Nevertheless - equal or MORE uses for defense than for offense

Go back and count again. 135,000 deaths or injuries for "offense" as you put it. Total number of civilian defensive shootings, in the hundreds. The 67k includes people who showed a gun in defense, but it doesn't include Kreck's millions of sepculative numbers where there he assumed the criminal thought there might be a gun.

As opposed to voting rights absolutists? Fifth Amendment absolutists?

Voting rights absolutists and Fifth Amendment absolutists aren't responsible for people's deaths. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

You simply infer you have a gun and the bad guy goes away

Yes, it's Kleck's number, and it's been shown to be fraudulent. It also includes defensive uses of a gun by police, which could be extrapolated to number several every day by every armed police officer in the US, every day (there are nearly half a million sworn police officers in the US). And it includes defensive uses against animals. And by the military. We're talking pure imagination here. And all of it based on a sample of 196 phone interviews.

At the same time, the DOJ under Edwin Meese (a Second Amendment absolutist) could only account for 87,000 defensive uses of guns, not Kleck's 2.5million. And this was against 135,000 gun deaths or injuries in the US.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/p...

You see part of the problem, right? Here's some analysis of Kleck's number.

http://vacps.org/public-policy...

The number is a fantasy.

The inappropriate apostrophe is one of the last freedoms we have. If you try to take it away, you'll have to wrest it from my cold, dead finger's.

"Is it street legal" is probably one of the last questions I would ask.

No, scratch that. I don't care if it's street legal. I just want to know if it's got two cup holders and decent sound system. And as a long-time Burnout Paradise player, I want to know how much boost it has and how well it drifts around turns.

And don't forget we're still in the infancy of this technology.

How long does an "infancy" last? 3D printing has been around since the '80s.

Now let me reboot this frikin N7

Was it 3D printed?

Be afraid of the guy that holds his breath, takes a moment to aim and drops a round in your forehead with a bolt action single round rifle.

Does that happen a lot in your neck of the woods? I don't know who you are, but if you're concerned about someone coolly dropping a round in your forehead with a bolt action single round rifle, you might want to think about the life choices you have made.

My backup gun

Wrap your head around that. This guy needs a "backup gun".

I think my safety mechanisms work better than any smart gun ever can.

I'm sure the "gun safety" instructor thought the same thing before the nine year old girl, shooting an Uzi at his urging, blew him all to hell.

A gun is more capable of making good decisions than your average Second Amendment activist.

Oh, I've read the book, and I'm not the only one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Remember, John Lott is one of the guys pushing the "2.5 million" crimes prevented annually by guns. If that was true, it would make the US the most lawless country in the world. If that's your assertion, then we've got a place to start a conversation.

Number of robberies involving a fierarm, according to the FBI [fbi.gov]: about 170 000 per year

So more crimes are committed with guns than "valid defensive uses". OK, that's a starting point, and a very telling example of why gun control is needed.

There are bad guys all over the world. Australia's been able to figure out that guns don't help, and it's only the pathological love of guns and gun violence in America that prevents us from figuring it out, too.

Would you accept a report by the anti-gun Violence Policy Center that concludes there are 67,000 valid defensive uses of a firearm each year

Yes, but that's not the number that's bandied about by gun nuts. 67k is a long way from 2.5 million. So what does that tell you about the Second Amendment absolutists, and their intellectual honesty?

And how many of those "valid defensive uses of a firearm" were the only - or even the best - way to prevent a crime? How many were uses by law enforcement? And of the "valid defensive uses", how many were "stand your ground" uses that could have been completely avoided by someone with their wits about them?

The real number is closer to 12,000, with only about 200 cases of "justifiable homicide" with a gun. That's fewer than the number of accidental shootings.

The "2.5m" number includes anecdotal reports of someone who believes they were not the victim of a crime because supposedly the perpetrator "thought" he "might" have a gun. It is a number which you will only find on Second Amendment "advocacy" sites.

About three times that number of crimes were prevented by household pets, and ten times that number were prevented by dead-bolt locks and mean looks.

Don't forget the 2.5m crimes avoided through firearm self defense each year.

Yes, that's John Lott's number, which has been proven to be pulled straight out of his ass.

Note also that an average of one such accident per year

One? Are you joking? According to CDC’s WISQARS, there are about 14,000-19,000 nonfatal injuries stemming from accidental shootings per year in the U.S. That's in addition to ~500-600 unintentional deaths per year. Gun "enthusiasts" like to cite statistics on gun deaths since the rise of conceal/carry (which truly have a lot more to do with better trauma medicine), but they never want to talk about the number of shootings. If you really want to understand the extent of the damage of America's gun fetish, count the number of people who get hit by bullets.
http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/...

Of these about 20% are under the age of 25 and 10% under the age of 12.

Where do you get "an average of one such accident per year" unless you are focused strictly on injuries to your penis? Although I guess there is some evidence that gun owners have issues in that regard.

But yours is a common mistake people make when talking about guns, because they just don't know (or care) about the actual numbers. Much of the misdirected focus comes from the faulty research of the only "gun expert" that ever seems to appear in the media, the dishonest gun industry lobbyist and "researcher", John Lott whose book, "More Guns Less Crime" has been completely debunked.

[Full disclosure: I have been a gun owner for more than 4 decades. I've qualified 3 times as an expert marksman and twice as a sharpshooter, which is the second highest marksmanship designation (not counting the pro-marksman, etc. I support legal gun ownership and very strict gun control laws.]