Don't worry; your toys are safe.
Guns aren't toys, any more than computers, sports cars, or light aircraft, and can't responsibly be treated as such. Fun, yes; toys, no. Want a toy, buy an Airsoft.
And so are all of your delusional assumptions. From the look of gun-lovers on DU, only intelligent, responsible, middle class people have guns! I wonder where all the murdered bodies come from?
Well, your gun-banning man Bloomberg (yes, he's a repub, too) says that 90% of murderers in New York had prior criminal records, as I recall.
Roughly
40 percent of U.S. households own guns. Between one fourth and one third of Dems and indies personally owns a gun. Yet most homicides are committed by people who are Federally barred from owning guns, a significant number of whom live in jurisdictions where lawful handgun ownership is practically impossible even for those with clean records.
Gun ownership by
criminals is a problem--so address it. But bashing squeaky clean non-criminals because of felons with guns is not all that different than the right's attempt to conflate gay men with pedophiles. You are talking about entirely different populations.
BTW, want to fight criminal violence, then do something about the conditions that create it. Lack of inner-city educational and economic opportunites, and the insanely militaristic approach the U.S. takes toward non-approved herbs. Alcohol Prohibition created lots of gun violence, too...
But, regarding the education level of gun enthusiasts...here are the results from a THR poll on the education level of members there:
< High school............................18..........2.24%
High School Diploma......................90.........11.18%
Associates/Technical school degree......123.........15.28%
Bachelors Degree........................324.........40.25%
Master's degree.........................159.........19.75%
Doctorate +..............................91.........11.30%
I'm PM'ing you the link so you don't think I'm making this up; the accompanying thread gives degrees and specialties. I don't recall if I posted there or not, but I am a technical writer with a B.A. and some master's work in English, and my wife also has a B.A.
Shooting is a very science-intensive, numbers-intensive, law-intensive hobby if you get into it much, and it also requires significant disposable income. So there is a selection bias toward people with degrees.
BTW, would you believe a link from an
anti-gun website that said the same thing?
dispatch.third-way.com/articles/2006/01/25/taking-back-the-second-amendment
There probably is no political issue that progressives handle more poorly than guns. Our problems begin with some basic misconceptions about who owns guns and why they own them.
So let’s get a few facts on the table:
* Nearly half of the voting population of America has a gun in the home. That’s right — half.
* And these aren’t hunters. The vast majority of gun owners possess firearms for self-protection, not sport.
* Gun owners don’t live in trailer parks. In fact, gun owners are generally wealthier and more educated than the rest of the population.
* They are not right-wingers. Politically, gun owners are only slightly more conservative than non-gun owners. Their views on hot-button culture issues like abortion and gay marriage are just a tick to the right of all other voters. They attend religious services at the same rate as non-gun owners.
That from a rather prominent member of the gun-control lobby, Jim Kessler (formerly of AGS).
Oh wait--I'll just go to one of your websites, and they'll provide me with all the the pro-gun statistics and talking points I will ever need.
www.fbi.gov is a gun-lobby website?
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_20.htmlThat's the only stat I'm aware of that I've posted in the last few days (the one that says, you know, that rifles are almost never used in criminal homicides). Guess the
Uniform Crime Reports are just a gunnie fabrication, then, and you can only get the
real story from the repubs at the Brady Campaign...
Here's another one, showing that despite the hyperbole, the U.S. violent crime rate is still way down from 15 or 20 years ago, despite this past year's uptick. Guess the vast renaissance in gun sales after 1992 or so didn't cause a corresponding increase in the homicide rate after all..
Oh, wait, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics is another one of those unreliable gun-lobby sites, isn't it?
In the meantine, I hope your guns are safe and sound.
They are, don't worry.
And to quote Plutarch,
Пάλιν δ̀ὲ̀ του̑ Ξέρξου γράψαντος 'πέµψον τὰ ὅπλα' ἀντέγραψε 'µολὼν λαβέ'.
(From
Moralia, III, Apophthegmata Laconica.)
There are an awful lot of people like me who want to sneak into your house and steal your toys.
But
unlike you, I don't have the slightest desire to break into anyone's house and take their stuff, either personally or by proxy, nor do I wish to dictate to others how to live their lives.