Hi Christoph and Rob,

It's been well said that there are lies, there are really bad lies, and then there are statistics. And I've said that math is just a languange. Therefore it can be used to enlighten or deceive, depending on the speaker.

The truth is that you will find some places in this world with lower murder rates than here in the U.S., and other places with higher. My point is that the availability of guns is not the problem, and neither is their scarcity the solution. This simple fact can be intuitively understood, and has been statistically born out by comparing crime rates between states here that allow and disallow citizens to go armed, that when citizens are armed the population as a whole is safer.

Consider Rob's statistics that he cites. He's shown that you're less likely to be murdered in the Netherlands than in all but about 5 U.S. states. What his statistics don't show is the correlation between those states that allow citizens to carry weapons, those that disallow it altogether, and the continuum of political environments between those two extremes. For example, there are some states where you can legally carry a gun, but politically you will be more aggressively prosecuted if you use one, being forced to spend time and money convincing a jury that you were defending yourself. Now I could argue that those states at the more restrictive end of that spectrum perpetuate the criminal mentality which then spills over into the more libertarian states where it is effectively stamped down by the armed populace. And in fact this has been shown to be the case in at least a couple of studies. The problem with such studies is that they inevitably serve more to obfuscate than illuminate. So instead of going there, I will simply point out two objective facts. First, the second safest state in the U.S. is New Hampshire, where anyone can carry a gun at any time, without even getting a license or permit. Second, the only state that's safer has about the lowest population density of any state in the U.S..

The real question to be asked then is "Why?" Why are people less violent in some places, and more violent in others? The longer we keep vainly insisting that guns are the problem, the longer it will be before we discover the truth.

And in the final analysis, I philosophically oppose outlawing or otherwise impeding citizens from keeping and bearing arms. Do you really want to trust the police to keep you and your family safe? To what extent will you sacrifice liberty for security? No antelope on the plains of Africa enjoys a life expectnacy even close to those living in zoos. Will you live in a world where the authorities lock you into your home every evening, for your own protection of course, and then awaken you in the morning to eat the diet they approve for you before they transport you to your workplace?

The logical consequence of the position that only the authorities should have the ability to protect you is truly absurd, much worse than I've just cited. So let's try to discover the real problem instead of just assuaging irrational fears with straw man arguments.

As for Erik's comment that "He hates guns," I understand what he means and I don't want to come across as being pedantic. So please, no one interpret this as a rebuttal of his position. Nonetheless, his statement makes a point that I believe goes directly to the real problem that so many people want to blame on guns.

I could no more hate a gun than I could love one. I could never hate or love a hammer or a screwdriver or a car or a computer. These are all tools, things I use to make my life easier. But I do believe that the problem, this ill-defined circustance that underlies the debate of this thread, whatever it is, has at its root the tendancy of so many to love things and use people, instead of the other way 'round.