stormothecentury wrote:
Igneouss wrote:
"There have just been too many instances of lunatics slaughtering people in those places."

It's actually exceedingly rare.


Yup.  Thanks, sensationalist media!
Yep.

Disclaimer: I am pro-gun.

Experience I had on a car forum:
Guy who had never posted showed up with this long story about a home invasion and how he had recently trained for - and purchased a hand gun. He was able to hold the guy at gun point until the cops arrived. Happy ending. Blah blah.

It just did not ring true to me. I did a casual search and discovered that the guy was posting the story all over the place, mostly on numerous car forums.

So I called the police in his home town and asked if anyhting like the story had happened. Not only did I get a "NO' but the cop went on to say that anything like that would be extremely memorable to the local cops and he could not remember any such thing happening in the last 15 years or so.

Turns out that gun rights activists routinely spread false stories as some sort of grass roots political effort. The effect is that everybody seems to have a second hand story about some 'burger king shoot up' or home invasion. But when you actually check the records about 95% turn out to be fantasy.

eesh.