[waxhaw]

I've lived in Latin American countries with very restrictive gun control laws - Venezuela was one such place. The criminals had guns, the cops had guns and the wealthy "elite" had guns and bodyguards.... the law-abiding bulk of the citizens did not have guns and the murder rate in Caracas, with a population of 6 million, was greater than the total death rate in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Balkan war.

[John Galt's cousin]

bump

[bullseye1911]

Why does The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence's Web site say, "The risk of homicide in the home is three times greater in households with guns"?

I think Kellerman said 43 times more likely.

[frossca]

How often do Americans use guns each year for defensive purposes, some of whom -- but for their guns -- might have been killed? Criminologist Gary Kleck estimates that 2.5 million Americans use guns for defensive purposes each year, and approximately 400,000 of them believe someone would have been dead had they not resorted to their defensive use of firearms. A government study put the figure at 1.5 million.

Does anybody have a link to definite source points for the data quoted above. Not that I dis-believe it, but I would like to be able to use these statistics when "debating" some of my anti-Constitution acquaintences. But I cannot use un-sourced data.

[rmvh]

In this case....as in most...the government did not enforce any of the over 1000 existing federal, state, and local gun laws already on the books which if enforced may have prevented these murders.

New gun laws have one primary purpose: To appeal to the bewildered and the uninformed so that politicians proposing them can receive votes.

Enforcing existing gun laws is dangerous and expensive and does not get votes for the pols.