Originally Posted by brendon444
Firearms violence of all types—homicides, suicides, and unintentional deaths.
1. Most of this violence involves the use of a handgun.
2. Handguns are easily concealed, engineered for maximum lethality, relatively inexpensive, and easy to acquire.
3. Handguns are used in nearly 70 percent of firearm suicides
and 80 percent of firearm homicides.
4. Canada has not so much a firearms problem as a handgun problem.
The Toll of Handgun Violence
The call to ban handguns is not inspired by a generalized hatred of guns. It is a response to the blood price that our nation has paid for the explosive growth of the handgun population over the past generation.
5. More than two out of three of the one million who died in firearm-related homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings since 1962 were killed with handguns—i.E., 667,000.
6. This weapon, which has inflicted pain and death in such a disproportionate degree, is owned by a distinct minority —only one out of six adults.
7. Out of the current total firearms population of some 190 million, rifles and shotguns outnumber handguns two to one, yet handguns account for the majority of killings, woundings, and gun crimes. For example, of all firearm-related crimes in 1993, 86 percent involved the use of a handgun.
8. The modern handgun has been honed for decades by the firearms industry to the highest possible level of lethality, just as race cars are continually redeveloped for maximum speed. The handguns that have been introduced into the market in the past two decades—especially high-caliber, high-capacity, semiautomatic pistols—meet the lethality standard admirably.
9. The increased efficiency of the handgun as a killing machine is the result of a strategy by the gun industry over the past decade and a half to boost sales.
10. This growth in killing power is the result of three variables deliberately designed into handguns—
Greater capacity, i.e. the ability to hold more bullets.
11.Higher caliber, meaning bigger bullets.
12. Increased concealability, facilitating criminal use.
13. These variables reached their zenith with the recent introduction of "pocket rockets,"—semiautomatic pistols in higher calibers that can be concealed in the palm of the hand.
Recent data reveal the effect of this decades-long trend. From 1990 to 1997, of the 160,000 homicides committed , more than half (55.6 percent) involved a handgun.
14. This block of 89,000 handgun homicides is larger than that of all other weapons used in homicides combined.
As the debate over gun violence is almost always framed in terms of fatalities, it is easy to overlook that, for every person killed with a firearm, approximately require medical treatment for wounds inflicted with a gun.
15. One estimate places the annual cost of immediate medical care for all gunshot wounds at $4 billion.
16. Other researchers take into account lifetime care and long-term economic loss, calculating the overall cost of gun violence in any given year to be in excess of $20 billion.
So yes, I dont see the point and they truly serve no purpose other than to inflict harm. Are they fun to shoot? Yes of course. But there is no need to have one.
Again this is just my opinion and if you dont agree that is fine. But this is why I see no use for hand guns. No need to get worked up. Everyone is welcome to their own opinions.
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