RKBA is a DKos group of second amendment supporters who also have progressive and liberal values. We don't think that being a liberal means one has to be anti-gun. Some of us are extreme in our second amendment views (no licensing, no restrictions on small arms) and some of us are more moderate (licensing, restrictions on small arms.) Moderate or extreme, we hold one common belief: more gun control equals lost elections. We don't want a repeat of 1994. We are an inclusive group: if you see the Second Amendment as safeguarding our right to keep and bear arms individually, then come join us in our conversation. If you are against the right to keep and bear arms, come join our conversation. We look forward to seeing you, as long as you engage in a civil discussion. RKBA stands for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
Did you notice the changes above? There are two of them.
TG's Thursday Corner:
Why is it that the people who yell the loudest about banning or severely restricting anything tend to be the ones who know the least about it? Pot is a gateway drug, Obama is a Socialist, gun-owners all want machineguns to compensate for things!
I've said many times, education is the cure to most of the world's ills -- and this one is no exception.
If you insist on trying to decide for everyone else what they can or cannot do, at least have the common courtesy to learn something about what it is you want them to do or not to do. Of course, by learning something, you run the risk of also learning you were wrong about whatever it was you were up in arms about, but that is a risk one takes.
Duckhunter has some statistics for us:
I offer the links below for your information. In my view, when it comes to child deaths it is hard to argue statistics when there is a prevailing sentiment that even one death is too many.
KID SAFE has child injury trend data showing that unintentional firearm deaths among children 1 - 14 decreased 74% between 1987 and 2004 from 247 down to 63. . http://www.safekids.org/... Unintentional injury deaths are down generally but unintentional death by firearms dropped the most followed by unintentional death by bicycle.
KID SAFE has a 2008 paper that compare data to parental beliefs about child accidents. The study showed that parents viewed firearms as the 5th leading cause of accident injuries when comparative data shows that it is 7th.
http://www.safekids.org/...
Childstats.gov has data on adolescent (15 - 19) injury and mortality. At this age cars and guns are the leading causes of death. However, their stats include intentional and unintentional injuries, that would be suicide and homicide.
KVoimakas has some defensive gun use statistics below:
link
On the basis of data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data, one would conclude that defensive uses are rare indeed, about 108,000 per year. But other surveys yield far higher estimates of the number of DGUs. Most notable has been a much publicized estimate of 2.5 million DGUs, based on data from a 1994 telephone survey conducted by Florida State University professors Gary Kleck and Mark Gertz.[13] The 2.5 million figure has been picked up by the press and now appears regularly in newspaper articles, letters to the editor, editorials, and even Congressional Research Service briefs for public policymakers.
...
A somewhat more conservative NSPOF estimate is shown in the column of exhibit 7 that reflects the application of the criteria used by Kleck and Gertz to identify "genuine" defensive gun uses. Respondents were excluded on the basis of the most recent DGU description for any of the following
reasons: the respondent did not see a perpetrator; the respondent could not state a specific crime that was involved in the incident; or the respondent did not actually display the gun or mention it to the perpetrator.
Applying those restrictions leaves 19 NSPOF respondents (0.8 percent of the sample), representing 1.5 million defensive users. This estimate is directly comparable to the well-known estimate of Kleck and Gertz, shown in the last column of exhibit 7.