In reply to:


Moore and the film are not talking about crime related gun deaths, but gun deaths in the broader scope. He's not asking whether or not there would be less crime, but whether on not there would be less dead people that shouldn't be dead. He's also asking questions to figure out why it is that the US culture has the problem while similar first world countries do not.



I haven't seen the film, but your last 2 sentences are the nub of the whole issue.

I was going to do a post on this point earlier but decided not to, but since you've bought it up again here goes.

Its a well known fact (confirmed by many, many studies) that having any guns in the house dramatically increases the likelihood of death or injury to the (legal) occupants of the house.

One of the main reasons for this is that guns in the house increases the chance of a (successful) suicide attempt.

However removing that from the equation, still results in a higher death and injury rate due to many reasons including improper storage and/or improper use of the guns in the house resulting in death or injury to the occupants, whether through not storing the gun properly (e.g. keeping the ammunition seperate from the (locked away and - ) unloaded weapon), or from a lack of training in the proper use of the weapon, through to shooting the wrong people due to not properly (and accurately) indentifying your target before firing the weapon.

Seems ironic doesn't it that those who get a gun for protection of their familiy are probably putting their loved ones in more danger than if they did not have a gun in the first place.
I think that episode of the Simpsons where Homer joined the NRA (before being kicked out again) made this point quite well - many people (the NRA included if I recall) probably failed to make this connection.

One wonders what would the be ths situation if automobiles existed back a few hundred years ago - imagine if the US consitution had been extended to cover Automobiles - (say everyone has the right to "bear" (drive) an automobile) - would that now make the NRA and the AAA bedfellows? And would we be having the same discussions?