[Vision2020] Not safer with guns

[Ron Force]

From Gun Violence and the Irrational Fear of Home Invasion
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| Gun Violence and the Irrational Fear of Home InvasionI've spent this week arguing for gun control and more regulation, but for some reason I can't get myself to endorse the idea of banning handguns. |
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   Professor Harold Pollack, who (among other things) co-directs the University of Chicago's Crime Lab was kind of enough to send along the following note:
I enjoyed your conversation on Up with Chris Hayes. You mentioned the risk of home invasion, and the realistic fear that the cops just wouldn't get there in time. That's obviously a primeval motive to have a gun by the bedside or whatever.But the fear is also easily out of proportion to the threat. I had the Chicago police run the number on homicides. In 2011, precisely one homicide listed "burglary" as the motive. Nationwide, there are about 100 burglary-homicides every year. When you compare that to more than 18,000 gun suicides, the conclusions seem pretty obvious.
Pollack wrote about this for the Nation. In the article Harold points out a few other cases that might be homicides from someone who gained entry, from the home. But all in all, the risk is vanishing small:
Home protection provides a common, all-too-understandable motive to buy a gun. Few things are scarier than the possibility that some violent intruder will break in when you and your loved-ones are home. This risk happens to be especially vivid for me. My gentle disabled cousin was beaten to death by two teenage burglars in his New York apartment thirty years ago.Yet having guns around bring risks, too. Practically speaking, it's not the incredibly rare risk of mass homicide, but the everyday risks of injury, accident, domestic altercations, and suicide. The relative risks matter. And the fact is: lethal home invasions and burglaries are incredibly rare. You might not think so, since dramatic cases stick in your mind and tend to receive disproportionate press coverage. These cases are rare nonetheless.

Ron Force
Moscow Idaho USA 

     On Thursday, January 22, 2015 5:54 PM, lfalen <lfalen at turbonet.com> wrote:
   

 Chris has a  point, but he is not entirely correct. It is true that guns in the wrong hands are a danger. I do not agree with open carry laws where any idiot can carry. Concealed carry on the other hand with proper training can reduce crime and promote personal safety. If a robber with a gun is at your door and the police are 20 minutes away, you may be dead,, with out the means to defend yourself. I do not have a problem with background checks.

Roger




-----Original Message-----
Subject: [Vision2020] Not safer with guns
From: "Tom Hansen" <thansen at moscow.com>
To: "Moscow Vision 2020" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Date: 01/22/15 15:20:14

Courtesy of today's (January 22, 2015) Spokesman/Review with thanks and appreciation to Chris Norden.
--------------------------------------Not safer with gunsWhen a powerful organization called al-Qaida nurtures the violent fantasies of angry and disaffected men, and enables them to obtain weapons and kill innocent civilians, we call that terrorism.When a profit-driven industry lobby called the National Rifle Association makes it easy as pie for any angry, or even crazy, person to get handguns and assault weapons and act out their own violent fantasies against family and community members, does that count as terrorism, too?As with most of the stupidity and irrationality in American public life, our friends, neighbors and family members are being killed on a weekly basis nationwide because this is what we have asked for, either by voting for politicians who are stooges of the NRA, or by not voting at all, thus leaving the decision to zealots.So tell me again that a nation flooded
with guns and plagued with mass murders is somehow freer and safer than nations like Australia, Canada or England with vastly lower murder rates. Somehow, I'm not feeling it.I've been a gun owner all my adult life, am pro-hunting and attended the police funeral following the previous Moscow mass murders in 2007. Still not feeling it.Chris NordenMoscow --------------------------------------

Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .
"Moscow Cares"http://www.MoscowCares.com  Tom HansenMoscow, Idaho 
"There's room at the top they are telling you still.But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,If you want to be like the folks on the hill."
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