I'd Like to Call the Attention of MikeB Readers to This Excellent Gun Myth Busting Website

The website is Gun Information.org, and the page which particularly impressed me is entitled Gun Control and the 2nd Amendment.  I would encourage readers to check out the full debunking of the various gun myths, and in particular, take a look at their excellent graphs.  The site is exceptionally well researched, well written and well reasoned.  Our readers know how much I respect quality sources.  It addresses a number of the topics we have covered here just recently, and does so in a manner which offers more light and less heat than some of our discussions have. 

I would encourage not only reading the content of the site, but also supporting them with a financial donation in appreciation.

Here is a brief excerpt of their impeccable content:

Read! Enjoy! Support - PLEASE!  Think!!!!!!!

MYTH: The crime rate has been skyrocketing in the UK and Australia since stricter gun control laws were enacted in 1996-1997.
TRUTH: The truth is that the UK police has changed its system for recording crime since implementing new gun control laws. This change in recording crime made it appear that the crime rate went up. The British Crime Survey, which was unaffected by this change, shows a decrease in crime.

MYTH: Keeping guns in the home increases personal protection.
TRUTH: Obviously, self defense is not a good argument against gun control since those who own firearms are actually more likely to be victims of homicide. Two studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine revealed that keeping a gun in the home increases the risk of both suicide and homicide. Keeping a gun in the home makes it 2.7 times more likely that someone will be a victim of homicide in your home (in almost all cases the victim is either related to or intimately acquainted with the murderer) (source) and 4.8 times more likely that someone will commit suicide (source). Guns make it more likely that a suicide attempt will be successful than if other means were used such as sleeping pills.

MYTH:"Guns don't kill, people kill people" is a good argument against gun control.
TRUTH: This pro-gun argument makes about as much sense as claiming that "glasses don't see, eyes see" is a good argument against wearing glasses. Glasses are a tool which help people to see just as guns are a tool that help people to kill and injure others. Empirical research indicates that firearms increase the chances that a crime will turn deadly. A study done by the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence reported that a victim is about five times more likely to survive if an attacker is armed with a knife rather than a gun (source). Furthermore, The International Crime Victim Survey concluded that there is a correlation between gun ownership and an increase in both homicide and suicide.

MYTH: Guns are used defensively 2.5 million times each year in the US.
TRUTH: Gary Kleck conducted a survey which concluded that 2.5 million people in the US each year use guns to defend themselves. One percent of the US population is between 2 and 3 million. So if only one percent of the survey respondents had answered the survey dishonestly that would make the results of the survey inaccurate by millions. According to the NCVS (National Crime Victim Survey) guns are used defensively less than 100,000 times each year (source).

MYTH: A decrease in crime in Kennesaw, Georgia after it passed a law which required people to keep a firearm in their homes shows that guns reduce crime.
TRUTH: Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig explain, "The case of Kennesaw, Georgia, which adopted an ordinance in 1982 requiring every household to keep a gun, has been prominent. There have been several published analyses of the burglary trends in Kennesaw around the time of the ordinance, with contradictory results.

MYTH: People in Switzerland are heavily armed. There is an assault weapon in every Swiss home.
TRUTH: It's true that Swiss soldiers are required to keep their assault rifles at home. How big is the Swiss Army? 400,000 (source). There are about 3 million Swiss households (source- PDF file). 400,000/3,000,000= 0.133. Therefore, there is a military assault rifle in about 13% of Swiss homes. Switzerland also has rather strict gun control laws. In Switzerland a permit is required in order to purchase a weapon (The permit shows that you are at least 18 and don't have a criminal record). A permit is also required to carrry a weapon. Such a permit is mostly issued to people who work in security-type occupations.

MYTH: The 1976 handgun ban in Washington D.C. caused an increase in crime.
TRUTH: The handgun ban has prevented 47 deaths each year (source) Gun control has saved lives. Let's look at a graph that displays information about the homicide rate in the District of Columbia a decade before the ban and a decade after. There are random fluctuations in the crime rate from year to year so it's best to look at homicide data from many years. In the decade preceding the ban, the homicide rate exceeded 35 per 100,000 4 times. In the decade following the ban this happened only once. The average homicide rate of the ten years that followed the ban was lower than the homicide rate of the previous decade.

MYTH: If you outlaw guns only the outlaws will have guns.
TRUTH: If you outlaw guns, very few criminals will have guns. In America guns start out legal. Then they enter the black market one way or the other (source). So if you have less legal guns then there will less guns entering the black market and consequently less outlaws owning guns. Think about it. Nations with very strict gun control laws such as the UK, Australia, and Japan have much lower gun crime rates than the US.

MYTH:Gun ownership is a protection against political tyranny.
TRUTH: Private ownership of guns was very common under Saddam Hussein's regime (source).It certainly didn't protect the Iraqi people against political tyranny. Gun ownership was legalized in Germany in 1928, five years before Hitler rose to power. Despite the claims of pro-gun activists, gun ownership did nothing to stop a tyrant like Hitler from seizing power.