Dan,

>You are quoting some web sites I have difficulty accepting as authoritative. Let's try the National Safety Council "Odds on Dying" report, shall we? Granted, these stats are related only to fatalities, but are (I believe) still relavent:

>(Accidental) Firearms discharge: 762
>Intentional self-harm by firearm: 17,108
>Assault by firearm: 11,829
>Event of undetermined intent (Firearm discharge): 243
>Legal intervention involving firearm discharge: 300

>Total for 2002: 30,242, of which better than 50% are suicides.

>Of the total deaths (164,112), the accidental and undetermined intent deaths of 1005 represent a miniscule percentage.

Seems acceptable statistics to me. Now how to intepretate that? The assault by firearms still is a massive amount that should be reduced in some way. The the accidental and undetermined intent deaths still represents a 3% of the total, that probably could be reduced to a level common in other western countries. So what to do about the assault ??

The fact of the matter is that about 30.000 people die in the US because of gun missuse. It does not even mention the number of wounded people, but I guess that must be a few times those rates. Is carrying a gun really such right that it justifies such high number of causulties ? The US is faced with a 2000+ deaths in iraq, but falls into nothing if you compare it to the numbers above.

Sad...

Walter,