I had the priveledge of speaking with Rep. Paul Rosenthal today regarding HF953 “Hidden Gun Registration Bill”

He will be removing his name as co-author from the bill and stated that he thought it went too far.  He doesn’t agree completely with my stance but didn’t think HF953 was the solution.

I sent him this follow-up letter:

Rep. Rosenthal,

Thank you for taking the time to call me today and for seriously looking into the details of HF953.  I greatly appreciate your candor and honesty.

I would love to help you gain an ‘A’ grade from the NRA for this next election cycle.  If you ever have a spare moment, please consider this recent UN report on homicide rates vs guns per capita around the world.  Links and a small excerpt are below:

Between 2003 and 2007, Small Arms Survey compiled civilian firearms inventories for various countries around the world. The European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics – 2006, published under the auspices of the Council of Europe, compiled crime data for the greater European region for the years 2000-2003. This research group “included several members involved in recent UN [crime] surveys.” The latest (2003) values appear in the table below, in order to best correlate firearms ownership with murder rates (expressed as offenses per 100,000 population).

Collating Sourcebook data with SAS firearms per capita data, an interesting trend appears: Higher levels of civilian firearms ownership correlates with lower levels of homicide, and countries with the highest civilian firearms ownership averaged lower homicide rates.

Firearms Versus Homicide
Quartile	Firearms per Capita	Homicide Rate
1	0.374	1.6
2	0.147	2.5
3	0.083	2.7
4	0.020	3.5

The top quartile is comprised of developed western economies. These data contradict Annan’s assertion that firearms “damaged development prospects and imperiled human security” and the SAS assertion that firearms availability “undermined political and economic development.” The UN’s own reports prove that other factors besides gun control play a larger role in homicide rates.

Again thank you for your time today,