• http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=armedcitizen

Besides you said "....if you try to tell that to the gunslingers they tell you stories about all the homeowners who defended their homes. Its all BS but you cant win with these guys.?

Why don't you ask those that refused to be vicitms if it's all BS. I bet they are happy not to included in the murder stats....Colin

PS, Look up your own information.

• http://audioroundtable.com/Dungeon/messages/3014.html

I'm using an anti-gun website's numbers on the deaths of handguns:

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In 2003 (the most recent year for which data is available), there were 30,136 gun deaths in the U.S:

* 16,907 suicides (56% of all U.S gun deaths),
* 11,920 homicides (40% of all U.S gun deaths),
* 730 unintentional shootings (2% of all U.S gun deaths),
* 347 from legal intervention and 232 from undetermined intent (2% of all U.S gun deaths combined).

-Numbers obtained from CDC National Center for Health Statistics mortality report online, 2006.
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A chart of such statistics reaching back to 1979 can be located here:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0764212.html

A few notes on this. First, more than half of those are deaths by suicide. When someone is suicidal, they will find a means of death regardless.

Likewise, it could be argued that if someone is hateful enough to commit a murder, they will find a way if they have to drown the suspect.

Interestingly enough, there were 42,636 deaths by automobiles in 2004. Your argument appears to be that guns should be banned because they can also be used for harm. Using this logic, we would ban cars because they kill people too. This means matches, kitchen knives and baseball bats.

Interestingly, Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University is a leading expert on the links between guns, violence and gun control laws in the United States.

According to Wikipedia, "He has done statistical analysis of crime in the United States and argues that while in 1993 there were about four hundred thousand crimes committed with guns, there were approximately 2.5 million crimes in which victims used guns for self-protection."

Economist John Lott wrote a work called "More Guns, Less Crime" which essentially agrees with Kleck.

According to the Bureau of Alchol, Tobacco and Firearms, ownership of guns in America is at an all-time highThe number of privately owned guns in the U.S. is at an all-time high, and rises by about 4.5 million per year. Meanwhile, according to the FBI, the nation's violent crime rate has decreased every year since 1991 and is now at a 30-year low.

More people die from motor vehicles (40%), poisoning (17%), falls (15%), suffocation (5%), drowning (3%), fires (3%), medical mistakes (2%), environmental factors (1%), and bicycles and tricycles (1%) than they do from guns (.65%).

I should also mention that from personal experience finding and posting such stories of armed citizens, they are not uncommon. The past two weeks, there have been at least 14 stories. Do the math, that's one per day.

You can read more of them here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=armedcitizen

"IMO - "average" gun owner in the long run has much more chance to shoot himself (accidentaly or suicide), the member of the family (arguing+gun in the pocket), someone else `cos of small incident (traffic, bar, work, etc.); then to somehow defend himself of thieves/killers or so."

The interpretation of this statistic isn`t simple, and many things are missing. But, subjectively - many of those "self defence" situations aren`t "clear". For example, in many countries incident where shop owner shot dead, say, 20 years old junkie who tried to rob the store - this is not self defence on the court...
Yeah, the clerc had the gun behind the desk and murdered the kid for $100...but is it the right path for the society and for the individual persons?

Anyway, number of the death from firearms use is scarying high, even for the big country like US - 30 000 dead per year is more then in many wars!