Shuckins beat me to it. Roughly the underage death toll from alcohol during a single week. Not to mention the thousand people killed by lightening during that 10-year period. Perhaps we need a prohibition on being outdoors during a thunderstorm? We would have one if the politicians could make it work. Vote for Bob Smith... he's tough on lightening!
And, out of a population of 300 million. We're talking lottery ticket odds here. The reality is that unless you are a gangbanger in an urban war zone you have little real risk of meeting a violent death at the wrong end of a gun. Even innocent people in those neighborhoods have a slim chance of such a death. Is it a ****ty existance -- absolutely. But illegal firearm violence is a symptom, not a cause or a cure.
BTW, I personally know of at least two (and one probable) friends who have died directly from alcohol. Not a one from a firearm incident. Demographically, if I did know a firearm victim, it would probably be a suicide victim. Where, although we have a higher rate of firearm suicides, our overall suicide rate is comprable, and perhaps even less (can't remember), compared to other developed nations.
And we haven't even touched the 1st Amendment. Virtually all of these vanity shootings -- Colombine, the Amish deal, any number of others -- were committed with the sole intent of going out with the maximum amount of media exposure. I mean, we've had firearm ownership for well over two hundred years, yet it's only in the media age that we see these "blaze of glory" killings. So, we should sensibly restrict the news media in covering such cases, I suppose. Not to mention the action hero films and blazing machine gun cop shows that glorify violence (not even remotely related to real life crime) night after night. Violent video games are on the list, of course. Can't rely on parents to read the warning lables, so let's just ban them completely.
Then we can move on to the threat the Internet poses to our children (politicians are already testing these waters). Pedophiles roaming Myspace, hate groups recruiting at vile Web sites (the ADL is all over that one)... books like The Turner Diaries inciting the Oklahoma City Bombing (and a number of other hate crimes). Sure 99 percent of people use the Internet responsibly, but we NEED to protect our children from that 1 percent that might misuse the Internet because, as a parent, I can't be held responsible for monitoring my child's internet usage.
In today's world, my rights end where someone's feelings begin -- facts be dammed. And the majority of the responsible must suffer for the irresponsible minority since personal accountability has gone out the window where society's ills are concerned. You don't win elections by blaming the voters and telling them to get their **** together.
Wanna sacrifice your kid so others can keep their guns? I don't.
Actually, I want my kid to grow up with individual rights as a free, responsible American. He has more to fear from the knee jerk reactions of his fellow citizens that give up a broad range of freedoms for some politician's spin on "safety," than he does from something like legal, responsible gun ownership. The facts bear this out, and I'm not even that good at math.
Charon
