Posted on 12/25/2005 3:49:06 PM PST by neverdem
Five years ago an elderly Los Angeles woman who had agreed to move out of her daughter's apartment bought a handgun. She cleared the background check, passed the safety test and practiced on targets at the local shooting range. Then she shot and killed her daughter and her daughter's fiance -- my brother David.
As someone who has lost a member of my family to gun violence, I see the new federal legislation to limit gun manufacturers' liability as unconscionable beyond my ken. But what troubles me most is that the gun control lobby is pouring its resources into battles that probably won't save many lives -- and we're losing even those.
In the past decade, states have passed law after law to require safety locks, force gun-purchase waiting periods, trace bullets back to their sources and allow victims to sue manufacturers for negligence. That such measures have produced at best slight decreases in the rate of gun deaths is hardly surprising, because only 3 percent of gun deaths are accidents, and most murderers own their handguns legally and know how to use them safely. California has passed a raft of such laws in the past five years and
is widely praised as one of the most progressive states on gun control. In that same period, the number of handgun-related homicides has fallen and then risen again, with no correlation whatever.
The real problem is not that handguns aren't safe or well-regulated enough, or that you can't sue and try to bankrupt a corrupt manufacturer after someone you love has been killed. The problem is that 60 million people in the United States own handguns. The gun used to kill my brother was a Glock 19, a light and portable semiautomatic. These guns are designed to kill people: That's their...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
No..the real problem is that greedy, un-American idiots never blame the responsible party; they go after the deep pockets.
I'd like to see the author of this piece insist that auto manufacturers in Detroit should be held responsible when some reckless driver runs over a pedestrian. The problem is not the instrument; the problem is the nutjob wielding it.
And you don't solve the problem by criminalizing legitimate instruments of freedom. You solve the problem by stripping the mentally deficient of their rights and enforcing laws that already exist.
(The problem is that 60 million people in the United States own handguns.)
That's a good reason to write laws that violate the constitution and turn close to 60 million people into criminals. I have no sympathy for people who never blame the criminal. As long as we are on the face of this earth there will be criminals. Making their tools illegal will not stop them. We need to stop the criminals or punish them if they are able to perpetrate their crime.
What a maroon! After expressing sorrow at the loss of an innocent life there is nothing more to be said to this idiot. And where does she get her figures? Jeez!!! Merry Xmas and Molon Labe...SSZ
The definitive source for US injury death statistics is the Centers For Disease Control National Center for Injury Prevention & Control website which provides statistics on all deaths by injury, not just gun deaths. To get the number of gun deaths for a year just set the Cause of Injury to Firearm. If you only want to know the number of child gun deaths per year then choose the custom age range and input 0 years ( <1 ) as the lowest age and 17 years as the top age. Be sure to select "No Age-Adjusting Requested" if you are only interested in a particular age group.
Note that the CDC child gun death figures are typically half of the figures that the gun control lobby publishes. The difference is in the definition of a child. The gun control lobby counts young adults that are 18 or 19 years old as children, but they do not count 20 year olds as children. You can choose from one of two possible reasons, depending on your level of cynicism: 1. The standard CDC age groups used to go from 0-19, 20-39, etc and the gun control lobby couldn't figure out how to select a custom age group. 2. Counting 18 and 19 year olds as children doubles the number of so-called child gun deaths, and more child gun deaths means more support for gun control.
In 1999 there were 1776 gun deaths in the 0 through 17 age group and 3385 gun deaths in the 0 through 19 age group. By subtraction we find that there were a whopping 1609 gun deaths in just the 18 through 19 age group. Historically the 18 through 24 age group is the highest crime-committing group. At age 18 part-time drug dealers leave school and become full-time drug dealers. Despite the propaganda from the gun control lobby, criminals in general and drug dealers in particular are the group of so-called children most likely to be shot by their fellow criminals. You can verify this by reading the local gun death news stories in any city newspaper. School shootings are so rare that every one gets national television coverage, but drug dealers are shot so often that they are barely mentioned in their local newspaper.
Older people's gun deaths are most likely to be suicides. Suicides typically make up 56.5% of all gun deaths according to the Bureau Of Justice Statistics. In fact, drugs and suicides account for more than 2 out of every 3 gun deaths in the USA.
The best way to prevent gun deaths is to treat depression and other mental illness, teach children not to sell or use illegal drugs, treat drug addiction, and have police concentrate on enforcing drug laws. However, the gun control lobby says that we should spend billions of dollars on gun registration and gun licensing instead of using the money to treat depression and combat drugs. Click here for some sensible ways to prevent gun violence.
The accidental gun death rate has been falling since 1930 and US accidental gun deaths per year were down to 824 by 1999 according to the CDC. Note that it is extremely easy to prevent accidental gun deaths by following Jeff Cooper's Four Rules Of Gun Safety. Click here for a free downloadable brochure that illustrates the four rules.
http://www.tincher.to/deaths.htm
"These guns are designed to kill people"
The nasty little gun grabber got one thing right - the gun was designed to kill people and when her whacko mother-in-law to be whacked out enough, she bought a gun known to be reliable, learned how to use the gun and used.
So - what's the problem? A soon to be mother-in-law killed her son-in-law to be.
Does the whining Liberal gun grabber want the government to outlaw mothers-in-law?
Hmmnnn - now that I mentioned it, that's not a bad idea.
Fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity . - Sigmund Freud
Quemadmoeum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est." (A sword is never a killer, it's a tool in the killer's hands.) - Lucius Annaeus Seneca "the Younger" (ca. 4 BC-65 AD)
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed one. - Thomas Jefferson quoting Cesare Beccaria, Criminologist 1764.
A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks. - Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to his nephew
The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people;that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, ... or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press. - The Living Thoughts of Thomas Jefferson, pp.46 - 47, Presented by John Dewey
Gun control laws increase the power of government and the criminal element over the average citizen and serve no other purpose. - Robert E. Lee
A goverment that fears arms in the hands of it people should also fear ROPE! - Nathan Bedford Forrest about 1845
...I am opposed to all attempts to license or restrict the arming of individuals...I consider such laws a violation of civil liberty, subversive of democratic political institutions, and self-defeating in their purpose. - Robert Heinlein, in a 1949 letter concerning "Red Planet"
I don't know about you, but if you hear that Williams' guns have been taken, you will know that Williams is dead. - Walter Williams, syndicated columnist
Ain't much can't be cured with a lot of lead flyin' through the air. - SEAL Team Six saying
It is hard to oppress a population equipped to hunt animals the size of a man. -- L. Neil Smith, Pallas (New York: Tor, 1993), p. 380
Americans have the will to resist because you have weapons. If you don't have a gun, freedom of speech has no power. - Yoshimi Ishikawa, Japanese author commenting on the lack of protest with which Japanese tolerated governmental corruption, Los Angeles Times, 10/15/92
The most important freedom of all is the freedom to defend freedom.- Kevin McGehee
Gun control, the opiate of the intellectuals: covert elitism laced with self-righteousness.
Someone needs to e-mail this twit and tell her that if free speech is outlawed only outlaws will have free speech.
The idiot fringe will never give up their battle to infringe on my rights.
OK beotch... come get my gun; you can have it - bullets first.
(Wouldn't it make more sense to define the ultimate battle as one for a national ban on handguns -- the sole gun-control measure that promises to save tens of thousands of lives?)
Well, promises are good enough for me! The fact that those promises were turned on their heads in countries where guns were banned shouldn't bother her. I'll give her kudos for at least being honest. She however obviously has never felt the need to own a gun for self protection. The fact that people like her cause women and others to be hurt by much stronger criminals should also not bother her.
Agreed.... mine is as dumb as an ice cube.
This moron sees it as unconscionable that gun makers are not held liable because someone used their legal product in the way that it was designed to be used, without failure? Personally I think it is unconscionable that this silly person gets print space for their emotion based rantings. The person who pulled the trigger (twice?) is not at fault here?
--12,000 guns used to kill people every year, 160 are used in legitimate self-defense---
And they're used millions of times each year in self defense - WITHOUT being used to kill someone.
---Jenny Price is a writer living in Los Angeles.---
And she's also apparently developed immunity to logic.
Jenny should not stop at taking the right to bear arms from citizens. After all, in countries that ban fire arms other items are used to commit murder. She should lobby the government to insert a chip in people's heads, a chip that monitors the person's excitement level (especially excitement caused by anger). Once a certain threshold is crossed, the government should be able to zap that person for at least 15 minutes. These people should also immediately be locked up until psychological evaluation. Hey, we just want there to be zero murders!
My guess is that this liberal is OK with killing babies.
But if they did that, then what would be the penalty for bigamy?
And it's a sure bet she's against killing terrorists, rapists, murderers, et al.
Liberals only believe in slaughtering the innocent. The guilty, in their view, are more deserving of protection. That's but one reason why they want to ban firearms. They don't want the criminal "lifestyle" to be threatened by law-abiding citizens with guns.
Yep, blame the inanimate object. What a warped individual!
I cant see how anyone with common sense can come around to wanting to sue a gun manufacturer because the gun worked properly. If she broke a heel on her shoe and fell would she sue the shoe manufacturer?
Yeah : This one probably would---Dork
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