XPost: can.general, can.politics, bc.general   
   XPost: bc.politics   
   From: bo774@FreeNet.Carleton.CA   
      
   Over 90% of gunshot deaths in Canada are suicide.   
      
   Living in one of the small minority of Canadian homes with long guns predicts a   
   5 times higher rate of suicide completion, for the adults and teenage chidren.   
      
   While that may sound like a so what Darwin Award living in a gun home in Canada   
   also predicts a 3 times higher rate of being a victim of domestic homicide.   
      
   The success of gun registration and control in Canada has reduced the butchers   
   bill of dead women, but 1 in 3 women killed by a former intimate partner is   
   shot.   
   Of those 88 out of 100 are shot with long guns.   
      
   Nearly 4 out of 5 long gun killers say they would not have tried to kill their   
   former partners if they didn't have access to a firearm.   
      
   Long gun ownership and previous death threats have a high correlation with   
   actual   
   murder.   
      
   Gun death rates in Canada vary in lock step with the % of long guns in homes.   
   The   
   northern provinces/territories have the highest rate of long guns in homes, and   
   the highest rates of gun suicide, homicide, and accidental gunshot death.   
      
   Canada is no exception. The USA, Finland, and Switzerland have the highest   
   rates   
   of gun homes in the developed world, and the highest rates of gunshot deaths.   
   The   
   high Swiss gunshot death rate comes as a cognitive dissonant shock to most gun   
   nuts. Part of their catechism goes:   
      Every able bodied swiss male of military age keeps a military firearm in   
   their   
      home. This proves that guns in homes are not a hazard.   
   As usual they don't have a clue what they are talking about.   
      
   The numbers in this "debate" lead to an easy and direct conclusion about the   
   dangers of long guns in homes.   
      
   For some reason the news media seem to have been too lazy to bring up those   
   clear   
   and convincing public safety statistics during the latest "debate" about   
   whether   
   to register and control possession of long guns.   
      
   It wasn't that many years ago that we had a good old city boy driving around   
   Saanich, BC with a long gun on his pickup rack, stopping every now and then to   
   shoot at people from concealment, killing a teenage girl and continuing to   
   shoot   
   at a group of young children out for a bike ride. He shot out the tire on one   
   of the bikes, when they stopped to look at the flat tire they realized that   
   bullets were whizzing through the air around them.   
      
   Gun ownership is an anomaly in Canada, for good reason. Gun nuts complain about   
   Gun Homes being "de-normalized" in Canada. Well duh, the sane majority knows   
   that guns are more than 4 times a likely to be used to kill someone in the   
   home, suicice or domestic homicide, than anyone else. Why shouldn't the sane   
   majority look critically at the small minority of gun nuts who can't understand   
   the lethal risk that guns pose to the owners, and their families?   
      
   The ridiculously high number of handguns in the USA brings with it an 8 times   
   higher risk (per 100 k of population) of being shot with a handgun and dying.   
   Hand gun control in Canada works and saves lives. There is no reason to exempt   
   long guns, which come with an annual toll of dead bodies, most often the owners   
   or members of their families.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)