Paul, must you believe EVERYTHING you read on the internet? ;)

Care to put up evidence that counters the government sources and peer reviewed scientific articles used in his link than discrediting it out of hand.

I'm going to side with numerous scientific proven surveys and factual evidence published in various impartial articles over the previous decades, rather than the rights obsessed, gun hugging patriots know as "the National Rifle association" which is obscenly biased.

I'm all for rights and freedom, every Western civilization has them, but weapons are not needed to protect either.

Yeah, they've done so incredibly well on the whole coming ice age morphing into global warming morphing into global climate change because the global warming proved to be just as much a hoax as ice age. Time magazine even had the ice age and meltdown covers about 30 years apart to prove it. Yeah, I put tons of faith in those scientists who are vehemently anti-gun and test for their desired outcome as opposed to those defending our rights.

I’d like to offer these thoughts to you before I leave this dialog:

In the United States, a great many people have been fooled into believing the NRA (National Rifle Association) represents “the will of the people.” Most folks don’t know that the firearm manufacturers in the US have created (and they massively fund) an immensely powerful and influential Pro-Gun Lobby to promote and defend their own interests: high profits through brisk sales. They accomplish this by getting laws passed that support their cause[1], and preventing laws from being passed that could work against their cause[2].

The Pro-Gun Lobby is exceptionally well organized, very well-funded, and obviously, effective in the extreme. This is an example of how a relatively tiny group of fabulously wealthy and influential people has far more control than all the “voices” of a democracy combined. (By the way, the Pro-Gun Lobby is not an isolated example of this phenomenon at work.)

Mass-shootings and “terrorism” in the US are good for business, because after each well-publicized shooting (i.e., free ads for gun manufacturers), concerned and fearful citizens rush out to buy yet more firearms in the belief that they’ll be safer. This always results in a gun sales spike (AKA more profit for gun manufacturers) after a mass shooting.

Closing remarks: A decade ago, I’d spend hours and days supporting my views by provide data, proof, links to research, etc. I’ve since learned this: It’s like arguing atheism to a religious fundamentalist, in that nothing I can say or reveal can change a believer’s thinking.

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[1] Examples: (1) by law, you cannot sue a gun manufacturer for injury or death caused by their product, and (2) the law prevents the paper-based data used for forearm background checks from being computerized; the checks are time-limited and default to a “yes” if they cannot be performed in a timely manner.

[2] Example: (1) law prohibits the Center for Disease Control (CDC) from researching firearm injuries/fatalities and compiling data on same, (2) while laws exist for (trivial) background checks before purchasing a firearm at a bricks-and-mortars store, no such checks are required at gun shows or online purchases.

Wrong on several counts including in your examples but as you say it's pretty pointless to provide facts to those who have made up their minds otherwise.

The wasn't the scientist. That was the news papers and magazines reporting on science matters by choosing what would lead to the best head lines. The Ice Age predictions from 30 years ago were from a minority of the climate science community. The majority were talking about the warming we see today.

If guns made you safer, and prevent crime, the US wouldn't have the highest homicide rates or highest crime rates of developed countries, and it wouldn't have the highest prison population in the World. The trend so far is increasing every year, there's been 100 mass shootings this year in the US, 3 yesterday and 5 the day before, every year pretty much the record is broken for the previous year. More guns = more crime/shootings, it's very basic mathematics.

Lining up all violent felons and mass executing them would save us a ton of money AND virtually eliminate crime in the US.

The point being missed here is the 2nd amendment addresses oppression, be it by a criminal or by government, by giving the people a powerful tool to force both govt and criminal to think twice about breaking into my house to impose their will on me without me being capable of resisting that effort.

The simplistic analogy about gun possession and crime-murder rates falls far short of even approaching a rational analysis. No way to remove one weapon category and then see what the effect of that removal would actually be. It would be as futile as trying to name the total number of lethal weapons in a single household and I can easily kill you with a number 2 pencil or even my bare hands. One good karate chop to your larynx will do the job fine.

Now you have to understand crime. Criminals cross a threshold where their respect for your well being is sacrificed so they can rationalize their actions and ignore the catastrophic consequences to their victims. Considerable analysis of two examples, Switzerland and Germany, under Hitler would be interesting.

I could name 100 "weapons of mass destruction" in my own garage. Tie you up, put a plastic bag over your head and watch you suffocate. A file, even a coat hanger will do the job, 250cc of air in a syringe.

Fukushima was predictable, bottom line, they screwed up and built it where the largest fault on the globe (parts of the marianas trench) should have been obvious to any same person of minimal intelligence.

The scientific method requires skepticism until the evidence overwhelms that skepticism, something you WILL NEVER SEE IN THE CONTEXT OF THIS FORUM.