At 09:14 AM 6/16/01, Dan M. wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Ronn Blankenship" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <Recipient list suppressed>
>Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2001 7:03 AM
>Subject: [Fwd:] Re: Gun Control
>
>
> > Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year: 120,000.
> > Accidental deaths per physician.... 0.171
> > (U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services)
> >
> > Number of gun owners in the US: 80,000,000.
> > Number of accidental gun deaths per year (all age groups) 1,500.
> > Accidental deaths per gun owner: 0.0000188
> >
> > Statistically, therefore, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more
> > dangerous than gun owners.
> >
> > FACT: Not everyone has a gun, but everyone has at least one Doctor.
> >
> > Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors
> > before this gets out of hand.
> >
>Ah, its not a cost, but a cost/benifit question. How many lives are saved
>by the use of handguns per year?
There's no way of telling. For every time a convenience store operator
being robbed or a woman working late who is confronted by a mugger on the
way to her car shoots the attacker in self-defense, there are an unknown
number of similar attacks in which the criminal turns and runs as soon as
the would-be victim displays a weapon, or in some cases, only appears to
have a weapon. Many of these incidents are never reported to the police,
so there are no statistics on them. Add to those the unknowable number of
times a would-be criminal thinks again and does not rob or attack a certain
business or person because he realizes that there is at least a possibility
that his intended victim is armed, so if anything he looks for a different
victim who he is more sure is unarmed and helpless.
Some people have estimated, based on anecdotal reports of occurrences like
the above, that on the order of a million potential crimes per year may be
thwarted by an armed citizen defending him/herself with a firearm without
firing the weapon. I have no way of knowing if this figure is accurate,
even to order of magnitude. The only ones I can confirm are the ones that
I have personal knowledge of or those reported to me by reliable sources
such as acquaintances who have personal knowledge. Fortunately, those are
relatively few in number. I suppose a million such incidents per year in
the whole US would not be incompatible with the number of incidents I've
been made aware of.
-- Ronn! :)
