Quote Originally Posted by Sinfix_15 View Post
Nice healthy argument you present here. I agree with most of it. Benefit vs dangers, are we judging this based on perception or stats? Statistically, only 300 people died from rifles last year, that's a pretty small margin of danger. Also, dont undervalue the benefit. A gun could save your life. Nothing is more valuable than that. Also, i stated that the government could provide us with transportation as they do in many places. The government's ability to meet our travel demands wouldnt be that much of a difference between their ability to protect us would it? Also, Obama's verbiage was " If we can save 1 life then we have to try " , i didnt say that... he did. If it's about lives.... and measured down to the importance of a single life.... then cars kill more people than guns. A life is a life no matter how it's taken. Are we saying that getting to bestbuy 15 minutes faster is more important than human life? Buses can provide transportation... sure, it would be a huge pain in the ass.... much like gun control.
Unfortunately we don't have very many studies on gun violence, partly due to the NRA's influence, and that is part of the reason we have such strong disagreements on what is reasonable. You say not to undervalue a gun's ability to save your life but stats say that if you have a gun in your home, you are more likely to be involved in an accidental shooting than to successfully protect yourself from a home invasion. How should that be interpreted? I'm sure you could find many stats that support gun ownership. The point is, there is evidence on both sides so a reasonable debate still exists. Furthermore, stats will never make us all have the same values.

I don't agree with Obama's gun policies but I also think you are taking that statement too literally. I think it is merely a rhetorical statement to say we need to take a strong look at what should be done to prevent these types of incidents to the extent we have control over. I don't think Obama would support banning all children even though that would certainly cut down on the number of child deaths we have every year.