400,000 people in the US die each year from tobacco & tobacco related
dieases (facts at ash.org) but shoot somebody and you get front page
news.

On Apr 22, 7:43 am, Harry Hope <riv...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

From The San Francisco Chronicle, 4/22/07:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/22/GUNSHOW.TMP

Gun safeguards must improve, enthusiasts say

Janine DeFao, Chronicle Staff Writer

Gun enthusiasts' cliche of choice was on the tip of many tongues at
this weekend's Code of the West gun show in Antioch.

As Antioch resident Tom Green put it, "It's not the gun that kills
people, it's the idiot behind it."

Despite pronouncements from political pundits that Democrats in
Congress are unlikely to push for tougher gun control laws before an
election year, gun owners such as Green worry such regulations are
inevitable in the wake of Monday's massacre at Virginia Tech, the
worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

But while they staunchly defend their constitutional right to own
firearms, many attending the show Saturday at the Contra Costa County
Fairgrounds agreed that more must be done to keep guns from mentally
troubled people like Seung-Hui Cho, the 23-year-old student who shot
32 people before taking his own life.

To that end, they favor measures ranging from better background checks
to waiting periods.

"If he was red-flagged properly, those guns should never have been in
his hands," said Vonda Hall, 43, of Petaluma.

________________________________________________

Harry

400,000 people in the US die each year from tobacco & tobacco related
dieases (facts at ash.org) but shoot somebody and you get front page
news.