'Facts' support liberal gun laws

[Desertdog]

'Facts' support liberal gun laws
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061215/OPINION02/612150312/1009/OPINION

In response to Bill Wallace's letter ("More gun laws require hard facts," Dec. 7), the data that Mr. Wallace desires is not absent.

There have been at least 15 studies on the defensive use of firearms in America. Without exception, the studies find approximately 1 million to 4 million defensive uses of firearms annually, which is approximately four times the number of criminal uses.

Five years after liberal concealed handgun carry laws went into effect in a typical county, murders had declined by at least 15 percent, rapes by 9 percent, robberies by 11 percent, and mass public shootings by 100 percent. Enactment of such laws appears to produce only about a 0.5 percent increase in accidental deaths.

Based on 1992 numbers, if all other states without such statutes had adopted them, the laws would have resulted in less than one (0.645) more accidental death, but 1,570 fewer murders, 60,363 fewer aggravated assaults, 11,898 fewer robberies and 4,177 fewer rapes annually!

Accidental deaths from firearms are already at an all-time low, at about 1 percent to 2 percent of all accidental deaths. There were about 600 non-hunting-related fatal firearms accidents nationwide in 2005, continuing a record-low trend. Sources for these facts are available.

Jeff A. Pittman

Vice president

Miss. State Firearm Owners Assn.

Terry

 

[Lucky]

+1 great post. Liberal gun laws is confusing though!

 

[Kentak]

+1 great post. Liberal gun laws is confusing though!

There are many meanings of the term "liberal." Context is important. In the context of the thread title, liberal means "less restrictive."

K

 

[GRB]

Five years after liberal concealed handgun carry laws

Context does not matter hear as this is an oxymoron. They are conservative guns laws if truth be told, and those conservative gun laws conserve your right to keep and bear arms. Just better to use better phrasing than liberal when referring to guns. LOL, or you may get the left to beleive that we believe them about gun control

 

[TX1911fan]

The meaning of liberal and conservative change over time, depending on the context. Conservative means laws designed to stick to the past, to do things as we have always done them. Hence, the American Revolution was LIBERAL, not conservative. Do not get stuck on these words as a definition of values, they are not. They simply define something at a point in time. Abraham Lincoln was a liberal when he sought to destroy slavery. The Democrats in the 60s were conservatives when they opposed the Republican sponsored civil rights laws. Democrats are now conservative with respect to gun laws as they want to keep restrictive laws in place, and go even more restrictive. Those of us who want to see restrictive laws abolished are liberals with respect to those laws (unless of course we look WAY WAY back to when the gun laws in this country were non-existent, except for one, in which case we can then be classified as conservative on that issue as well).