911 tells young mother, "do what you have to do to protect your baby"

[LAGC]

94. Let's fact-check all that, shall we?

How would you go about killing (or injuring) a bystander from a significant distance with, oh, a knife? or a baseball bat? or your fist?

Most gun homicides are committed with HANDGUNS, which are in and of themselves SHORT-DISTANCE weapons. Despite the media sensationalism around folks like the "Beltway snipers", such long-gun/long-distance incidents are exceedingly rare.

How would you go about killing (or injuring) a child in its bed, from outside the building, with some other "tool"?

Very simple: pour gasoline and apply match. This is the preferred way of killing entire houses full of occupants in countries where guns aren't as easily available.

How would you go about killing (or injuring) anyone from a significant distance with a rock, even?

Again, that's YOUR straw-man. Most homicides are committed at very close range, regardless of weapon.

How likely is it that you would set out to commit a robbery or a drug rip-off armed with a blunt object? You might indeed; but you are far more likely to do that if you have a firearm; just admit it, okay?

Why is it then that countries like the U.K. have no shortage of successful robberies committed with no firearms at all?

How likely is it that you would kill your spouse or partner with the plan of killing yourself directly afterward, if the tools at your disposal were a bottle of sleeping pills, a pillow, a brick and a high bridge?

People in Japan (with suicide rates far higher than ours) find ways to do it all the time. Common methods of suicide are jumping in front of trains, leaping off high places, hanging, or overdosing on medication. No doubt these same people would still find a way.

How likely is it that you would go to your place of employment or your school or a public place with the intention of killing as many people as possible if you had only a baseball bat in your arsenal?

As I posted in this forum several months ago, a disturbing trend of attacks happening in China lately are by machete-weilding perpetrators killing many people -- even defenseless kids -- before finally being stopped. While you may have a point that these perps are often caught alive before they can kill themselves, I kind of prefer they do everyone else the favor and save us the trouble of having to try them and pay to house their sorry asses in prison for the rest of their miserable lives. In a way, I kind of have more respect for assholes that end their own lives after they get through with their killing sprees, saves everyone else the trouble.

How about you or someone go take a look at a sample of the thousands of firearm homicides that take place in the US annually and offer up some significant number where you can at least credibly assert that the homicide would have been committed absent a firearm?

What you fail to realize is that we don't have a gun problem as much as we have a CRIME problem. Yes, our violent crime rate (despite falling for the last two decades) is still very high compared to other parts of the developed world. But there are several factors that feed into that which have nothing to do with guns. Inner-city gangs, the "War on Drugs", wealth inequality in general -- all play a much bigger role than the mere availability of guns.

How about you do the same for some robberies? -- and be sure to include homicides in the course of robbery (which skew the robbery stats for the US to an extent that does not apply in comparable societies with much less widespread access to firearms, since the event is classified by its highest offence, thus removing it from robbery numbers).

Most robberies that end in murder may indeed involve a firearm, but most robberies DON'T end in murder. So you're talking about a very rare event.

Could you also identify the homicide-suicides where a firearm was the "tool" and assess the likelihood of them occurring where there was no firearm? (An international comparison of the incidence of homicide-suicide might be very interesting in this particular case -- the drug war isn't a factor that can be drug up as somehow proving USAmerican exceptionalism, wholly inadequate though that explanation is even where it might be relevant in any event, for instance.)

Why do you put the onus on me to dig up all relevant statistics? You're the one claiming guns CAUSE people to do violence. If you want to change people's minds in this forum, why don't you do all the grunt-work and report back to us with solid numbers?

I'll grant you that most murder-suicides here in the U.S. do indeed involve firearms, but murders happen all the time in other countries where firearms aren't available. Sure, the perp may wait and/or travel some distance after the murder before committing suicide himself, but the end result is just the same. Dead is dead.