> I trust you that the rural gun-toting types you described are
> pretty harmless and likeable - it is the suburban "law-n-order"
> types, urban "wannabe-gangstas" and psychotic IT workers that
> are much more scary.
You know what they say about opinions ...
I love this kind of "pseudo-fact slinging" because it's so fun to debunk. It turns out that the rate of gun violence[*] is about the same between urban and rural areas; it's the suburbs where it's lower.
Can't you just admit that you have an irrational fear? I have one of being in the middle of open water. There, I said it. Oh, and snakes. Have fun with that one.
But I'm not about to ask for new laws to prohibit it.
/jordan
[*] If you're afraid, I presume it's being afraid of violence
with the use of a gun, either on you personally or against
"society" in general -- so we can only look at actual violence
rather than the creepy feeling you get when you think about a
white man with a gun and a hard-on. You or someone else
mentioned 'accidents' which can be seen clearly as an insignificant
cause of death in the US ... here's a good data set:
http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcaus.html