So there have been no statistical increases in accidental shooting-deaths of
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{chop}*
Your seriously uncharitable tone and inaccurate and improperly interpreted statistics really detract from you points. Please post more charitably and cease mocking other posters.
For example, you mentioned that there has been great variability in crime rates in Alaska compared to the rest of country as a whole. Well of course. It is a state with fewer than 900,000 people and you are comparing that the the entire USA with various others factors that tend to smooth out rate curves because the vastly different sample sizes. Please.
As for your statistic on bear maulings, you make four critical mistakes. First, why 40 year old statistics? Were later statistics not as helpful for your point? Next, while you claim to say “injury or death”, the numbers you quoted were actually just deaths. In Anchorage alone, there were three bear mailings last year, at least one was fatal. In two cases it was a pedestrian and bicyclist on a bike path (different bears.) The third problem is that carefully crafted “statistics” referred only to sparsely and occasionally populated “national parks”, not cities, state parks, national forests, state forests, BLM lands or private lands, where the vast majority of attacks occur. For example, the bear maulings that took place in Anchorage in the time of your statistics would not be included. My brother has had more than 15 grizzly bear encounters in the last 10 years. The third mistake is limiting the animal thread to grizzlies are not the only problem. Black bears, moose, wolves, lynx, and other large cats as well as large game pose threats to people. Moose are particularly problematic. Only a fool goes fishing in Alaska without a large caliber handgun.
By the way, black bears are a problem in Florida (and New Jersey and Georgia, and the Carolinas…)
But the point is not about the threats of wildlife creating a need for self protection. Rather the point of my early post, which you either could not figure out or chose to ignore, was that there is no huge increase in gun accidents as you and another protester claimed. While you are probably correct in your assertion that the rate of gun competence per capita is probably higher in Alaska, that does not mean that individual Alaskans who are gun competent are more gun competent that residents of the lower 48 who are gun competent. With few exceptions, those who actually obtain a CHL have demonstrated that they can competently handle guns.
It seems to me that people who are opposed to firearms, especially in the irrational and frankly mean manner of some of the posts on this thread, are actually arguing from a position of ignorance. They have not used a gun, not familiar with proper procedures and cannot separate the firearm from the person. In fact, you post also demonstrates a serious lack of understanding of the threats of various wildlife. In fact, you showed no understanding at all of the threats in not just rural areas, but even suburban areas. Not to mention what a “frontier” area really is.
Such a hatred of
guns and extending that to a hatred of those who carry them, with no distinction between legal and illegal purpose, can be likened to a hatred of homosexuals. We are, as Catholic called to love all people including homosexuals. Yet we must distinguish the person from the sin. When it comes to gun issues, it is absolutely critical to distinguish between legal use and illegal use.
One of the most critical first steps in any dictatorship is to disarm the public. With the direction the current US administration is taking, the last thing that should be encouraged is any limitation on the reasonable legal use of firearms, including concealed carry laws.
Please be charitable or even more people will add you to their ignore list.
