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Bzzzt! Wrong, troll boy.

Your claim is an old chestnut, and an easily refutable one at that. Despite what the propaganda you posted claims, the courts have not been unanimous with regard to the Second Amendment. Furthermore, an eminent legal scholar, one who writes law-school textbooks on the Constitution (i.e., has forgotten more than you'll ever know about this issue), begs to differ with you. Further, many state constitutions contain provisions giving individuals the right to keep and bear arms.

In order to avoid embarrassments like this one in the future, try posting something other than Sarah Brady's talking points.

Class dismissed.

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)

Gun control began in this country to keep guns out of the hands of blacks.

http://www.shadeslanding.com/firearms/cramer.racis m.html

Unlike Americans, we can't just walk in to the local Guns'R'Us and buy a handgun.

We can't do that either. We have to have permits issued by the local sheriff, and wait a certain number of days to get it. Each handgun purchased is registered to the buyer.

Long guns (rifles, shotguns) can be bought a Walmart, Dick's Sporting Goods, etc.

the argument that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to gun ownership is in itself a completely subjective interpretation of the language of the Constitution.

If so, then it's equally important to remember that every Constitutional scholar who's examined the question without being beholden to anti-gun forces has concluded that not only is the individual rights interpretation correct, but a collective rights interpretation is nonsensical. See, for example, Professor Sanford Levinson (ACLU leading legal light, and no friend of the NRA)'s paper The Embarrassing Second Amendment for a complete discussion.

There is a set of factoids that have been widely distributed, such as here. They have a pro-gun bias, but sound credible to me. The gun-control folks never seem to indicate that most of their shocking statistics are primarily about suicides and gang members killing each other, rather than littly Timmy finding Daddy's gun in the closet.

Three guys grabbed him, showed him the knife and said "Play nice". They hailed a cab, put him in it, and said "Take us to your apartment," which he did.

These guys were obviously well-connected, given their total lack of concern about witnesses. I think the residents of this city have problems that are a lot more serious and basic than laptop theft!

Agreed.

An interesting statistic -- generally an attacker with a knife is much more likely to cut a victim to 'show he means business' than an attacker with a gun. Generally, people attacked by a gun-wielding assaliant are less likely to be injured.

• http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm
• http://www.shadeslanding.com/firearms/kleck.study. html

An excerpt: The rape rate computes to 4.67/100,000 population. By comparision, the U.S. as a whole had a rape rate of 36.39/100,000 population, and even the lowest rate rape in the U.S. (again, South Dakota) was 7.30/100,000. "Big deal," you say, "It must be gun control at work." Except that firearms are used in rape only 7% of the time (Source: Report To The Nation On Crime, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1983). The very low British rape rate can't be because of gun control laws -- adding 7% to British rape rates they would STILL be lower than the safest part of the U.S. -- and by a large margin, and still be one-eighth of U.S. rape rates as a whole.

Here is an article from the BBC that might interest you: "Street crime surges"

How is gun control racist? No AC replies please.

Lowered crime rates can be attributed to any thing.
True. As could the so-called increase that you claim occurs when more people have guns. Show me a detailed, reality-based study showing that gun-related crime rises when more non-criminals have guns.

Also gun related crimes may be up while the overall crime rate drops. There could be more murders but less muggings or shoplifting.
Are you suggesting that murder is the only crime committed where the perpetrator used a gun? Why would you believe that mugger would not use a gun?

Accidental death statistics

Some studies on the subject of crime and firearms.

Friend, if you want to judge another nation by it's atrocities, you'd damn well better be sure that your own nation has a clean slate...