[quote=bubba99]Each year we loose about 30 thousand people to gun deaths. The first 17 thousand are suicides, then 9 thousand or so to hand guns, and around 3 thousand to rifles, shotguns, and assault weapons. Assault weapons are less than 10% of the murders by gun.
Other weapons like knives kill about 3thousand people/year and blunt objects about 800/year. An assault weapon ban would appear to be targeting one of the smaller groups of dangerous weapons. A group that is on par (size wise) with knives, as far as the big picture goes, it addresses the wrong guns. It’s easy to target military weapons as the villain, but practically they are not the big killer they are advertised to be.
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Lumping knives, blunt weapons, and assault weapons into the same group because they kill about the same number of people doesn’t really make sense. Knives are used millions of times every day for thousands of purposes by hundreds of millions of Americans. It wouldn’t be practical to outlaw them. Of course you can’t outlaw blunt objects. Assault rifles are for what useful purpose? There’s no good reason we can’t outlaw them and save those lives.
[quote=bubba99]
The real threat I see is from the 17000 annual suicides.
Each of those highly depressed, highly disturbed people has the potential to pick up a gun, or car, or mix up some amfo, or . . . and bring us the next murderous rampage. I saw on article that estimates 4.3 million Americans walking around with an untreated serious psychosis that makes them a real threat to be the next nut job that kills children.[/quote]
I think 4.3 million is a pretty high number for untreated “serious” psychosis. In any case, I agree that something needs to be done about mental illness in this country. Bubba, do you think taxpayer money should be spent to work on the mental illness problem in America? If not, what do you think we should do about it?
