I don't agree with you on this one, Bob.

My wife and I have been together since 1995. In that time, we've both dealt with issues in our lives that might have lead to the deaths of either one of us had we not been together. We've been through hell and kept each other on our feet when we felt like we couldn't walk another step. We've been there for each other in the absolute worst moments of our lives.

On the other side, my favorite memories always include her: the first time we saw the Eiffel Tower together; hiking together in Henry Coe State Park; nights in Mendocino and dinners at Brouwer's. A thousand thousand little things where she's brought happiness into my life. How much joy I experience just holding her hand!

Men lose everything? Have someone look at you when you feel like absolute human shit -- like you're the tiniest speck of worthlessness in the universe -- and say "I love you." Someone who doesn't just rescue you from yourself, but lifts you up into the pure light of happiness and joy, is the absolute affirmation of goodness in the human heart.

I say this with all honesty, with no malice and no sense of superiority, just one human being to another: if something happened to you that makes you feel the way you do, if someone hurt you that bad, then I wish it were within my power to lift that from your heart and soul. No one ever deserves to have love turned to hate, least of all you.

Your "refutations" are, for the most part, self-defeating, so I will allow others to do their own research and come to their own conclusions rather than addressing each one. Suffice it to say that gun-control, in the U.S. at least, starts as an anti-minority measure (not unlike the "war on drugs" and the "war on poverty") and spurs on a "dark economy" (or "underground economy"), not unlike what (eventually) felled the Soviet Union. It's not dissimilar to what's going on in Puerto Rico and, to some extent, the Bay Area (except NorCal doesn't have the feds all over them like Puerto Rico does, so violent crime is high in PR and low in Mendocino).

Is it purely a "coincidence" that Puerto Rico has a higher murder rate than almost anywhere else in the U.S, while citing as many as 50%+ of the people on "public assistance," is an epicenter on the "war on drugs" and has about the strictest gun control laws of anywhere in the U.S.?

But don't worry! Here's some good news!
"They found that a country like Luxembourg, which bans all guns has a murder rate that is 9 times higher than Germany, where there are 30,000 guns per 100,000 people. They also cited a study by the U.S.National Academy of Sciences, which studied 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and it failed to find one gun control initiative that worked. . . . The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, conceded that the results they found in their report was not what they expected to find."

I guess they didn't account for the fact that outlaws don't really care about laws! The nerve of some people...