re guns in backcountry no thanks in article qkcok s i usenet ins cwru edu ci cleveland freenet edu john k gever writes public health experts will tell you that you are far more likely have your gun stolen use it yourself on a family member or have it used on you than you are to use it on an actual criminal actually they won t what they ll tell you is that if you add up the number of suicides murders of one drug dealer by another legit self defenses of a battered spouse and so on you ll end up with a number that is much larger than the number of self defense killings against strangers committed in the bedroom btw they didn t honestly count the latter either but let s not quibble they try to claim that comparison is between the costs of self defense and the benefits but they re wrong this comparison doesn t measure the costs of self defense and it doesn t measure the benefits either for example the goal is not to kill the attacker whatever your relationship to him but to stop him while the number of killings may be proportional to the number of stops it isn t equal anyone who confuses that comparison with an honest evaluation is either lying or andy
