Eddie, your support of HCI simply puts you in the ranks of the duped. HCI lies. Both to the public and to their contributors. The founder was quoted in the New Yorker years ago as stating that he and HCI will say anything and do anything to meet their goal of complete elimination of private firearms ownership in America. Not handguns, firearms. Their continuing fabric of deception and media manipulation is one of the major reasons, in my view, that we can't have a reasonable discussion about any reasonable legal measures.

I think the NRA is a little off it's rocker as well. But the NRA would be defused if the "anti" side wasn't so flagrantly dishonest. Paranoia is the only reasonable response if the world really is out to get you.

If you want an interesting view as to what the dangers of simple gun ownership are, vis a vis your kids, check out the National Safety Foundation's web site. Your kid's bike is more dangerous, statistically, to him/her than your firearm. Cars are way more dangerous. This of course assumes that your kid isn't a crack dealer, which I consider to be a separate issue.

If you want a scientific view of what the impact of private gun ownership really is, I'd suggest John Lott's "Point Blank". This is a statistical study of crime and gun ownership. John Lott is a researcher, who was anti gun, but intellectually honest. He did a study of the rates of crime, trying to correlate crime to gun ownership. He expected to find that as gun ownership increased, that crime would increase. He instead found the opposite. It's thought provoking reading.

As in so many areas, the problem is more complex than it appears at first. Also, as in so many areas, there seems to be a scarcity of independent thought.