Oh please!

Here we go again. Some group called the Violence Policy Center has released statistics showing that in a 23 month period 44 US residents were killed by people legally carrying concealed weapons and therefore the "violence" is too much to bear and we must ban the practice. Perhaps my math is faulty but I think that translates to a 0.0000075% chance of being shot and killed in any given year.

No figures were given with regard to the number of lives saved by legally owned guns, but in my small county of 130,000 people several have been this year so far and of course shooting deaths in Florida have declined steadily since the State started issuing licenses and instituted the "castle doctrine."

I don't feel like doing all the work, but I'd like to see how many people die in ER waiting rooms every year because they can't get insurance. I'd like to see how many people are shot by drug gangs and more than anything I'd like to see how many innocent people are shot by the police. I'm willing to bet that more people are killed by MADD members driving SUVs while talking on the phone.

Of course the Flu claims about 36,000 lives every year and cars even more. Cigarettes and alcohol? Well, you know. More people are killed every year by lightening in Florida alone and we're not closing the golf courses in a hysterical panic.

At the risk of being called a "nut" I take a vastly higher risk of dying and of killing someone else every time I take the boat out -- or the car for that matter and I have to conclude that our friends at the Violence Policy Center are proceeding from the conclusion that guns are so frightening that the right to self defense against violent criminals is washed away by their phobia and so they must grasp at these meaningless arguments and fallacious conclusions like a drowning man at straws.

Yes, yes, the NRA. Everything including the Constitutional right is the fault of "the gun lobby." Forget not that that worn out straw/bogey man only exists because people are tired of being forced to accede to other people's phobias and it has such clout because it has so many individual, dues paying members. Much more of this twaddle and they'll have one more member.