THOMAS SOWELL blows up the entire ANTI-GUN argument a few brief paragraphs...

- The rate of gun ownership is higher in rural areas than in urban areas, but the murder rate is higher in urban areas.

- The rate of gun ownership is higher among whites than among blacks, but the murder rate is higher among blacks.

- For the country as a whole, hand-gun ownership doubled in the late 20th century, while the murder rate went down.

- Britain has had a lower murder rate than the United States for more than two centuries — and, for most of that time, the British had no more stringent gun-control laws than the United States.

- In the middle of the 20th century, you could buy a shotgun in London with no questions asked. New York, which at that time had had the stringent Sullivan Law restricting gun ownership since 1911, still had several times the gun-murder rate of London, as well as several times the London murder rate with other weapons.

- The crime rate, including the rate of crimes committed with guns, is far higher in Britain now than it was back in the days when there were few restrictions on Britons buying firearms.

- In 1954, there were only a dozen armed robberies in London but, by the 1990s — after decades of ever tightening gun-ownership restrictions — there were more than a hundred times as many armed robberies.

- Other countries with stronger gun-control laws than the United States, such as Russia, Brazil, and Mexico have higher murder rates than the United States.

- Gun ownership has been three times as high in Switzerland as in Germany, but the Swiss have had lower murder rates. Other countries with high rates of gun ownership and low murder rates include Israel, New Zealand, and Finland.

[link to www.nationalreview.com]