Continuation from message #6
Many governments of U.N. members have been affected by armed conflict.129 Many of those conflicts involved uprisings by oppressed civilians. It is easy to understand why the nondemocratic governments that comprise a majority of the General Assembly might wish to prevent forceful challenges to incumbent governments. Yet as Zwi points out: “there are occasions when such conflicts yield desirable social change, such as the anti-colonial struggles, or where they are necessary for protecting the victims of inequitable social and political processes.”130 The incessant repetition of the “500,000” factoid by the UN/WHO and their allied NGOs and academics ignores this essential moral point—a point that is crucial to resistance to tyranny, to deterrence of genocide, and to reduction of murder-by-police.
Currently available data support the claim that small arms in the hands of civilians do not cause 500,000 needless deaths each year. Moreover, firearms prohibition would prevent only a small fraction of deaths caused by civilian-owned firearms. Firearms prohibition would worsen the balance of power between oppressive governments and victim populations.

127 SMALL ARMS SURVEY 2002, supra note 1, at 158.
128 Global Burden of Disease 2001, World Health Organization, at http://www3.who.int/whosis/menu.cfm?...rden_estimates &language=English (last visited Feb. 12, 2003) (on file with author).
129 Anthony B. Zwi, Numbering the Dead: Counting the Casualties of War, in DEFINING VIOLENCE 99 (Hannah Bradby ed., 1998).
130 Id.

More can be said if needed!
(http://www.davekopel.com/2A/Foreign/...m-Firearms.pdf)