As well, high-profile crimes such as school shootings and the tragically large numbers of gun deaths among minority youth have raised many people’s awareness about guns and sparked renewed debate about gun control. Strident speeches and press releases from organizations on both sides of the issue have also contributed to the controversy. Private groups as well as government bodies hold many lively debates on what forms of gun control, if

• Every day fourteen American children and adolescents die in gun-related incidents.

Now it is clear that guns kill alarmingly high numbers of Americans, yet they continue to buy more. “In 1997 Americans owned about 240 million guns and more than one-third of American households had at least one gun,” according to Statistics Canada. Think about what that means. If you don’t own a gun in America, it’s likely that at least one of your neighbours does. And the numbers tell us how dangerous that is. Furthermore, people wrongly believe that allowing more people to have guns will reduce crime and violence. Gun advocates use Florida as an example because it used to be a state brimming over with gun-related violence until the passage of a 1987 law allowing nearly anyone to carry a concealed weapon. Gun advocates say, after the law was passed, Florida’s crime rate decreased. But that is not true. For between 1987 and 1992, the violent crime rate increased by almost 20 percent and every year since then, the state has had the highest crime rate in the nation, all according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. Even then, people still purchase firearms.

Gun advocates are fond of the saying “Guns don’t kill; people do.” Yet tragic incident after tragic incident proves just the opposite. Consider these statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics:

Although, gun advocates sa

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