About guns

On December 14 this year, a terrible thing happened in the village of Sandy Hook, CT in the town named Newtown. I can't add any new information and I can't add any analysis beyond what has been written about it already. I can't tell much beyond what everyone has heard over the last week. I just want to add a pointer to some information that should be considered.

While I don't own a gun, I do not call for everyone to give up all of their guns because it's a right given to every citizen by our Constitution. However, I do not believe that everyone should be allowed to have as many guns as they want. I accept the fact that people can own a gun for any number of reasons but I do not accept that people should be allowed to own assault weapons. And, of course, owning a gun should never be allowed for someone who has been convicted of a serious crime or is mentally or emotionally unfit for the responsibility of owning a firearm.

But - all too often I hear stupid things said and have seen stupid things written by people trying to justify the proliferation of guns in this country. Too often, I've heard stupid things said by people who don't believe there should be any restrictions on gun ownership. The type of "stupid-speak" I'm talking about goes something like this:

More homicides in the U.S. are committed with baseball bats than with firearms.

The term "baseball bats" is sometimes replaced with other things. All I can do in this post is to point you to one of my favorite sites, Snopes, which debunks these kinds of things. Here is a link to their page showing the fallacy of the statement above. In case you don't have time to go to the link and read the article, the synopsis is - About 67% of homicides in this country are caused by firearms. That's all I want to say about that.