It's not splitting hairs. How do you account for the "dramatic" difference when the main relevant variable is gun control laws? If they don't help, what's making the difference here?

Math. The US rape rate is about 3x (not 4x) the Germany rate. Again, not close at all to the 8-fold or 36-fold differences in gun deaths.

You mean where the US rate is only 3x the UK rate, which is a far cry from the 8 to 36x of gun deaths?

35 feet is the range of a Taser. When would you need to shoot someone farther than that in self-defense?

Well, you might be pretty sure...but you'd be wrong.

Tasers are 76% effective. Guns are moreso, but not 100%. And it's so much easier to accidentally kill someone by shooting them (even through blood loss) than it would be to kill someone with a Taser. You're basically sacrificing your control over whether they live or die for less than 24% difference. I would never…

Again...MAD fails at every scale in my book. I'm not saying you can't harm someone in self defense. I'm saying KILLING anyone for any reason is a bad thing that should be avoided as much as possible. Break their legs, give them a bloody nose, knock them out—that's all fine in self-defense. But killing them? Not fine.…

It's the difference in gun deaths per capita (i.e. adjusted for population) between the US (about 9 deaths per 100,000 people per year) and the UK, which has strict gun laws (about 0.25 deaths per 100,000 people per year). That's a 36-fold decrease. In Germany, known to have some of the strictest anti-gun laws in the…

And as I said, that is where we differ. No matter what he did, or what kind of horrible person he is, he was still a human being. His life was still taken from him, and no one deserves that—no exceptions. He should be mourned like any other person who's died.

They lose the right to be mourned? There's where we disagree, and probably will never agree. I think everyone, no matter what they've done, has the right to life and the right to be mourned when they die. For example, Osama bin Laden. He was a terrible person. A terrible human being who killed thousands in his own…

There's a lot of debate over many things, but until it's settled, we need to assume the thing with the most evidence is correct. Which is 4BC.

No one is saying a gun ban would stop it completely. But it would reduce it drastically—as the statistics show.

I didn't mean just a gun either. I'm using "gun" here as a paragon of lethal weapons. If you don't have the lethal weapons around, even your panicky instincts can't use them to kill someone. I find it a little sad that you'd be upset over my murder but you wouldn't be just as upset over the death of said attacker.…

How is it NOT mutually assured destruction? Using a gun as a threat is the same as saying "if you try to hurt me, I'll kill you". That's the very definition of MAD. I do think countries should have a military...however, I disagree with the firearm comment. I'd much, much, MUCH rather we put more money and research…

What? RTA: "...there's a lot of historical and theological debate over Jesus's date of birth ('4 BC' seems to be the closest thing to a historical consensus date)."

I don't know about that...evolution is extremely powerful, and evolutionary programming is no exception.

If it occurred in 2AD, that's at least 6 years later...are these wise men also time travelers?

We're not talking about mass-murderers or psychopaths here. At least, I'm not. I'm talking about common robbers or muggers or rapists, etc. People whose main goal is NOT to kill, but they'd shoot a gun anyway to get their goal done. Keeping their hands off a gun would in fact reduce gun-related deaths, as it has over…

Relevance level: 5000.

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