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Guns
Brady Campaign Details Dangers of Guns
A Detailed Look at the Dangers of Guns at Home, Work and School
Guns in Our Homes
Although only about 34.5% of households have a gun, there are an estimated 193 million guns in America. Some estimates range as high as 250 million. That's almost one gun for every man, woman and child in the United States. Guns are not just in urban and rural homes, they're in homes everywhere – cities, towns, suburbs and farms. According to a survey conducted by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in 1998, there is a gun in 43% of households with children in America. There's a loaded gun in one in every ten households with children, and a gun that's left unlocked and just "hidden away" in one in every eight family homes.
While the Brady Campaign does not seek to prevent law-abiding citizens from owning, using, or purchasing firearms, people have the right to know the true risks associated with keeping a gun in the home. The fallacy that a home is safer with a gun in it and that a gun is a necessary means of self-protection is widely promoted by the gun lobby. The gun lobby also downplays or ignores the risks families take when they introduce a gun into the home.
Does Owning a Gun Make You Safer?
Guns in Our Workplaces
Gun violence in the workplace is a serious national problem:
* 77% of workplace homicides are committed with firearms.
* Murder is the leading cause of injury-related death for women in the workplace.
* 60% of major employers said in a 2005 survey that disgruntled employees had threatened to assault or kill senior managers in the last year.
* A May 2005 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that workplaces where guns were permitted were 5 to 7 times more likely to be the site of a workplace homicide compared to workplaces where guns are prohibited.
* Dozens of workplace shootings occur every year.
* In addition, car burglaries are a common source of guns on the black market. 28% of guns reported stolen were taken from parked cars, according to one study.
Guns in Our Schools
Guns in our schools would dramatically increase gun violence risks to students and trample on academic freedom. Drugs and alcohol use, plus suicide and mental health issues, all peak for people 18-24. Let's not add guns into that volatile mix. College campuses and schools are safer than the communities that surround them, precisely because those institutions have barred or tightly controlled firearms. We need to support those institutions, not strip them of the ability to control firearms on campus. Arming teachers is also a bad idea. Do we really want teachers shooting at students? Even police officers hit their targets less than 20% of the time.
Would Allowing Students to Carry Weapons Make Schools Safer?
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Comments
Guns aren't the problem; never have been...
People have been killing other people, for good reason or not, for thousands of years. It didn't start with guns, and it won't end if they magically disappear tomorrow. If guns were the problem, then how could my home state of North Dakota, tied for second-to-last in the Brady rankings, finish the year of 2008 with NO FIREARM-RELATED HOMICIDES? That's right, none, for an entire year. Two killings in the state last year, both stabbings. In a state with shall-issue concealed carry, no state-level background check for purchase (just the Federal one), and probably more guns than adults within its borders.
Sorry, these "rankings" just don't pass the smell test, OR the common-sense test. Double-fail.
Does owning a gun make you safer?
This is from a report by the U.S. Department of Justice concerning violent crime victims and self-defense:
"*A fifth of the victims defending themselves with a firearm
suffered an injury, compared to almost half of those who defended
themselves with weapons other than a firearm or who had no weapon."
You can read the entire report here:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/hvfsdaft.txt
I think I'll go with the odds.
Why so many topics started by Brady Campaign?
Why is this website getting so many topics posted by the Brady Campaign? Can people start as many topics as they please?
Given the responses to their previous discussions, one would think that their credibility had already been sufficiently damaged that it would be obvious they're not worth listening to.
What is the Brady Campaign's agenda?
“While the Brady Campaign does not seek to prevent law-abiding citizens from owning, using, or purchasing firearms...” appears to be a false statement.
The Brady Campaign words and actions actually work for the total elimination of private gun ownership.
On 12/30/ 2008 the Brady Campaign filed a lawsuit to to try to ban the People the right to keep and bear arms in the People’s National parks.
http://www.bradycenter.org/xshare/pdf/kempthorne-complaint.pdf
In February 2008 the Brady Campaign filed an amicus brief in the D.C v Heller Supreme Court case in support of the D.C. laws that did prevent law-abiding citizens from owning, using, or purchasing firearms.
The Brady Campaign said,
“THE SECOND AMENDMENT GUARANTEES
NO RIGHT TO POSSESS FIREARMS UNLESS
IN CONNECTION WITH SERVICE IN A
STATE-REGULATED MILITIA” (emphasis Brady's)
http://www.bradycenter.org/xshare/pdf/heller/07-290tsacBradyCenter.pdf
If the Brady Campaign is not pretending they do not intend to ban guns. Is this no longer the master plan?
Nelson T. 'Pete' Shields, Founder of Handgun Control, Inc.
"I'm convinced that we have to have federal legislation to build on. We're going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily — given the political realities — going to be very modest. Of course, it's true that politicians will then go home and say, 'This is a great law. The problem is solved.' And it's also true that such statements will tend to defuse the gun-control issue for a time. So then we'll have to strengthen that law, and then again to strengthen that law, and maybe again and again. Right now, though, we'd be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal — total control of handguns in the United States — is going to take time. My estimate is from seven to ten years. The problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns sold in this country. The second problem is to get them all registered. And the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition — except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors — totally illegal."
-Pete Shields, Chairman and founder, Handgun Control Inc., "A Reporter At Large: Handguns," The New Yorker, July 26, 1976, 57-58
This group has changed their name, but have they changed their stripes?
“Gifts to Handgun Control, the advocacy organization, dropped after it changed its name to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence in 2001.
“Seven years later, we still use the old name on the outer envelope of our mailings because responses drop when we don’t,” said Mary Ester, the Brady Campaign’s director of development.”
http://philanthropy.com/news/prospecting/5709/whats-in-a-name-a-hunger-relief-group-is-about-to-find-out
The Brady campaign finds fault with every firearm made, too big, too powerful, too small too concealable, looks military, shoots too many bullets and so forth.
So, Brady Campaign, please name which firearms, make and model, you do not seek to prevent law-abiding citizens from owning, using, or purchasing.
Ignorance
The idea that "a home is safer with a gun in it and that a gun is a necessary means of self-protection" has become a "fallacy" is 100% pure ignorance.
Assume a member of the brady campaign has someone invade their home with their loved ones inside that home. This invader has an illegal gun and wants to do nothing more than kill. You have 4 kids in different rooms, and you and your wife in the same room. You hear a gun shot go off and you call 911. Let's say you eve have security cameras in the rooms and are on eof the rich and elite members of the brady campaign. Are you prepared to sit and watch your children be shot one by one while you sit and wait for the police to show up who will then have to clear your house our room by room? I for one would rather have a weapon available to at least give myself and my family a fighting chance to survive.
What you don't understand brady campaign is that no matter what laws you make a criminal will ALWAYS find a way to have a weapon, gun or not. They will always break the law to do it or they wouldn't be called criminals. Do you suggest a better way for the average person to defend themselves and their families? You are a hazard to everything that is great in this nation, and your statistics fail to mention the lower crime rate for all communities when conceal carry is available. Do australia and england have lower crime rates now because they don't allow guns? Nope, and it's your ideas that's causing their surge in crime. Do us a favor and take your inept ideas and horrible logic somewhere else. This country has seen through that for many years, it's time you realize your support is in the extreme low minority, and those that do support you would ALL with they had a gun if their family was being systematically murdered.