[quote=CA renter]You keep mentioning “gun crimes” and “gun deaths” as if the manner of committing a crime is what matters. I don’t care if someone commits a murder with a knife, a gun, a car, or some other weapon. The ONLY thing that matters is that a homicide occured. [/quote]
Yes, the only thing that matters is that a homicide occurred. As I said in an earlier post:
I don’t agree with the “other instruments of force” argument. Sure, a person could walk into a McDonalds and start stabbing people. But to think that it would happen nearly as often as it does with guns just doesn’t seem realistic to me. It takes real guts (I imagine) to walk up to somebody and stab them. They might grab your knife and stab you. And you can’t just stab them once, generally, if you want to kill them. It’s a lot easier and more effective to stand a few feet away and pull a trigger.
In other words, if you reduce gun crimes, you’re most likely going to reduce homicides.
[quote=CA renter]If banning spray paint, guns, alcohol, drugs, etc. worked…then we wouldn’t have given so much power to the mafia and other gangs. It’s the creation of these black markets that allows many violent criminals to thrive. Banning guns won’t turn criminals into law-abiding citizens (though it would turn a good number of law-abiding, totally non-violent citizens into criminals) and there is NO EVIDENCE that these gun bans would eliminate or reduce homicides or violent attacks. Criminals are going to commit whatever crimes they want because **laws do not matter to them.** [/quote]
Of course laws matter to them. Or, more precisely, the punishments that laws provide for matter to them. To think that criminals give no thought whatsoever to possible punishment is absurd. (Except in very rare cases of certain mental illnesses.) And if you can get a criminal thinking about those punishments when he’s not in the heat of battle, as with severe penalties for possession, then you’re more likely to stop his crime than you are if he’s only going to be punished if you catch him in the act. Because frequently gun crimes are crimes of passion, and in the heat of passion, laws are less likely to matter.
As for evidence that gun bans would eliminate or reduce homicides, this seems like pretty solid evidence:
“In 2008, the Australian Institute of Criminology reported a decrease of 9% in homicides and a one-third decrease in armed robbery since the 1990s, but an increase of over 40% in assaults and 20% in sexual assaults.”
Even as their culture got more violent, homicides and armed robbery decreased after a gun ban. As I’ve said, there is no way to perfectly assess the effects of stricter gun-control laws. What kind of evidence, exactly, are you looking for?
[quote=CA renter]What we need to do is stop glorifying and “normalizing” violence through violent, sadistic video games, movies, etc. We also need to get VERY tough on violent criminals, and allow citizens to fully protect themselves and their property from violent attackers without any fear of legal repercussions.
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I agree with this, to a point.
[quote=CA renter]We also need to get serious about mental health problems in our society. Psychopaths have pretty obvious characteristics, even from young childhood, and while I understand there are some civil liberty issues regarding this, they should be observed and possibly institutionalized in some way in order to protect society. Not an easy answer, but this is where a lot of our problems lie, IMHO.
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I agree that mental illness needs to be taken much more seriously in this country. But the vast majority of murderers are not mentally ill. This will not solve, nor put much of a dent, in our homicide problem.
[quote=CA renter]Just a casual glance at a list of the most notorious serial killers shows that many (most?) of them didn’t use guns to commit their crimes. [/quote]
You frequently focus on serial killings and mass killings. As I keep saying, the biggest problem is the daily murders. The mass/serial killings are what bring the problem to the forefront of the consciousness of our short-attention-spanned populace.
[quote=CA renter]Again, guns are simply one of many tools used to commit murder. Even if you could get the guns out of criminal hands (highly unlikely, as these will be the LAST people to turn in any guns), they would still manage to find other tools to violently attack and kill others. http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/seria… [/quote]
Again, you’re focusing on a very small portion of homicides.
