American Gun Control

Self defense cases may have dropped in recent years, but I believe this has something to do with what the average person and jury believes to be a 'justifiable homicide.' The very definition of self defense seems to be changing. When a police officer shoots back at a criminal, people protest in the streets for days, causing more damage and starting more violence than what they were protesting about to begin with. One example of this would be of Ferguson, Missouri, after the death of Michael Brown. Less and less people feel comfortable with picking up a gun to defend themselves, because in the end it may be futile, and they could go to jail for it. Maybe I'm just not accurately reading your statistics on suicide, or maybe they are simply misleading. Committing suicide, with either a gun or a knife, can be fatal. Whether one chooses for the attempt to be fatal or to inflict pain is what counts. Usually using a knife means that the victim is not yet ready to take their own life. As for fire arm deaths in low gun control versus high gun control states, of course low gun control state rates will be higher. Guns are more accessible. But that does not mean the suicide rate is higher overall. People will just be forced to use different, more painful, drawn out methods, like overdosing or repeated cutting. In fact, Japan has some of the world's toughest gun control laws, and yet they still see double the amount of suicides as the U.S.A. does. According to the CDC, unintentional firearm deaths are ranked as ninth and tenth cause for unintentional injury deaths from age groups 5-9 and 10-14 respectively in 2013. For everybody else, unintentional firearm deaths does not even make top ten. Yes, guns are dangerous. There is no denying that. But in the hands of a child, or a careless parent, most everything can become a lethal danger. Plastic bags, blankets, and the strings that adjust blinds, all fit into this category. I'm certainly not seeing a push for restrictions on baby blankets because of its potential smothering capabilities. A gun doesn't kill people- people kill people.In response to the article from the Washington Post, the author actually admits to the second graph, its main source of argument, being biased. "The highest ratio of killings to population happened at the Renegade Mountain resort in Tennessee, due to an incident in which four people were killed -- in a place with about 40 permanent residents. Since large-scale shootings in very small places skew the scale..." Chicago, with it's tight gun control laws, still continues to have the highest crime rate, and its population does not excuse it. New York City has nearly four times the amount of people, and Los Angeles twice as much, yet their crime rates are still lower. America is not only the source of example like this: Russia has similar problems, as I cited in the last round. Overall, tracing the real source of the problem (and finding accurate, unbiased sources) prove that gun control restrictions simply do not work. Unfortunately most people choose to look at the gun control issue with face value only, without stopping to check the facts and use deductive reasoning, but that is a matter for another time. Thank you for taking up this challenge. I appreciate that you took the time to respond.http://www.cbsnews.com...https://www.washingtonpost.com...http://www.cdc.gov...