Quote:
Originally posted by Neb:
quote: Originally posted by Thoran:
Israel allows it's citizens to carry firearms (if they've received training) and actually will provide a citizen with a firearm at their request (which it does millions of times a year), It has one of the lowest murder rates in the world.
|
Do not forget what country you're talking about. They're pretty much threatened too much by the surrounding countries to think of hurting each other much I should say, that might be a factor. As well as being the reason for them allowing gun ownership. Likewise, the Swiss might also simply be a less violent group of people.[/QUOTE]yes exactly... they're a less violent group of people. My belief is that the presence or lack of firearms really doesn't change the death toll much. If a society is violent then it will show in the statistics, but statistics are funny things, for instance, Europe has much lower rates of Homocide than the US, but makes up for it by much higher suicide rates (weird...)
It's also interesting that the Palestinian terrorists don't use guns to do their public damage. Not long after a gunman walked into a McDonalds in California and killed 20 unarmed people (a few years back), 3 terrorists walked into a crowd of Israeli's and opened fire on them. They killed one before two of them were shot and killed and the third wounded by armed civilians. The surviving terrorist was quoted as saying that "it wasn't fair" that the civillians were armed.
Now they sneak around an blow stuff up, and I think even if you took the guns away 100%, the criminals would move to something else... like bombing. Whatever component of our society (inequality, poverty, education, whatever...) causes these violent tendencies is the root cause, guns are simply the knee jerk reaction. (Like when Chicago banned "Super-Soakers" after some kid got killed for spraying someone)