The playground at the RPES (Rocky Point Elementary School
The RPTC (Rocky Point Town Counsel) sent out word to all of the local businesses for ideas, but they really were hoping that some thriving enterprise (there was only one of those in town) would simply donate the cash in exchange for naming rights to a new and improved playground. But no company, no local philanthropist, nobody came forward to foot the bill for the renovation and the RPES continued to send home dirty little children.
Then, just as the RPTC was about to give up on the idea of a new playground field, Slate and Sandy Feldspar, owners of FRS &G (Feldspar’s Rock, Sand, & Gravel), offered to chip in all of the resurfacing materials for the entire playground! Since Feldspar’s was by far the largest employer in town, mine workers, who sent their kids to the school, felt compelled to cough up their labor to complete the work. Members of the RPTC were beside themselves with joy. Between the generosity of the Feldspars, the good will of townspeople, and the new playground, their re-elections were as good as in the bag.
When the job was complete, the Mayor and the RPTC, and the Feldspars, and the workers, and the teachers, and kids all gathered at the RPES and had a ribbon-cutting ceremony. In place of the once-dilapidated field of mud, there lay a beautiful, brand-spanking new multi-colored bed of fist-size, jagged-edged, flint rock, straight from the Feldspar’s own quarry. Photographs were taken of the new FCPA (Feldspar Children’s Play Area), and the kids were immediately set loose to run and play and hang from the monkey bars and climb the jungle gym, and swing on the swings. And everybody clapped and cheered.
As you might have guessed, it wasn’t too long before things started to happen on the FCPA at the RPES. Kids were tripping and falling on the unsteady bed of jagged flint and scraping and gashing various body parts. And once again, parents, (those few who did not work for the Feldspars) began to complain. They felt that there might be a tad too many rocks on the playground for the kids to avoid. And word got around to the Feldspars, and their response was printed in the editorial section of the local newspaper and was swift and to the point: “Here in Rocky Point, we enjoy a long, proud tradition of all things…rocky. Everyone knows that this town was built on a bedrock of bedrock. Most, here in Rocky Point, owe their livelihoods to the many uses and benefits of the product which we harvest from our own local quarry. There is nothing inherently dangerous about a little rock. Sure, the occasional natural or stoned-milled product can become lethal if subject to misuse, but kids just need to be educated about how they can avoid those accidents by the proper care and treatment of our rocky friends.”
And so the principal at RPES both crafted and rigidly enforced a new rule saying that children were no longer allowed to trip and fall on the flint. And the kids? They really tried to keep from falling, but every step they took seemed to land on a jagged edge as the rocks were everywhere, and both they and the rocks were even more slippery after it rained. And so, more kids despite their best efforts to follow the new rule, got gashes and holes and stitches and eye patches. FRS &G paid to cover up the blood-stained layer of flint with a new shiny bed of identical size and quality.
In addition to accidental gashing, slashing, and severe blood-loss, some kids came up with creative/destructive ways to actually play with those razor sharp fist-size rocks on the FCPA at the RPES. Games of dodge-ball soon took a deadly turn. When you were thrown out, you were really out, usually for the semester. But what was more surprising was how many kids, maimed or worse, had been completely unintended targets or were otherwise collaterally damaged by ricocheted, stray shards of the razor-sharp flint. More parents complained. The Feldspars issued a similar editorial response and the principal crafted another rule. But kids still threw rocks at each other, because that is what kids do, when their playground is full of rocks.
And a few of the “bad” students reacted…badly to “time out” by picking up rocks in anger with an eye to an eye for any eye, to bash in the brains of the ones who told on them. And parents of the injured, comatose, and deceased children again complained. They had the idea that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to have so many rocks lying around where one of their children, good, bad, or otherwise, could pick one up and do so much bodily damage to another one of their children. And they mentioned neighboring towns that had fewer rocks lying about where more of the kids carried all of their body parts into adulthood. The idea was silly, they admitted, but there seemed to be a connection.
Predictably, FRS &G issued a scathing response; this time on a full-page in the local newspaper. Rocks don’t kill people! People kill people! There are no bad rocks, only bad people! Rocks are just rocks. They don’t need no stinking education! Parents and teachers are shirking their responsibility to teach proper rock-safety at the RPES. If “bad” kids are bashing good kids, then the answer is…more rocks! If every “good” law-abiding kid had a fist-size, jagged edged, piece of flint hidden away in their pocket, the “bad” kids would think twice about starting up a bashing they might not be able to finish! We don’t need more rules about the numbers of rocks allowed on our streets. We need less. If we outlaw rocks, only the outlaws will have the rocks! We need increased penalties for “bad people” who misuse rocks, not an immoral abridgement of lawful rock ownership! You can take away my fist-sized flint, when you pry my cold, bloody fingers, from the jagged edges!”
But more children misused the poor blameless rocks, and more eyes and limbs and brains were lost in the process. More “bad” kids were sent away to prison for rock-related crimes, but parents quit complaining. Since most of the townspeople relied on FRS &G for their livelihood, many friendships were already frayed to the limit. The parking lot of the local church was paved in FRS &G materials, as were the local roads and sidewalks. Every member of the RPTC owed their cushy Counsel positions to FRS &G. The RPTC did take a vote, however, and unanimously decided to expand the childrens’ section at the RPC&C (Rocky Point Cemetery & Crematorium) and the FFF (Feldspar Family Foundation) offered slightly imperfect marble for all of the extra little gravestones at a greatly reduced price, in light of the situation.
The only billboard in town still read: “More Rocks, Less Rules,” on one side and “Mine Baby Mine!” on the other.
Eventually, the Feldspar Mine quite literally ran out of rocks and every family that could drive, walk, limp, hobble, crawl, or wheel out of Rocky Point, did so. And the town crumbled to its original foundation.
So it goes.
It is my position that all handguns and their owners should be licensed, just like automobiles and their drivers. Period. And children should never be allowed to handle a firearm…ever.
Below, you will find just a few quick statistics on the number of guns, gun ownership per capita, and number of deaths related to firearms in the United States
J. Brandeis Sperandeo
From Answers.com:
The FBI estimates that there are over 200 million privately-owned firearms in the If you want to get a rough idea of how many guns there are out there just look at how many people you see out there then multiply by a factor of estimated ownership. The last best guess was about 350,000,000 Total. That would be 1 weapon for every man woman and child. The average gun enthusiast owns several firearms which includes pistols, shotguns, and rifles of all makes and models. It is often estimated that about 1 in 4 people own any firearms and on average firearms owners own 4 guns each.
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_guns_are_in_the_united_states_of_America#ixzz1Huf3bP9p
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This is a list of countries by gun ownership rate (number of privately owned small firearms divided by number of residents).[1][2][3][4]The numbers are based on the average of figures provided by the Small Arms Survey 2007,[3] unless other sources are provided, and are an estimation based on dividing the total amount of civilian owned guns in a nation by the total population of that nation. As some people may possess multiple weapons while others possess none, this number is not a representation of the percentage of people who possess guns in each nation.
The ownership rate reported is the average estimate taken from "Annexe 4: The largest civilian firearms arsenals for 178 countries. That table gives also the minimum and maximum estimates. Note that for some countries, this margin of error is considerable. E.g. Yemen, ranked second with an ownership rate of 54.8, has a low estimate of 28.6 and a high estimate of 81.1. While the United States are ranked for the highest gun ownership rate unambiguously, Yemen based on the margin of error may rank anywhere between 2nd and 18th, Switzerland anywhere between 2nd and 16th.
The lowest gun ownership rate among the 178 countries surveyed as of 2007 was reported from Tunisia, with 0.1 (or a total number of 9,000 guns), due to very strict gun control under the Ben Ali regime (compare the rates of the neighbouring states, Algeria: 7.6, Libya: 15.5).
88.8 | 1 | ||
54.8 | 2 | ||
45.7 | 3 | ||
37.8 | 4 | ||
36.4 | 5 | ||
35.0 | 6 | ||
34.2 | 7 | ||
32.0 | 8 | ||
31.8 | 9 | ||
31.6 | 10 | ||
31.3 | 11 | ||
31.2 | 12 | ||
30.8 | 13 | ||
30.4 | 14 | ||
30.3 | 15 | ||
22.6 | 22 | 1993: 26.8.[2] | |
22.5 | 23 | ||
17.3 | 34 | ||
15.6 | 39 | ||
15.0 | 42 | ||
15.0 | 42 | ||
12.7 | 50 | ||
12.5 | 52 | ||
11.9 | 55 | ||
11.6 | 57 | ||
10.4 | 61 | ||
10.2 | 62 | ||
8.9 | 68 | ||
7.3 | 79 | ||
0.1 | 178 |
From The American Bar Association
In 2003, there were 30,136 firearm-related deaths in the United States
CDC/National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports 1999-2003 http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars
· The rate of death from firearms in the United States
Kellermann AL and Waeckerle JF. Preventing Firearm Injuries. Ann Emerg Med July 1998; 32:77-79.
· The overall firearm-related death rate among U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 1997;46:101-105.
· The United States
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Rates of homicide, suicide, and firearm-related death among children: 26 industrialized countries.
MMWR. 1997;46:101-105.
Rates of homicide, suicide, and firearm-related death among children: 26 industrialized countries.
MMWR. 1997;46:101-105.
Krug EG, Dahlberg LL, Powell KE. Childhood homicide, suicide, and firearm deaths: an international comparison. World Health Stat Q. 1996;49:230-235.
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