Cite, please? Any kind of evidence at all to back this up?
"[T]he adjective “well-regulated” implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training." - SCOTUS DC v Heller
Personally I think private citizens should be allowed to carry whatever the police forces are allowed to carry.
I agree with this sentiment 100%
Which country?
Most are sold for hunting and/or self defense
Citation? This is not my experience. Most of the people I know that purchase firearms do so either because they are collecting (finding a new, interesting firearm for their collection), or for target shooting (plinking, clays, paper, etc). Certainly that is what 99.99999999999% of the rounds run through those firearms end up being used for.
Hunters in my area are rare (urban) and maybe one or two firearms out of their entire collection (often dozens) are for SD.
"It happens enough that there is a story about it"?
No, that just means it is outlandish enough to warrant a breathless, hyperbolic headline.
Media reporting does not represent the "average story", only the most outrageous outliers. The occurrence of reporting of incidents by the media says nothing about their statistical likelihood.
Can't be done in the U.S. due to the 2nd Amendment; even in its current state of murkiness (what with the Drake/Moore/Peruta circuit split) mass confiscation isn't going to happen any time soon. But we can look at other countries - and there is no consistent correlation between violent crime and firearm ownership rates. Violent crime seems to correlate with other factors, e.g. socio-economics, poverty levels, corruption, etc.
Still looking for AD/ND injury/fatality rates, but certainly suicide *alone* is the leading cause, and AD/ND likely follow. It stands to reason that combined, they are still the leading cause.
CA, NJ, NY, IL, DC have not experienced a decrease in suicide rate that correlates with gun control efforts. Not that it matters, because even if they did, you'd be hard pressed to give proof of causation. You're the one making the claim, you provide proof of causation.
SCOTUS has left a gaping circuit split on the topic between Moore and Peruta. At some point they will have to opine on the level of scrutiny that should be applied to keep/bear regulation(s), since Heller/McDonald incorporated the 2nd amendment against the states. If they do not resolve it, I'd say the Constitution has failed, since that is their role.
SCOTUS declining a case has no legal bearing on litigation. Only an actual holding carries any weight. The Castleman holding you cited has absolutely no relevance to the circuit split in question, since neither Moore nor Peruta (nor Drake, for that matter) are prohibited persons.
You could argue that SCOTUS has significantly lowered the bar when it comes to scrutiny of prohibited persons legislation, but that really doesn't directly apply to the circuit split problem.
The 9th made an interesting decision in Peruta v San Diego
Did you bother reading this?
http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
7. Guns are used for self-defense often and effectively. “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008,” says the report. The three million figure is probably high, “based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys.” But a much lower estimate of 108,000 also seems fishy, “because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.” Furthermore, “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”
There is plenty of evidence that restricting gun ownership has no effect on suicide rates. So something in your assertion isn't adding up, or the studies you are citing are flawed.
http://www.policeone.com/close...
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Topi...
I read that cops are more likely to be killed by their own guns than another's. But I can't seem to find the statistics right now. www.ncjrs.gov is not responding.
Just because you heard it does't make it true. And even if it were true (which it isn't), the majority of self inflicted gun shot wounds are due to accidental (or negligent) discharge, or suicide attempt, neither of which "smart gun" technology would have any effect on.
Those who can, do; those who can't, write. Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record.
