" hypothesis in the heart and burns the corpse.

And that's why DC, which has the strictest gun control laws in the country, has such a low murder rate, right?

This is an interesting page to read about gun control facts:
http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

Did you read the article you posted to? It points out that the numbers are wrong and wrongly used and then points out why the comparison to the US wouldn't make sense anyway.

I could see linking to the email as support of the idea of gun control. I could see to linking to a rebuttal of the email as support of gun ownership. I fail to understand the point of linking to an email analysis where it is pointed out as having no reliability.

I've read quite a few good articles on both sides of the argument over gun control vs. ownership rights. Try these instead:

• http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp - shows gun control not working
• http://www.guninformation.org/ - explains how gun control is effective and what is wrong with opposing statistics
• http://usliberals.about.com/od/patriotactcivilrights/i/ProConGunLaws.htm - examines the legal history with some bias toward gun control
• http://libertariananarchy.com/articles/the-case-against-gun-control/ - presents logical arguments supporting gun ownership rights (I hesitated to include this even more than the article above due to its source, but it really is well written)

If you really wanted a link using the numbers snopes points out as unreliable, you should have used: http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0210e.asp

Personally, my opinion is that freedom is more important than safety. Whatever the statistics, whatever the arguments are about crime rates, murder and preventative defense, I believe that an individual has a right to any reasonable self defense they choose. Freedom absolutely does cost lives, but I believe that even as tragic as they can be, preventing them by restricting legitimate freedoms is worse.

I've heard that old saw so many times before, and it still makes me puke when I hear it. One of the classic examples of an unarmed society with a much lower crime rate is Japan. I *lived* in Japan, for seven years (unlike a lot of the people who parrot that example), and I will guarantee that the lower crime rate in Japan has much, much less to do with whether or not the average citizen is allowed to own a gun, and much, much more to do with culture. The Japanese *do not tolerate* those who break with tradition or societal rules. We Americans practically worship the rebels. The Japanese also don't muck around with criminals. When a suspect is arrested, they are guilty unless proven innocent, and once incarcerated, it's not a trip to the country club (albeit with Bubba in the shower and iron bars in the windows) -- it's sit on your knees on a concrete cell until you are allowed to move, then back on your knees again.

If you really want to know how disarming the population affects crime rates, compare the crime rates before and after in a single location before and after gun laws are changed, or compare crime rates in cities in, for example, right-to-carry and no concealed-carry states. For example, there is a very interesting graph of the crime rate in Florida before and after it passed a right-to-carry law in 1987 at http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp . In other words, I see your "...concealed weapons has surely made America one of the most respectful places in the world..." and raise you a "Indeed, and the handgun bans in Washington D.C., Chicago and NYC have certainly made them safe places to live!"

It's not a fraud or ponzi scheme.

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck -- it's probably a duck. Social Security took money from people that were still working and gave it to people who never put a dime into the system. That is the classic definition of a Ponzi scheme.

private companies have been funding plans like this for 150 years.

It would not be legal for a private company to do this in the United States. Company retirement accounts are required to have the cash separate from the company's money.

Ronald Reagan did break down the lockbox and mingled Social Security revenue with general revenue

If Reagan had done that, he had the Democratic congress as a willing accomplice. According to http://www.justfacts.com/socialsecurity.asp the excess is made as loans to the Federal government. Whether the Feds will be solvent enough to pay it back is another question.

"Is there or is there not a clear correlation between gun ownership and intentional deaths by means of guns? There is. You seem to conveniently ignore that in your argument."

No, I don't ignore it. I've already covered it and I'm not going back over it. Read my previous posts again if you're having trouble.

"In theory, those people will be schooled, monitored and need to keep tabs on every single bullet they fire. This is more, or less, true depending on where you live."

None of which cannot be accomplished by people who don't wear uniforms. Take the uniform off them and they're just as naked as the rest of us.

"Finally, the thing is _you are not protecting yourself_! You are raising the stakes for both sides"

This is incorrect. Criminals choose their victims on the basis of fairly rational criteria (those who don't, don't last long, criminal activity is ruthlessly darwinian), preferring those who are both unprepared to meet violence with violence and/or who are unable to counter the amount of force that the criminal is able to apply. This means that females, the young, small males as well as those who are obviously insufficiently self confident to resist acts of violence are far more likely to be victims of violent crime... so long as they are unable to arm themselves such that even the smallest person can resist the violence of the largest thug. Gun control, or, worse, gun removal would reduce any confrontation between a citizen and a criminal to a question of brute force. A contest the criminal will always win because the criminal gets to choose opponents who will not be able to resist effectively. What actually happens when the citizenry is permitted to arm themselves is that criminals choose not to compete on this level playing field and commit crimes against property rather than crimes against persons or, alternatively, they target people who they know will not be armed (people leaving an airport are a particular favorite: they are likely to be carrying cash and almost certainly not carrying a weapon). This shift of focus on the part of criminals has been demonstrated many times in the US when various states have loosened their gun control laws to permit citizens to protect themselves.

It has also been demonstrated in the opposite direction by Washington DCs illegal 3 decade handgun ban, "During the years in which the D.C. handgun ban and trigger lock law was in effect, the Washington, D.C. murder rate averaged 73% higher than it was at the outset of the law, while the U.S. murder rate averaged 11% lower"

Also, the criminals do not need to protect themselves from overzealous home-owners

Someone protecting their home, their family and their possessions in their own home, no less, should never be described as "overzealous". Someone who busts into anothers home with malicious intent has no business whining about a few grams of lead passing through their chest.

How many households have real guns? Now, how many households have a computer or gaming console? Yeah, I thought so. The target is where it should be.

Those questions don't paint a picture nearly as impressive as you think it does. According to http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp 40-45% of households have a gun. So even if we assume just about everyone has computer or game console, every other person also has a gun in their home. Half is hardly a fringe situation.

Besides, asking for simple parental involvement (which any good parent would have NO issues doing so)[...]

I smell a no true scottsman in that statement. You can't know what you put in the parenthetical simply because everyone's interpretation of good parent is different.

[...]is hardly stepping on any Constitutional Rights, which do come into play when you start talking about real guns.

It's not that hard to make a 1st amendment issue out of this. Why does the medium matter; why not books? After all, what good parent wouldn't shield their child from violence of every medium. Could you imagine how horrible a parent would have to be, not only to not be concerned, but encouraging their child to read about mass genocide by drowning and billing it as a good thing? (Gilgamesh and some derivative hack work comes to mind... on an unrelated topic, can I mod myself flamebait? :D )

And, this is precisely why so many people fear guns. They want to hide behind the AC tag, and use vulgarity - knowing they are safe. They also expect to be just as safe when they choose to run their mouth on the street. I'll bet my dollar against your penny, if a real man answers his little potty mouth, AC will pick up a rock, a club, a knife, or something because he's AC. When the real man shoots him dead, then that man is in the wrong for having a weapon. Go figure.

Anonymous COWARD.

http://www.legis.state.wi.us/LRB/pubs/ttp/ttp-09-2003.html
http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

Go, coward, read. The facts are, when the populace is armed, violent crimes go down. When citizens are disarmed, crime goes up.

Since we have already established that you are a coward, allow me to ask a simple question: If/when you ever creep out of your Mama's basement, hoping to drag a female into your den, would you rather face women who are armed, and are able to resist? Or, would you rather face defenseless women? I don't give you much chance in either instance - but I am perfectly happy with armed women. Knowing that she can shoot you dead if you get out of line just helps to keep a guy honest.

I love headlines like these, which you will NEVER read in gaywad anonymous coward magazines:
http://wheelgun.blogspot.com/2005/04/jacksonville-great-grandmother-shoots.html
http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-47396.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4191/is_20001128/ai_n9979806/

Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin were both gun control proponents. I suppose you would like those individuals, right? Douchebag, yourself.

* Florida adopted a right-to-carry law in 1987. At the time the law was passed, critics predicted increases in violence. The founder of the National Organization of Women, Betty Friedan stated:

"lethal violence, even in self defense, only engenders more violence." (13)

* When the law went into effect, the Dade County Police began a program to record all arrest and non arrest incidents involving concealed carry licensees. Between September of 1987 and August of 1992, Dade County recorded 4 crimes committed by licensees with firearms. None of these crimes resulted in an injury. The record keeping program was abandoned in 1992 because there were not enough incidents to justify tracking them. (13)(15)

So, in 5 years, they had 4 incidents of crimes, none resulting in injury. This was around the time that gun violence was peaking in the U.S. too, IIRC. Not exactly the picture of a bunch of gun-crazy guys that shoot someone at the drop of a hat that you're trying to convey, is it?

More official stats from Florida here. Seems that only about 1% of CC holders commited a crime with their weapon over the last 20+ years (166 in total, out of nearly 1.5 million).

There are only about 2x as many cars sold each year as guns. About 50% of all households have a gun (I know this might come as a shock to leftie-liberals, but it's true).

A gun doesn't have to be shot to be useful. Deterrent value is the primary value of a gun anywhere off the battlefield. There's no way to capture the statistics about how many people weren't killed, how many women weren't rapped, how many people weren't beaten, how many robberies and burglaries and thefts didn't occur because the would-be perpetrator was confronted by, or just concerned about the possibility of, a gun.

new cars: http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_12.html
new guns: http://www.atf.gov/firearms/stats/afmer/afmer2006.pdf
number guns: http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

What if her response had been, "What are the odds I'll be able to retreive my gun, unlock it, load it, and successfully fend off a murderer/rapist?"

My response would be: Why are you storing a self defense weapon locked and unloaded?

If she, living alone, still wants it locked up, there are fast open safes available that you could store the loaded weapon in. Time into the safe is under 5 seconds with a little practice.

What percentage of people who have a gun are actually able to use it in these circumstances they imagine it will be so useful in? Any real statistics out there?

How about 764,000 by the lowest of 9 nationwide surveys? Considering a population of 300 million, figure about half of households have a gun, so 150 million, it's about half a percent per household per year. Minimum.

Again, what percentage of people who have a gun are involved in accidental / misuse / etc?

Same site, about 1400 fatal accidents total in 1995 from guns. You're 700 times more likely to defend yourself with your weapon than you are to accidentally kill yourself. On the misuse side, I'd include crimes & suicides, but studies have shown that substitution is strong with suicide(IE if unable to get a gun rather than not killing themselves they'll do it in a different way). As for crimes, that's what personal defense weapons are for, and just because you criminalize guns doesn't mean that you get them out of the criminals hands, and suddenly they have a force advantage.

In any case, I recently had a conversation with a pro-gun man. It was very civil, so no over the top rhetoric. When asked what he would do if his teenage child ever got pissed off at him, and in a fit of incredibly poor judgement takes the gun and shoots you with it. Then realizing what he's done, turns it on himself.

Very rare, in households with legitimate guns. More frequent in households with illegal guns(IE Felon in the house, stolen, gang, etc...). Most gun owners at least try to teach their children a greater amount of personal responsability. In addition, my grandfather started squirrel hunting, unsupervised, when he was 12.

Of course, around here I realized that you were echoing the earlier poster, so I'll simply finish with dog != gun.

now the only people who have the guns are criminals and the government for the most part

Believe it or not, the second amendment was intended precisely for that purpose. It's not a question of *if* a government will get out of control, it's *WHEN* a government will get out of control. Owning firearms is one of the last points of defense for a democratic government.

For guns to make a place safer, there'd have to be some mechanism to ensure that only `good` people get guns, and only do good with them. I have no idea what this mechanism is, and how it's supposed to work, but it's quite clear that whatever it is, it isn't working in the US.

Wrong, armed a person can not protect themself but they can also protect those around them. Criminals are less likely to rob or kill someone if they know people are armed. Only someone with a death wish would hold up someone if they knew others were armed.

This website, THE TRUTH ABOUT GUNS, CRIME AND VIOLENCE, has a graph of the crime rate of England and of the US between 1981 and 1996. It shows that per 1000 people crime went from 13 incidents to 20 in England whereas in the US it went from 12 to 9. Just Facts has some stats such as in the US "Americans use firearms to defend themselves from criminals at least 764,000 times a year." Further:

* Florida adopted a right-to-carry law in 1987. At the time the law was passed, critics predicted increases in violence. The founder of the National Organization of Women, Betty Friedan stated:
"lethal violence, even in self defense, only engenders more violence."
When the law went into effect, the Dade County Police began a program to record all arrest and non arrest incidents involving concealed carry licensees. Between September of 1987 and August of 1992, Dade County recorded 4 crimes committed by licensees with firearms. None of these crimes resulted in an injury. The record keeping program was abandoned in 1992 because there were not enough incidents to justify tracking them

If you have an open mind it has more stats that show just how firearms have affected crime rates, with right to carry laws crime has dropped.

"Bowling for Columbine" tried to make a point like that, but is it valid?

I'm not convined that there are "more guns than people in Canada." The population of Canada is 32 million. The number of guns is difficult to determine, but is in the range of 7 to 11 million (corroborated here, and numbers of 7-16 million are used in some official canadian government rhetoric). That's alot of guns... but not more guns that people. It's 0.28 guns per person, on average.

The population of the US is about 295 million. The number of guns in the US (also hard to estimate) is, according to one estimatem, around 200 million (corroborated here, although that includes estimates of undeclared guns; a different site indicates at least 60 million declared guns). That's 0.68 guns per person, on average.

Those stats are debatable, of course. Estimating such things is hard. I also fully acknowledge that the websites I pointed to are not especially trustworthy sources (some are about gun-control, hence they will typically use the biggest stat for number of guns to make their point). However, the take-home message is that, indeed, there are lots of guns both in Canada and in the United States, yet the number of gun-related deaths (per person) in the US seems worse than in Canada. This is the point that "Bowling for Columbine" was trying to make... however it is a great exagerration to say that there are "more guns than people" in Canada.

I guess I am a gun nut since I support the 2nd amendment:

Here is some more evidence:
http://www.justfacts.com/gun_control.htm

• In 1999, the administrative overhead of the Social Security program was 3.4 billion dollars. This is equal to 0.9% of the benefit payments that Social Security made that year. (
• Here.
  So, more people are needed in each tier because of the administrative costs.

sorry i got it wrong again :P stupid tab key is screwing me over:
Fox News Report
justthefacts.com
huppi.com
Google Search for Statistics in Europe
Sorry again