>>>No one is saying all gun owners are irresponsible.
>>
>>I really think you should re-read Victor's posts. That's precisely what he is saying.
>>Example: except that having a gun in your house makes your family LESS safe that not having one
>
>No, what Victor said is statistically true. People with guns in the house are more likely to be injured by gun than people without. The lead author of this study seems to have done quite a lot of research in this area:
>
>http://ajl.sagepub.com/content/5/6/502
>
>Clearly, your family knows how to handle guns and thus lower their risks. But also clearly, for a lot of people, having a gun available in the home is a significant risk factor for death or injury.
>
>Tamar

I am inherently distrustful of any use of statistics to support or attack social policy issues.

Are gun owners who show up in the injury statistics more likely to be living in areas where other factors for violence are higher? How does it correlate with domestic violence frequency in whatever subgroup the gun owner is part of? Since suicide by firearm is a big part of gun deaths, do those statistics include that? If so, would any legislation reduce that number? How many of those injured by firearms were injured by their own firearms in the hands of others? There is a lot going on. I think it is a tautology to say if there is a gun around there is a greater chance of being injured by a gun. The same could be said of electricity, automobiles etc. If there were no guns, there would be no gun deaths. But that is not the world we live in or are likely to.

Violence itself is disfunctional behavior. I don't know if possessing a gun causes that disfunction but I would suggest it does not. It probably does become the go-to methology for someone who has one who wants to do violence. Unless they have a bomb ... or poison and access to a water supply ... or the controls of a 747 under their hands ... or ...

I would personally feel safer if no one had a gun but me (and would support any gun control legislation and confiscation program that could implement that.) And I would feel completely safe from my own guns. I have never had any of the many firearms I have owned over the years leap up and attack me or anyone else.

I do not feel safe in the face of fetishists. Both gun fetishists and gun "control" fetishists are very fixated on guns as magical, anthropomorphic devices.

In a society that focuses more on personal responsibility and less on people as members of a balkanized "class" the debate would shift to what is to be done about individuals who have demonstrated a willingness to commit violence toward other people.

The method of violence may be an interesting factor, but as the events in Boston show, method is fungible but crazy is to the bone.

Ownership of a gun, an automobile, a penis, a womb, a big dog, or a big checkbook is a responsibility and people need to be held accountable for their actions rather than demonized or canonized for their membership in a "class".

Laws permitting or restricting ownership of anything will effect two things : the market value of whatever is permitted or controlled, and the ownership by people who obey the law.

The rest is political bloviage without the will to hold people responsible for their actual behavior.