Fox,

You are fooling yourself, not anyone else.

You could put a million firearms in the hands of one law-abiding citizen and there are many thousands of such licensed law-abiding citizens in Australia, and be well assured that NO crime would even be committed.

You deliberately disgrace them when you conflate their licensed firearm ownership and legal, appropriate use with ferals and drug-dealing gangsters who would never get a licence even if they tried (and would likely be collared instead for an outstanding warrant).

I am advised that the female form of Otto is Ottilie. So don't feel left out, you do share something more with Paul1405 than being joined at the hip politically and applauding each other. You would be rocked to realise that.

Dear Foxy,

Just to stick my oar in: are you suggesting that there is some connection between recreational shooting and guns on the streets ? Maybe one way around some of the problems may be to somehow restrict gun-use precisely to shooting schools, ranges and galleries, with no gun to be removed. Of course, the horse has bolted well and truly over there, so I really am whistling into the wind. Sorry :(

Love,

Joe

"Maybe one way around some of the problems may be to somehow restrict gun-use precisely to shooting schools, ranges and galleries, with no gun to be removed"

That still manages to conflate the unlawful possession and use by some with the lawful recreation and sports of the majority who have nothing to do and abhor the ferals and crims. In Australia the small number of crimes involving firearms are overwhelmingly committed by the drug gangs and specifically the OMG bikies that the Greens and Labor protect. -See the recent developments in Queensland where the successful anti-bikie laws are being given the 'deep six' treatment by Labor Premier Palaszczuk.

Cars are much far more essential to crime than firearms. When steering locks were installed on motor vehicles there was a sudden and permanent drop in crime in Australia.

Lock up all cars and use public transport with a national identify card to board and alight?

Some figures on mass shootings in the U.S:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map

Looks like people who get their guns legally do kill people. Mass shootings are only a fraction of the total homicide rate and more people might be killed with illegal guns in the U.S. - but it seems that people with legal firearms are more likely to commit mass shootings.

Some of you might also be interested to note that about three quarters of these shooters were white.

Foxy,

In fencing swords are used, in parts of the world people are being murdered with swords, so by your reasoning we should equate fencing and those that practice it with ISIS or other murderous groups.

By the way, darts were weapons of war and one variety are still used and you forgot to mention the discus, a truly fearful weapon.

On a per participant basis far more people have been injured by javelin throwing as a sport than have been injured in the sporting shooting disciplines.
Here's a recent javelin incident in which an official was killed.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/08/29/javelin-toss-goes-horribly-wrong-referee-dies-after-being-speared/

Here's some interesting statistics from the USA

"Unintentional
Firearms Fatalities at All-time Low
Data released by the National Safety Council demonstrates that
unintentional firearm-related fatalities continue to remain at
historically low levels. In fact, in the last two decades the number
of unintentional firearm-related fatalities has declined by 58 percent
– from 1,441 unintentional fatalities in 1991 to 600* in 2011.
Firearms are involved in ½ percent of all unintentional fatalities in the United States. In a side-by-side comparison, firearms rank among
the lowest causes of injury."
http://www.nssf.org/pdf/research/iir_injurystatistics2013.pdf

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

The US certainly has serious issues with guns.
We lived and worked in the US for close to ten years
and we had a relative in the LAPD. Most other
countries severely restrict private handgun ownership,
however as you can see from the stats given earlier
there are millions of handguns in the US - and weapons
of this type are used in more than half of the tens of
thousands of murders that occur each year.
The average handgun rate as shown was many, many, times
the average rate for Sweden,
Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Austria,
Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Ireland, Canada, Belgium,
and so on.

We might well ask why does the US permit a widespread access
to handguns? One reason is the persistent belief that,
since criminals have guns, law-abiding people need them for
self-protection. Actually, gun-owning households are much
more likely to suffer fatalities from their own weapons than
from those of outsiders.
Several studies have shown that only a small percentage of
all slayings in gun-owning households were for self-
protection; the remainder were suicides, homicides, or
accidental deaths, almost all involving family members,
friends, or acquaintances.

A second reason for the proliferation of handguns is the
belief, deeply held by many Americans, that gun ownership is
an individual right. And of course the third reason is that
the gun-lobby in the US is extremely powerful.

For granting this liberty to the individual, American society
pays the price in the deviance of those who abuse it.

See you on another discussion. For me this one has now
run its course.