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zk
Participant[quote=ucodegen]“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.”So we get a reduction of approx 30% in one category, 9% in another (which may statistically overlap with the first – if the armed robbery resulted in a homicide).. and a 40% increase in another category (assault) which has the sub-category sexual assault increasing by 20%? That does not look like good statistics to support gun control or a gun ban. Considering the reduction in armed robbery, I would suspect that it had nothing to do with gun control. It could be better police work, money obtained during a robbery not justifying the risk and finally… more prevalent use of credit cards meaning that establishments carry less cash. Be careful of taking statistics out of the context of the environment in which they were generated.[/quote]
I think you’re the one taking statistics out of context. Assault and sexual assault are not generally gun crimes. An increase in those crimes shows a general increase in the violence of a culture. As a culture gets more violent, you’d expect a commensurate increase in gun crimes. But, in this case, you see a reduction in gun crimes (assuming most homicides are gun crimes and most armed robbery is committed with a gun and not a knife or other weapon). It seems common sense that gun control resulted in that decrease in gun crimes. Why would you suspect it had to do with better police work? Or money not justifying the risk (why would that have changed) or more use of credit cards?
[quote=ucodegen]
A person considering using a weapon for a crime, has already considered that killing is ‘justifiable’ to achieve their ends.
[/quote]
This is a massive, and I believe erroneous, assumption. Armed robbers are probably generally hoping that they don’t have to kill anyone. And most of them probably wouldn’t unless it was their only way to stay alive or out of jail.Participant[quote=SK in CV][quote=zk]
The 2nd amendment covers all arms. And it doesn’t refer to protection of one’s person, family and property. It refers to the “security of a free state.”[/quote]No, it does not cover all arms. The supreme court has said so, repeatedly.[/quote]
Ok. Does it cover rifles and shotguns? More to the point, when Lucky in OC says the 2nd amendment doesn’t cover rifles and shotguns, what does he mean and what point is he trying to make?
Participant[quote=LuckyInOC]zk, The 2nd Amendment does not cover hunting or sporting rifles. The 2nd Amendment refers to the protection of ones person, family, and property.
Lucky In OC[/quote]
The 2nd amendment covers all arms. And it doesn’t refer to protection of one’s person, family and property. It refers to the “security of a free state.”
Participant[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.
[/quote]
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.
Participant[quote=CA renter][quote=Blogstar]I’d like to see everyone have to log in by computer or telephone anytime their gun is out of the house. Use plans and return time should be reported.Theywould log in to report when it was back at home. Anyone out with a gun, registered or not who hasn’t done this would be committing a crime.[/quote]
How many times have mass murderers not been caught? Seems to me that knowing, after the fact, who was out of the house with a gun doesn’t really fix anything.[/quote]
You’re missing the point. And you’re (again) focusing on mass murders when they’re a very small part of the problem. Your average criminal is less likely to carry around a gun if it’s going to land him in jail for a long time.
ParticipantBeing overweight or even mildly obese, as measured by body mass index, doesn’t make you more likely to die than a person of normal weight.
There’s a huge problem with the analysis right there. They used BMI to determine whether a person is of normal weight or not. BMI is totally useless. Quite laughably, it doesn’t even account for gender. Let alone bone structure or muscularity. I’m not sure why anyone uses BMI for anything.
Participant[quote=CA renter]You’ve just made the “pro-gun” argument, yourself. You can disarm 100% of the people in Town A (the town with gang culture, etc.), and there will still be homicides and other violent crimes; maybe the same number as before any gun ban. You can also arm 100% of the population in Town B (the nicer town), and if all of those people are law-abiding, respectful, considerate people, you can theoretically have ZERO homicides. It’s not the guns that cause homicides, but the people and culture of those people. [/quote]
I’m not sure how you got from what I said to “You can disarm 100% of the people in Town A (the town with gang culture, etc.), and there will still be homicides and other violent crimes; maybe the same number as before any gun ban.” That is not what I said. I said you could ban sales of spray paint (or guns) and increase fines to a still-insignificant amount and Town A would still have a bigger problem than Town B. In other words, you could enact useless measures and not help the problem much. I didn’t say anything about disarming them. Disarming them would obviously bring gun crimes to zero. Banning sales and increasing fines by a piddling amount won’t disarm them. I also said that if you enact serious penalties for possessing spray paint (or guns) that spray paint (or gun) crimes would probably be reduced significantly.
In other words, it’s a combination of culture and gun-control measures. It doesn’t matter that Town B could have zero homicides. It’s not Town B that the measures are for. What matters is Town A. What matters is whether strict gun-control measures would significantly reduce (not eliminate, not reduce to Town B levels, just significantly reduce) gun crimes in Town A. Your argument seems to be that if a bad town is going to have more gun crimes than a good town regardless of gun-control laws, then gun-control laws don’t matter; only culture matters. That is just not true. If a bad town (or country) would have less gun crime with serious gun-control laws than that same country (in that same time period) would without those laws, then gun control does matter. Even if gun crime isn’t reduced to Switzerland levels.
[quote=CA renter]Let’s address your spray paint analogy, now. Assuming that it’s the *graffiti* you want to avoid, why do you think that enacting strict sentences for the possession of spray paint would be more effective than imposing those same strict sentences for vandalism? [/quote]
If possessing spray paint is a felony with a 5-10 year prison sentence, then in order to commit graffiti vandalism, you’ve got to not only make sure you don’t get caught actually in the act of painting something, you’ve got to make sure you don’t get caught with the paint. Think about it. You’ve got to get that paint somewhere. You hope it’s not from an undercover officer. You’ve got to drive it to your house. You’ve got to get it into your house. You’ve got to hide it pretty damn securely while it’s there. You’ve got to get it back out. You’ve got to drive it to the scene of the crime. You’ve got to carry it from your car to the scene of the crime. Any little slip up in any one of those areas, and you could be in prison for 5 years. Clearly that’s a bigger deterrent than just making sure you don’t get caught in the act. Also, it gives law enforcement that much more opportunity to prevent a spray paint (or gun) crime.
[quote=CA renter] There are perfectly good and useful things that people can do with spray paint; why would you make owning the *paint* illegal instead of making vandalism illegal? IOW, why would you impose new restrictions on people who would never vandalize in the first place? Those who vandalize are already doing so even though there are existing laws against it. Making spray paint illegal would only create a larger criminal class because some currently law-abiding citizens would still need/want to use spray paint, and would end up getting it illegally. If you can’t control the smaller group of criminals who actually vandalize, what makes you think that our legal system could control an even larger number of criminals…many of whom would never harm anybody else or their property?
The same goes for guns. There are many perfectly rational reasons for people to own guns. Some hunt, some participate in shooting sports, some use them for self defense, etc. Why would you ban guns and create an even larger criminal class (by turning these law-abiding citizens into criminals via new gun bans) when you can’t even enforce the laws that exist for a much smaller criminal class (those who are committing the crimes)? Just like with the prohibition of alcohol, there are many people who would never commit gun crimes who would still insist on owning a gun for self-defense, etc. With new gun laws, you’ve just created a larger criminal class while not showing that it would lower violent crime rates in any way. If history is any guide, it would very likely cause MORE violent crime as this market goes underground. [/quote]
The spray paint analogy is limited for the purposes of this part of the discussion, so we’ll use actual guns.
There are rational reasons for people to own guns. And I’m not suggesting banning guns. I’m suggesting banning handguns and assault rifles and making the purchase and possession of rifles and shotguns a difficult and rigorous and very selective process.
I think that hunting and sporting are good enough reasons to own guns in a perfect world. But we’re not in a perfect world, and we have to ask ourselves if hunting and sporting are worth the lives we lose to guns.
As for the argument that we shouldn’t try what I suggest because we don’t have enough law enforcement to handle what we already have, I say get more law enforcement. Not let people die because we’re too cheap to save their lives.
[quote=CA renter]The number of people who use guns to commit crimes is a very, very small percentage of gun owners. Think of these criminals as the numerator, and the total population of gun owners as the denominator. There are already laws that prevent felons from owning guns (numerator). There are already laws that make it illegal to commit violent crimes (numerator). If these existing laws are not able to prevent violent crimes, how do you figure that new laws affecting the law-abiding group (percentage of gun owners who never use guns to commit crimes — the majority of gun owners) would somehow reduce the number of crimes committed by the criminals? You’re increasing the ratio of criminal to non-criminal (as some law-abiding citizens are made “criminals” overnight via new gun laws), but not showing how that would reduce crime. [/quote]
No person is going to be made into a criminal overnight. Unless they decided not to turn in their gun in the time allotted, in which case they’d be turning themselves into criminals.
Sure, there are laws that make it illegal to commit violent crimes. But many violent crimes are committed in a passionate moment. With a gun. Usually a handgun. If you have a lot less guns, all of them in the hands of carefully selected people, and none of them handguns, that’s going to happen less often. Common sense tells you that. And, unfortunately, common sense is all we have to go on here. There’s no perfect way to tell what effect such gun laws would have. There are no two cultures exactly alike. Not even the same country in different time periods has the same culture.
I agree that culture is a huge part of the problem. The biggest part. And that we need to address that problem. But to think that we can solve the problem with that effort alone is, I think, unrealistic. I think if we address the culture problem aggressively while also addressing gun control aggressively, we have a shot at significantly reducing gun deaths in the U.S.
Participant[quote=bubba99]Each year we loose about 30 thousand people to gun deaths. The first 17 thousand are suicides, then 9 thousand or so to hand guns, and around 3 thousand to rifles, shotguns, and assault weapons. Assault weapons are less than 10% of the murders by gun.
Other weapons like knives kill about 3thousand people/year and blunt objects about 800/year. An assault weapon ban would appear to be targeting one of the smaller groups of dangerous weapons. A group that is on par (size wise) with knives, as far as the big picture goes, it addresses the wrong guns. It’s easy to target military weapons as the villain, but practically they are not the big killer they are advertised to be.
[/quote]
Lumping knives, blunt weapons, and assault weapons into the same group because they kill about the same number of people doesn’t really make sense. Knives are used millions of times every day for thousands of purposes by hundreds of millions of Americans. It wouldn’t be practical to outlaw them. Of course you can’t outlaw blunt objects. Assault rifles are for what useful purpose? There’s no good reason we can’t outlaw them and save those lives.
[quote=bubba99]
The real threat I see is from the 17000 annual suicides.Each of those highly depressed, highly disturbed people has the potential to pick up a gun, or car, or mix up some amfo, or . . . and bring us the next murderous rampage. I saw on article that estimates 4.3 million Americans walking around with an untreated serious psychosis that makes them a real threat to be the next nut job that kills children.[/quote]
I think 4.3 million is a pretty high number for untreated “serious” psychosis. In any case, I agree that something needs to be done about mental illness in this country. Bubba, do you think taxpayer money should be spent to work on the mental illness problem in America? If not, what do you think we should do about it?
ParticipantWe were a Nielson family for a while when I was a kid. Musta been the late 60’s. I remember them putting some kind of device on the TV (we had one TV and seven kids). I remember someone saying not to alter our viewing habits because of it. We were bewildered by that. Like we’re gonna not watch Bugs Bunny.
Participant[quote=LuckyInOC]
ZK, the same individuals who fought the english with weapons as the same firepower as the english armies wrote the 2nd amendment. The ‘arms’ referred to in the 2nd amendment is for protection of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not for sporting or hunting. If england banned weapons in the new world as it currently has, there would not be an United States. Like or not, our country exists because of the end of a gun barrel.
[/quote]18th century America was a completely different thing from 21st century America. And also,England hasn’t “banned weapons.” Nor have I advocated banning weapons.
[quote=LuckyInOC]
A real example of the need for semi-automatic weapons for the citizens against non-government aggressors would be the 1992 L.A. riots and the Korean shop owners. They protected their stores from hundreds of looters. The local police would not help. They were too busy protecting fire fighters and government buildings.Who would willing to pay the compensation for the losses of these store owners if they did not have the semi-automatic weapons and shotguns for personal protection, not hunting? I assume you would be the first in line to pay up.
[/quote]Not sure I follow your logic here. Why would I (the taxpayer) pay for the damage caused by the criminals? How about this: How about those who are proponents of weak gun control laws pay the families of all the victims of gun crimes? Again, I’m not sure I follow your logic, but if I do, it’s the same thing.
[quote=LuckyInOC]
In the time of major emergencies (earthquakes, riots, etc.), one will need to protect, secure, and feed your family for at least 3 days. Even after 3 days, your local police or national guard may not be able to protect you on a hourly basis. If you really needed them, they might be there in hours, not in minutes.
[/quote]And?
[quote=LuckyInOC]
I have always believe one should vote with his/her feet. May be you should live in UK if you would feel safer.
[/quote]Really? You think that if someone finds a place not perfect they should move instead of trying to improve it? You must have found a utopia. Either that or you move an awful lot.
Participant[quote=CA renter]
More on how the U.K. crime rates measure up to states with the lowest crime rate in the U.S. — some with very lenient gun laws. As others have already noted, some states and cities with the most restrictive gun laws also have some of the highest crime rates.
IOW, gun bans do not prevent violent crimes or homicides. The culture of the people is what prevents or fosters high crime rates.
http://libertarianhome.co.uk/2012/12/uk-…%5B/quote%5DTo say that “some states and cities with the most restrictive gun laws also have some of the highest crime rates” means, IOW, that “gun bans do not prevent violent crimes or homicides.” is to ignore why those states have those gun laws in the first place, and it is also to ignore your main argument. (Besides which, “restrictive gun laws” and “gun bans” are not necessarily the same thing. And any gun ban, to be effective, would require a serious punishment for possessing a gun).
Say you have two towns. Town A is kind of rough and has a bunch of hoodlums living in it; town B is nicer. Graffiti is a big problem in Town A. Town A bans sales of spray paint and doubles the fine for spraying graffiti from $25 to $50. Lame measures, obviously. Similar to current gun-control laws. Those small measures aren’t going to do anything. So you look at these two towns and say, “Town A has tougher graffiti-control measures and still has a bigger graffiti problem.” Well, of course it does. It had a bigger problem to start with, and that’s why it enacted “tougher” measures. But those measures, while maybe technically more restrictive, don’t, in reality, have any effect at all.
So, in the case of these two towns, as you say, “The culture of the people is what prevents or fosters high crime rates.” But that’s only part of the story.
Let’s say you have a mandatory 5-year prison sentence for possessing spray paint in Town A. Do you think graffiti would be reduced? Of course it would. Crime rates are a result of a combination of culture and the rule of law. The reason that’s so hard to see in our country as far as gun-control laws is that there is nowhere in the U.S. that has meaningful gun-control laws.
The same people who are against meaningful gun control laws are generally also for tough punishment for crimes (I happen to be for gun control and for tough punishment for crimes). Why are conservatives so strongly for tough punishment for crimes? Is it because they think it will reduce crimes or for some other reason? If they believe that being tough on crime will reduce crime, why don’t they think it will be effective against guns?
[quote=CA renter]
What we don’t know about the U.K. is whether or not the gun laws are effective at keeping **gun crime** down (overall, their violent crime rate is higher than ours, but they track things differently, so it’s difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison…they are well known for the under-reporting of crimes), or if their surveillance program is what keeps it down.
Here’s an interesting article on the subject:
“We aren’t alone in facing this problem. Great Britain and Australia, for example, suffered mass shootings in the 1980s and 1990s. Both countries had very stringent gun laws when they occurred. Nevertheless, both decided that even stricter control of guns was the answer. Their experiences can be instructive.”
“…What to conclude? Strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia haven’t made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres. The two major countries held up as models for the U.S. don’t provide much evidence that strict gun laws will solve our problems.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424…
And, is this what we want from our government?
“Britain is ‘surveillance society’
CCTV cameras
There are up to 4.2m CCTV cameras in Britain
Fears that the UK would “sleep-walk into a surveillance society” have become a reality, the government’s information commissioner has said.
Richard Thomas, who said he raised concerns two years ago, spoke after research found people’s actions were increasingly being monitored.
Researchers highlight “dataveillance”, the use of credit card, mobile phone and loyalty card information, and CCTV.
Monitoring of work rates, travel and telecommunications is also rising.
There are up to 4.2m CCTV cameras in Britain – about one for every 14 people.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/61084… [/quote]Here’s my favorite quote from the WSJ article:
“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.”And they conclude from this that gun laws haven’t made people “noticeably” safer. I reach a different conclusion. It seems that the country has gotten more violent over that time, as indicated by the increase in assaults and sexual assaults. But homicides and armed robbery decreased. Probably due to the gun-control measures.
A lot of the article talks about how massacres still occasionally happen. And, without extreme measures, we won’t prevent them entirely. I agree that you’re not going to completely halt mass killings. You’ll probably reduce them, but in any case, mass killings aren’t the main problem; they’re only what brings gun violence to the forefront of our nation’s consciousness. The main problem is the daily gun violence that occurs.
[quote=CA renter]
More on the U.K. — all of
Submitted by CA renter on December 28, 2012 – 4:04am.
More on the U.K. — all of this during the period that guns have been banned. As many of us have stated, it’s not the guns that are the problem…the people using them to commit violent acts are the problem. We need to focus on mental health and the obsession with sadistic violence in our society. [/quote]I agree that we need to focus on mental health issues. Our country is really quite horrible at dealing with the mentally ill. Whose job is it to deal with them? I don’t want to turn this into a left/right thing, but, really, conservatives don’t want to spend the required taxpayer dollars on the mentally ill.
[quote=CA renter]
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Culture of violence: Gun crime goes up by 89% in a decade
By James Slack
UPDATED: 03:42 EST, 27 October 2009
Comments (29)
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gun crime
Gun crime has increased five-fold in some parts of the UK
Gun crime has almost doubled since Labour came to power as a culture of extreme gang violence has taken hold.
The latest Government figures show that the total number of firearm offences in England and Wales has increased from 5,209 in 1998/99 to 9,865 last year – a rise of 89 per cent.
In some parts of the country, the number of offences has increased more than five-fold.
In eighteen police areas, gun crime at least doubled.
The statistic will fuel fears that the police are struggling to contain gang-related violence, in which the carrying of a firearm has become increasingly common place.
Last week, police in London revealed they had begun carrying out armed patrols on some streets.
The move means officers armed with sub-machine guns are engaged in routine policing for the first time.
Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling, said last night: ‘In areas dominated by gang culture, we’re now seeing guns used to settle scores between rivals as well as turf wars between rival drug dealers.
‘We need to redouble our efforts to deal with the challenge.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-…
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It’s also important to note that the U.K.’s homicide rate was always lower than the homicide rate in the U.S., even before the gun ban.
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More on how the U.K. crime rates measure up to states with the lowest crime rate in the U.S. — some with very lenient gun laws. As others have already noted, some states and cities with the most restrictive gun laws also have some of the highest crime rates.
IOW, gun bans do not prevent violent crimes or homicides. The culture of the people is what prevents or fosters high crime rates.
http://libertarianhome.co.uk/2012/12/uk-… [/quote]A culture of extreme gang violence has taken hold. And the number of firearm offenses has almost doubled nationwide.
First of all, they don’t say what they mean by “offenses.” If possession wasn’t an offense before, and it is now, then that would explain some of it.But far more importantly, a culture of extreme gang violence has taken hold. This is obviously a big change. Gun violence has increased since ban. This can’t automatically be taken to mean that the ban had no effect or made things worse. If their culture has changed that much for the worse, then quite possibly without the gun ban, gun violence would have increased significantly more than it has with the gun ban.
An interesting read:
http://election.princeton.edu/2012/12/22/scientific-americans-gun-error/ParticipantAlright! Now we’re getting somewhere. Too busy to respond right now; I’ll post something in a couple days.
Participant[quote=dumbrenter]
As for your position on cultural differences, I hope you realize that it is a very thin argument that can logically be taken to dangerous conclusions: Americans are culturally inferior, hence cannot be trusted with guns while swiss can > to Americans are more violent > to Americans are inferior & violent.[/quote]
“Thin” and “can logically be taken to dangerous conclusions” are two completely different things. You say it’s both and then explain how you think it can be logically taken to dangerous conclusions, but don’t explain why you think it’s thin. I’d be interested to hear why you think that.
As far as “dangerous” conclusions, the most dangerous conclusions are those you reach based on what you want to believe instead of the evidence. If you don’t want to conclude that Americans are more violent than Swiss, and therefore you don’t, that is dangerous. If it is your opinion that “more violent” is “inferior,” then I don’t see how you can escape the conclusion that Americans are inferior to Swiss. In that respect. Because clearly Americans are move violent.
Participant[quote=livinincali]
Sorry, I wasn’t around to quickly post a response.
[/quote]Didn’t mean to rush you. Glad you’re here now with some reasonable arguments.
[quote=livinincali] My point was that just because you have a particular set of gun laws on the books does not mean that gun related death statistics correspond directly with those laws. Swiss people have a high ratio of guns to population, higher than here and yet they have lower gun related deaths. Mexico has much stricter gun related laws and yet the number of gun related deaths in Mexico is much higher than here
Your point seems to be that guns to gun related deaths is proportional and the major contributing factor. If that was true then explain Mexico and explain Switzerland. Do a study and actually prove that guns to gun related deaths is actually proportional and then maybe you have a point.
[/quote]
I think that both Mexico and Switzerland can be explained by cultural differences. My point was not that you’d have the same number of gun-related deaths in any different country that has the same gun-control laws. My point is that the kind of gun laws that the U.K. has would result in fewer gun deaths in countries with cultures similar to the U.K.’s. Such as the U.S.
In Switzerland, you have a generally less violent culture than ours. And I believe (I could be wrong – this is an assumption on my part) that gun violence is not glorified there the way it is here. People don’t see guns as making them badass. They see them as hunting and self-defense tools. I doubt they play violent video games as much as Americans do. Etcetera.
In Mexico, you have a corrupt government and police force, and an out-of-control drug trade. It’s probably not that hard to get a gun if you’re a drug dealer there.
[quote=livinincali]
Of course let’s say we do get to a point where you do make that point, how do you propose to deal with all the guns and ammo we already have in america. Are you planning of confiscating it? Because if you aren’t, than even having those laws on the books does nothing to dramatically change the guns to people ratio in this country.
[/quote]This is an excellent point, and a very troublesome problem. But I don’t think we should just say, “the guns are out there. We’re screwed. Nothing we can do now. Let’s just keep things the way they are and put up with the thousands of gun murders every year because it’ll be too hard to change it.” (Not that you’re saying that). I think bold action is required, and that confiscating guns is part of that required action.
Before the public would get behind such an effort, it would take a sea change in our society. It is that sea change that we should be working on. Because, as you said, without confiscating guns, nothing will really change. And without that sea change, confiscation won’t happen.
After that, you won’t have handguns or assault rifles, and what guns you do have will, as much as possible, be in the hands of responsible people. And perhaps then a few thousand fewer innocent people will die every year in this country.
I understand this doesn’t sound realistic at this point in our country’s history. But attitudes change. For instance, if an operation as effective and omnipresent as the right-wing noise machine were to spring up and try to sway people in favor of meaningful gun-control laws, it could happen. Or if time passes and more people die, eventually this sea change could occur naturally.
[quote=livinincali]
As for the bad ass and all that nonsense, that’s the kind of argument people make when they let emotions get in the way of logical discussion. In my eyes you owning a gun does no harm to me. It’s only when you decide to commit another crime against me like murder or robbery that it might matter. Of course in that case there’s plenty of other instruments of force that you can use against me besides a gun. All in all it might not matter.
[/quote]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.
[quote=livinincali]
At this point all I’m seeing in the argument is that gun control might make a difference but I’m not really sure. Even though I’m not sure it’s worth it to infringe on a constitutional right. I’m willing to accept gun control laws if you can get enough support to create a constitutional amendment, but everybody knows that isn’t happening.[/quote]
It’s not in the constitution that you can own a handgun or an assault rifle.
In any case, the second amendment was, as I understand it, to allow the citizenry to rise up against an oppressive government, if necessary. That might have worked in the 18th century. To think that the citizenry would have to and be able to conduct such an uprising today is a paranoid fantasy.
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