[neocone]

I used to be a gun-hating Canadian brainwashed in the hogwash of "guns are bad, very bad" until I read that crime is a few folds higher in Canada and skyrocketing in Europe and especially England. I am glad to live in the States now.

Since law abiding citizens cannot carry that little metallic tub able to send a few grams of lead at supersonic speed, certainly criminals and the mafia sees their relative terrorism coefficient increase proportionally: link

Also in Quebec, defenseless farmers are forced by the Hell's Angels to harbor Marijuana plantation, which apparently thrive amid corn.

In America farms and rural villages are where the shotguns and rifle abound. Strange I never hear of organized theft of tractors there or organized gangs taking control of entire corn fields...

Remember: When seconds count... the Police is only minutes away...

[bobaloo]

Glad to see you've seen the light.

Here's what it boils down to me on a personal level. I have a 21 year old daughter who is 5' zero inches tall and 100 pounds. Should she have to defend herself against a 6'4 guy with her bare hands? She carries a .45 1911, there's a reason Sam Colt called his gun the "Great Equalizer."

Like you said, I live in a town where lots of folks drive around with guns in their cars, pretty much everyone owns a number of guns, we have a gun club with 1200 members just out of town and about 10 percent of the population has a concealed carry license. I've only been in town for 20 years, but in that time there's never been an armed robbery, maybe 1 burglary, crime is pretty much limited to drunks and pissed off spouses. Somehow those evil guns don't seem to be sneaking out at night and causing trouble.

For years we heard about how much better is was in Europe because the murder rates were so much lower. If you look at the stats you'll see that England is catching up with us fast in that regard, and is way worse than the US in all other forms of crime, particularly burglary and robbery. Crime has been skyrocketing there while holding steady or dropping in the US.