"Not that many Americans carry weapons - certainly can't remember them when I was dining in New York, LOL. "
...and a double LOL back from me, mate. You mention New York, which was probably the only district in the US which had a ban on handguns....till recently! Only a couple of weeks back, their High Court ruled that the US constitutional "Right to Bear Arms" over-rode any local city ordnance, and that depriving New Yorkers of the right to carry a handgun was "Unconstitutional", and that anyone without a criminal record can have one. By now, the New York gun shops would have been sold out..... ..and I did mention in my post that some districts have "Mandatory" gun ownership, in that everyone MUST have a gun, by law.....this led to significant crime reduction. One example: "The New American magazine reminds us that March 25th marked the 16th anniversary of Kennesaw, Georgia's ordinance requiring heads of households (with certain exceptions) to keep at least one firearm in their homes.
The city's population grew from around 5,000 in 1980 to 13,000 by 1996 (latest available estimate). Yet there have been only three murders: two with knives (1984 and 1987) and one with a firearm (1997).
"After the law went into effect in 1982, crime against persons plummeted 74 percent compared to 1981, and fell another 45 percent in 1983 compared to 1982. And it has stayed impressively low. In addition to nearly non-existent homicide (murders have averaged a mere 0.19 per year), the annual number of armed robberies, residential burglaries, commercial burglaries, and rapes have averaged, respectively, 1.69, 31.63, 19.75, and 2.00 through 1998."
http://www.mcsm.org/kennesaw.html
"but the reality is that strict gun laws do protect most of us from being the victim of guns"
Not true, FW. I pointed out that virtually ZERO crime is committed by licensed owners, and that the gun laws have done NOTHING to curtail illegal firearms. So the gun laws merely attempt to disarm the law-abiding....and protect the crooks, as was happening in New York.
Even in violence-free Honolulu, EVERYONE I met owned a handgun...some owned arsenals, lol. One law-enforcement officer owned assault rifles with 100 round drum magazines....and yours truly has been invited to help "light up" the Police Range on my next trip over.....drool, lol.
Free Will, I have no intention or desire to use a firearm on anyone, unless its in defence of my family, and I make the disclaimer that my willy is in fact larger than the maximum calibre allowed to us in handguns (.357 0r 9 mm, lol). I was brought up with firearms, was naturally good with them, and had the walls of my room covered with them while I was still at school. What is more natural than to participate in a sport/hobby that one is good at? And it is really more than a sport....it is a discipline. I understand that some have an aversion to firearms, and have seen some show discomfort when they find themselves in the presence of someone with a big automatic on his hip.... to them I say again, : "Guns dont kill people, people kill people", and if they havent a gun, they'll use something else........ Just after Howard's gun laws were proclaimed, in a country bar, we noted that if one came in with a chainsaw, and with only one way out, no one would have escaped out of a reasonably crowded bar......I would rather be shot than wrestle with a chainsaw. Ban chainsaws instead.
