On Wed, 06 Jan 1999 18:20:21 GMT, "M. Eglestone"
 wrote:

>Let's look at total population of the U.S. and gun involved crimes,
>shooting, deaths and injuries for a 12 month period. There are 271+
>million people living in this country. If you add up ALL the figures
>that involve death or injury by guns, excluding self defense, you
>still have LESS than 1 percent of the population involved. It's more
>on the order of .015 percent of the Total U.S. Population that are
>directly or indirectly effected by the presents of guns.
>
> Which sort of indicates that 99 percent of the population is
>"perfectly safe" from gun related incidents each year and, that guns
>are not much of a problem. Any time you can ASSURE 99 percent of the
>population that they WILL be safe from anything, you're doing good.
>
> Go ahead and do the figures yourself. Take the total population of
>this country as your base figure. Add up ALL the categories of gun
>related deaths or injuries that you can get your hands on. If the
>figures total more than 1 percent of our population (per year) I'll
>eat my hat. I was perfectly satisfied when I thought it was around 2
>percent, but I couldn't even get the figures up THAT high when I did
>the math.
>
> Folks, there are RISK factors involved in all activities that life
>presents to us. The risk factors involved in gun ownership just to NOT
>warrant all the fuss that's being made over the subject.
>
> Mike Eglestone

Thanks, Mike, for a diversion from the ongoing discussion, your
remarks having nothing at all to do with my post or with anyone
else's, as far as I can tell.

Your reasoning puzzles me, though.  If we are at low risk for
something, like, say, murder, we should conclude that the low risk
factors involved do not warrant all the fuss that's being made over
the subject?  You sure you want to say something like that on such
newsgroups as tx.guns and talk.politics.guns?  

Best regards,

--Jim McCulloch