Those statistics, brilliantly and articulately stated though they may have been, are a load of crap. Saying, "I dunno, I heard it on the evening news" in no way lends credibility to such a statement. One of the characteristics of Pro-Gun-Prohibition statistics is either poor sampling or outright twisting of the available data.
While I can't comment on a statewide level, it is a FACT that the CITIES with the strictest gun control laws are also the cities with the highest rates of violent crime, such as Washington DC and New York City.
Violence is NOT determined by the availability of weapons. Violence is determined by a society's CULTURE, and as a result, the oft-quoted examples of high-gun-prohibition, low-crime nations like Japan or England are meaningless -- since you can find examples of nations like Israel or Switzerland, where citizens have ready access to firearms but low gun crime, or nations like Mexico or Columbia, where firearms are more or less banned but people are being gunned down in the streets every day. That's a question of culture, not weapons availability.
As for knives, laws that restrict knife ownership are also MEANINGLESS in terms of crime prevention, because the majority of stabbings that occur in the United States are the result of domestic disputes involving kitchen cutlery.
Razor
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AKTI #A000845
And tomorrow when you wake up it will be worse.
[This message has been edited by Razoredj (edited 04-18-2000).]