Deltoid

Diederich Andrew Richard said:

According to a 1986 survey of 2,000 imprisoned felons: 57% believed encountering an armed victim is the worst thing that could happen.

False. The closest thing I could find in Wright and Rossi [1] to this is 57% agreed that "Most criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police", which is hardly the same thing at all. When asked what THEY (rather than others) regularly worried about, the results were:

Might get caught               34
Might have to go to prison     30
Family might look down on you  30
Might get shot at by police    20
Might hurt or kill someone     20
Might get shot at by victim    19
Friends might look down on you 14

In 1986 Florida weakened gun control laws. The results: from '87-'91, homicides dropped 20%, and rose 14% nationwide.

I'm not able to check this out, but since every other statistic in your posting is wrong or misleading, I'll take this with a large boulder of salt.

Americans defend themselves with handguns about 645,000 times a year, and 99% of the time no one is killed or wounded.

National Crime Survey data show 80,000 gun defences against crime each year. So the other 565,000 defences must not have been against crimes...

A U. of Wisconsin study 17 years ago looked at "every" form of state handgun control, including a complete gun ban. The results: the laws had no effect in reducing violent crime.

Which US state implemented a complete handgun ban before 1976? What was the methodology of this study?

Morton Grove, Illinois banned handguns to everyone but the police. In the next year, the crime rate rose 15.7% while in the rest of Cook County the crime rate rose 3%.

The "crime rate"? Which crime are you talking about? Car theft? Shop lifting? Fraud? The burglary rate in Morton Grove fell significantly following their handgun ban. [2]

Duke University: "Cities located in states with
stringent anti-gun regulations on gun purchases have a
significantly higher robbery rate."

This is rich. I believe the reference is to [3], which found that a 10% reduction in the prevalence of gun ownership in a city is associated with about a 5% reduction in the gun robbery rate and a 4% reduction in the robbery murder rate but has no discernible effect on the overall robbery rate. So the correlation that you are using to argue that gun control causes more robberies instead suggests that more robberies causes gun control. Talk about taking something out of context!

6,000 women were trained in firearms courses in Orlando,
Florida. The next year rapes dropped 90%.

And homicides rose 22%. Did the firearm training cause this? Or do you think it was an unrelated random fluctuation in the homicide rate? What about the smaller increase in Philadelphia? [2] analyses Orlando rapes --- despite the impressive size of the decrease, it too could be caused by chance with a high probability.

A study by the Justice Department showed that attempted
rapes on armed women were unsuccessful 97% of the time.

The reference is to [4], which showed no such thing.

1. What it did show that in cases where the victim used a gun OR A KNIFE in self-defence, the completion rate was 3%. They may not have been a single gun defence in the survey.

2. The statistic is clearly marked in the study as unreliable because gun and knife self defence was so uncommon. The actual numbers were 1 completion out of 32 attempts. A 95% confidence interval for the completion rate is 1-15%. The completion rate for non-violent resistance was 10%. So the data does not tell us whether resisting with a weapon was better or worse than non-violent resistance.

3. "armed woman" does not equal "resist with gun or knife". Someone with a weapon may be unable or choose not to use it.

Less than .025% of handguns in existence are involved in
homicides annually.

Or you could put it this way: roughly 1% of handguns will ever be used in homicides...

I found these statistics quoted in The Denver Post, except the Justice Department quote, which I got from an issue of Guns & Ammo. The closest anyone has ever gotten to refuting these statistics is when they whine about the police in Britain who don't carry handguns.

Using bogus statistics and then insulting those that disagree with you is not a good way to convince anyone of anything.

Then I point out that if we really want to deter crime, we should cut off thieves' hands like they do in some Arab countries.

So gun control is the same as cutting off hands?? Oh I get it. Gun control is cutting off arms. Ha ha.

Essentially, there is no rational argument to support gun control.

Certainly there is. "Gun control reduces homicides." There is evidence for and against this proposition. What is irrational about it?

References.
[1] The Armed Criminal in America (1986)
[2] Criminology 29:4 541-559 (1991)
[3] Policy Studies Review Annual vol 3 (1979)