• Every day fourteen American children and adolescents die in gun-related incidents.
Yes, in 1995 guns did kill 35,957 people in American streets, homes, businesses, and schools. To put this in perspective, in the Korean War (1950-1953) 33,651 Americans were killed and another 58,148 in Vietnam (1954-1975). It is appalling to think that more people are killed in one year during peacetime in the United States than were killed in a three-year war. To make matters worse, the United States has the highest gun-murder and hate crime rates of any other high-income nation.
Now it is clear that guns kill alarmingly high numbers of Americans, yet they continue to buy more. "In 1997 Americans owned about 240 million guns and more than one-third of American households had at least one gun," according to Statistics Canada. Think about what that means. If you don't own a gun in America, it's likely that at least one of your neighbours does. And the numbers tell us how dangerous that is. Furthermore, people wrongly believe that allowing more people to have guns will reduce crime and violence. Gun advocates use Florida as an example because it used to be a state brimming over with gun-related violence until the passage of a 1987 law allowing nearly anyone to carry a concealed weapon. Gun advocates say, after the law was passed, Florida's crime rate decreased. But that is not true. For between 1987 and 1992, the violent crime rate increased by almost 20 percent and every year since then, the state has had the highest crime rate in the nation, all according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. Even then, people still purchase firearms.
Although, gun advocates say, "Guns can make it easier for people, particularly those who are relatively weak physically, to be able to defend themselves and others." This belief is not unfounded. Many studies point to the value of guns in stopping crimes.