Gun control
- Thread starter ukbob
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Thanks
I have looked, but just wondered why you said outdated?
I'm also having trouble finding stats that prove murder rates are higher in countries with stricter gun control. All the stats I can find show overwhelmingly that the countries with little or no gun control (and I include America) have considerably higher homicide rates, and as expected ,considerably higher firearm related deaths.
I read somewhere that a study was conducted in the early 90s that stated 2.7x more likely. Haven't found newer data although I'm sure there's data available.
My comnent was directed at Gannicus' comments about not having to shoot to kill. Sorry for not being clear.
Thecpattern is clear and conistent, morecguns equals a higher death rate (not just more deaths).
Wouldn't a better graph be number of guns vs murder rate not just gun deaths. Isn't it kind of obvious that countries with more guns will have more gun deaths? A similar graph could probably be plotted with swimming pools in backgardens and death by drownings.
Ah right, no problem.
Well, yes, isn't that the point? The more people have guns, the more die from gun related incidents, which is obviously a bad thing.
As opposed to the more guns there are the more protected we are - which is shown to be bullshit.
Not really he just got lucky, how many times they break someone's house and end up raping women?
At home I have hollow point ammo, I need to make sure I cause the maximum damage to an intruder and at same time if I miss the target the bullet will not travel far when hits a wall.
I don't have any figures, but I'd imagine out of all the house invasions that happen, the ones where women get raped are in a very, very tiny minority.
Nothing happens instantly but I'm pretty sure that the best way to eliminate guns isn't to increase the number of them.
Plus if any of your kids gets depressed you can be sure they will make a very good job of their suicide. No hanging around as a vegetable for them. Costly clean up mind.
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/vdhb.txt
3% of the 1 million burglaries when a household member was present, or less than 1% of all burglaries committed.
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*An estimated 3.7 million burglaries occurred each year on average from 2003 to 2007.
*A household member was present in roughly 1 million burglaries and became victims of violent crimes in 266,560 burglaries.
*Simple assault (15%) was the most common form of violence when a resident was home and violence occurred. Robbery (7%) and rape (3%) were less likely to occur when a household member was present and violence occurred.
*Offenders were known to their victims in 65% of violent burglaries; offenders were strangers in 28%.
*Overall, 61% of offenders were unarmed when violence occurred during a burglary while a resident was present. About 12% of all households violently burglarized while someone was home faced an offender armed with a firearm.
*Households residing in single family units and higher density structures of 10 or more units were least likely to be burglarized (8 per 1,000 households) while a household member was present.
*Serious injury accounted for 9% and minor injury accounted for 36% of injuries sustained by household members who were home and experienced violence during a completed burglary.
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The sad part is that very simple and unobtrusive laws that encourage safe storage and discourage leaving loaded firearms unattended in the home would spare thousands of lives and untold tragedies in the US yet this one simple, common sense idea appears to me to be largely ignored by both sides. Gun control advocates (the real world ones south of me, not in this thread), I don't know, maybe it's not enough of a victory for them? The NRA I've no problem understanding; they fear giving up any ground as it relates to the 2nd but I fail to see how having the law demand citizens treat something as dangerous as firearms accordingly, as one's social responsibility requires, interferes with their right to keep and bear arms. I'm not aware of their position on safe storage but I can bet it will be ludicrous. They like their soapbox but are afraid of showing leadership here. The more guns solution looks increasingly good for only one group, just follow the money.
Maybe America really is the wild west and the idea of citizens acting responsibly is a foreign concept?
We are down to about 2.6, apparently, as far back as 2005. Go leafs!
Maybe America really is the wild west and the idea of citizens acting responsibly is a foreign concept?
We are down to about 2.6, apparently, as far back as 2005. Go leafs!
That still equates to over 900 gun deaths per year which seems a huge penalty to pay for gun ownership to me.
Have the laws against the production of marijuana and narcotics done anything to eliminate them?
Did the laws against the brewing or beer and distilling of spirits do anything to prevent those products from being made?
I'm fascinated by the argument that if we banned guns that they would eventually disappear.
A total ban is probably just a dream but proper regulation would eliminate virtually all privately owned guns as they serve no reasonable purpose. The rest should be highly regulated and hugely taxed as should drugs. Of course drugs are far harder to ban than guns.
Guns, ammunition shouldn't ever be allowed on private property and privatre manufacture of ammunition totally outlawed. If you do allow them for use at gun clubs and the like they should have to be kept there under extreme security akin to a high security bank vault. Biometric authentication should be mandatory so that only the registered user can fire the gun. Carrying a gun to a crime should involve a mandatory prison sentence. Breaking the gun laws should have hugely punitive outcomes. Hand guns outlawed totally except for sport in gun ranges, hunting should be banned outright unless for pest control and even then only by government employees/contractors and not weekend warriors who pretend they are not doing it because they enjoy killing stuff. Even farmer in remote locations should need to prove an actual need with most being unable to do so. And all guns should be hugely taxed with a 100% of purchase price (guns and ammo) levy that goes directly to the public health system with hugely expensive annual licencing requirements. That would be a start.
Guns laws are a joke in the US, even the most severe ones. We think we have a problem with guns here in Australia and our death rate is .88 and yours is over 10 per 100,000 of population. Which is stunningly high. Go to a football game and 10 people in the crowd will be killed by a gun in the next year - about the same as who will die from car crashes (a largely necessary evil unlike guns).
Guns, ammunition shouldn't ever be allowed on private property and privatre manufacture of ammunition totally outlawed. If you do allow them for use at gun clubs and the like they should have to be kept there under extreme security akin to a high security bank vault. Biometric authentication should be mandatory so that only the registered user can fire the gun. Carrying a gun to a crime should involve a mandatory prison sentence. Breaking the gun laws should have hugely punitive outcomes. Hand guns outlawed totally except for sport in gun ranges, hunting should be banned outright unless for pest control and even then only by government employees/contractors and not weekend warriors who pretend they are not doing it because they enjoy killing stuff. Even farmer in remote locations should need to prove an actual need with most being unable to do so. And all guns should be hugely taxed with a 100% of purchase price (guns and ammo) levy that goes directly to the public health system with hugely expensive annual licencing requirements. That would be a start.
Guns laws are a joke in the US, even the most severe ones. We think we have a problem with guns here in Australia and our death rate is .88 and yours is over 10 per 100,000 of population. Which is stunningly high. Go to a football game and 10 people in the crowd will be killed by a gun in the next year - about the same as who will die from car crashes (a largely necessary evil unlike guns).
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My guns are inside a safe
I'd reckon about two thirds of those are gang related as the stats, apparently, show that incidents involving handguns account for about 2/3s of the homicides. This violence is concentrated in only a few major centres and is committed with illegally held weapons.
Oh man, they're already quite expensive for the most part, at least the quality ones. Generally, control measures make it a bureaucratic pain to get a license, and this is plenty effective at discouraging ownership. By making the process cost a few hundred dollars, it adds another layer that keeps the poor from legally owning guns. Here in Canada it costs from anywhere between $80 and $320 for a license and it takes around three months, then you can buy a gun, which doesn't usually come that cheap either. For many that is too much time and money.
At least you're realistic about the prospect of a total ban. I'm shocked to see it, really.
Even high security banks can be robbed so I disagree with the notion of a general lock up. Leaving a large cache of weapons and ammo in one spot is far less secure than discreet private ownership. Same can be said for maintaining a central registry of who owns what, unless that registry only contains license number and serial number and any detailed licensee information must be obtained from a separate entity, of course but that would be seen as inefficient, probably.
This is an interesting one. Actually, you wouldn't need the tax with this because the cost of producing guns would increase substantially; however, it would be roundly derided because one of the joys of sport shooting is letting friends try your guns out at the range. Anyway, something like this would only be applicable to new guns and the 300 million or so old ones out there would still pose a danger. Additionally, as with any system, I'm certain the criminal element would find a way around this as well. It's certainly a novel and well intentioned idea but probably best to save for when we develop laser blasters and other personal energy weapons.
I'd be hugely surprised to learn this isn't the case but in the US nothing about gun laws comes as a surprise any more. That being said the second part of this is a slippery slope because you end up with "paper" criminals who haven't cause society any egregious offense but end up with hefty prison sentences, fines and court costs, all for what was previously a perfect legal endeavour. The bigger problem that you perhaps allude to is that criminal charges sometimes aren't stacked but rollled into one, I think the Yanks are better at stacking punishments whereas up here we have minimum mandatory sentences for unauthorized possession of our three classes of firearms and other prohibited weapons/devices (i.e. brass knuckles, nunchuku and 30 round AR mags) but while I read about such charges being laid, the sentencing tends to focus on the more sensational acts an everything gets rolled into one, lighter, sentence. As a gun owner, I find this disappointing. If we started handing out 10 years for gang bangers illegally carrying a snub nosed .38 (as per the Firearms Act) instead of three years plus time served for the headline grabbing charge I reckon we'd have a lot fewer firearms deaths up here.
I'm not crazy about banning specific types of firearms from civilian ownership other than fully automatic versions; as always, it is probable that the less law abiding will keep whatever they want anyway. If you want to defend yourself you should have the best and most modern technology at your disposal. Anyway, I live under a similar system and have six handguns and it seems effective. It is exceedingly rare for a legally held handgun to be used in a violent crime in Canada.
So forget about poor aboriginals in, say, Alaska who have no other means of feeding their families and communities? You appear slightly prejudiced against hunters here but I'm going to assume you did not consider all of the possibilities for who might hunt. However; if one group must be allowed to hunt then it is grossly unfair to deny others the same. I agree about those who just enjoy killing stuff, though. I've killed stuff and looking back it is largely unpleasant business to take life. Much better to shoot up inanimate objects or maybe those bleedy zombie targets.
Farmers in remote areas need firearms to protect their property and person from a variety of threats. Most often we are shown that guns are a tool of violence but they are also a defensive tool.
Making firearm ownership financially punitive isn't very egalitarian, either. Wealthy people owning guns is ok but feck the poor? They have nothing of value to defend anyway.
Annual licenses for ownership aren't fair either. Once again you end up making it likely that there will be a lot of paper criminals. You will find that an inordinate amount of police time will be spent rounding up forgetful old men whose only crime was not submitting paperwork on time. This will have a lovely knock on effect of further congesting the court system with needless cases. I have to renew my license every five years and even that is too soon if you consider that our eligibility is monitored in real time.
It all comes back to social responsibility for me. Something that the US seems sorely lacking in many areas, including operation of a motor vehicle. Impaired, drowsy or otherwise reckless driving is responsible for plenty of traffic deaths just as reckless use and careless storage are responsible for many firearms deaths. The graph you posted is interesting to me not because of the obvious correlation of number of guns to number of deaths but simply because the US is such a massive outlier compared to the rest of what are generally similar countries. It's not just because of the guns, I firmly believe that the notion of social responsibility is lacking there and contributes greatly to their problem with gun violence.
Good man.
9 month old shot by his five year old brother in Missouri today. Accidental of course. But the reason these types of tragedies happen more in the US as opposed to other developed nations is simply guns. Protection, second amendment, all of that business is irrelevant. A child is dead, for no reason and another child is likely scarred for life. The reasons are irresponsible parenting and guns.
@Gannicus and myself argued against each other earlier in this thread about whether a person should have the right to own a gun to protect themselves. I conceded that maybe it isn't my call to make whether or not a person shouldn't have a gun in their home but shootings like that make me reassert my belief that it should be a person's choice. Most people will be safe with their guns but the simple fact is, not everyone will and if not everyone is safe, then children will get their hands on them and tragedies like this will continue to happen.
To make things very simple, if guns were illegal in the states, this 9 month old baby would still be alive.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/01/20/missouri-boy-fatally-shot-brother/22033741/
@Gannicus and myself argued against each other earlier in this thread about whether a person should have the right to own a gun to protect themselves. I conceded that maybe it isn't my call to make whether or not a person shouldn't have a gun in their home but shootings like that make me reassert my belief that it should be a person's choice. Most people will be safe with their guns but the simple fact is, not everyone will and if not everyone is safe, then children will get their hands on them and tragedies like this will continue to happen.
To make things very simple, if guns were illegal in the states, this 9 month old baby would still be alive.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/01/20/missouri-boy-fatally-shot-brother/22033741/
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That's just so sad. Really horrible.But completely avoidable.
How many more times does this type of thing have to happen before people REALLY take notice? It's a long way off at the moment, and that's the real shame.
Accidents like this really do force one to reconsider whether a complete ban on private gun ownership isn't the best solution of all, despite the obvious risks that would subject many people to. After all, only law-abiding citizens will obey the law that says you can't own guns.
But then you go back to the fact that criminals will still continue to own and use guns. I suppose you could ban the manufacturing of new ammo so that eventually those guns would be useless as ammo eventually becomes scarce, but I suspect that somehow ammo will continue to be manufactured.
So what would be left are armed criminals and the rest of us, resulting prey, would be unarmed.
It wouldn't solve the problem overnight. But eventually it would work. When was the last time a child shot another child accidentally in Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, Australia etc? It seems to be a relatively regular occurrence in the States.
There will always be guns. Criminals in Ireland, England, France, Germany, Australia have guns. They can and will be obtained. Don't say that you automatically become prey though. That's just scare tactics. I'm Irish, I don't consider myself prey. Does anyone from a country where personal firearms are illegal consider themselves prey?
The simple fact is that these types of tragedies are avoidable simply by banning guns. There is a family decimated by this, probably a good decent family, where someone just happened to be careless with a firearm. Now one of their children are dead and another will likely have problems for life.
This idea of an unarmed populace being helpless "prey" to a wave of heavily armed home invaders is ludicrous scare-mongering by the gun lobby. Which has feck all to do with reality.
If anything, the possibility that a homeowner might be armed makes a burglar more likely to carry a gun but no less likely to try and rob someone's house. Is there any evidence that the incidence of robberies is lower in the states than anywhere in the world with stricter gun control? If there is, I haven't seen it.
If anything, the possibility that a homeowner might be armed makes a burglar more likely to carry a gun but no less likely to try and rob someone's house. Is there any evidence that the incidence of robberies is lower in the states than anywhere in the world with stricter gun control? If there is, I haven't seen it.
That's us, a nation of careless risk takers. Barely a day goes by when I don't lament the massive risk I'm taking by not keeping a dangerous loaded death machine in my house at all times.
Are there actually a great deal of armed stand-offs between law abiding homeowners and gun-toting burglars in the States? If the home defence argument was sound you'd expect a lot, whereas I imagine the main effects of gun ownership is just some good ol' murder and a firm dose of tragedies as linked above. I'm pretty sure, at any rate, that a ban on ownership other than in highly regulated cases, an amnesty for those already in circulation and severe penalties for those not abiding with the law would bring the associated death rate down a fair whack. If Madison could see us now...
I had questioned myself about this many times and decided to check. Doesn't seem so... Difference is small and probably explained by a myriad of different factors.
And the steep decrease in Britain in the past 20 years didn't need any change in gun laws.
The protection argument is ridiculous. I have more respect for people who just say "it's my right" and don't argue why. How often is a crime stopped because the victim had a gun? It must be incredibly rare. Wild west style duels are long gone, these days whoever shows the gun first wins.
Of course had the parents not been complete idiots about gun safety none of this would have happened either. As much as they are hurting now, they have a large share of the blame.
No point asking for complete bans very few countries have them. Or at least when I asked about it people could only name a few.
But we could sure use some tougher gun laws in the US including some that impose responsibility on gun owners. In addition to gun owners taking some damn responsibility for their own actions. Like leaving a loaded gun where a kid can so easily get it.
If you read my original post on this incident you'd see I did say that the parents were of course responsible. The problem is, people are often careless. Of course there won't be a complete ban. But it shouldn't be possible for anyone to go in and buy a gun after a quick background check. Of course the gun should not have been left lying around. But if you continue to allow people to carry weapons, then accidents like this will continue to happen.
I remember reading about (and watching the video) of an armed robbery on some establishment in the US with loads of customers by two armed criminals. Suddenly an old man comes out of nowhere and starts shooting with a small handgun. That turned out well because the bandits were either cowards or bluffers and ran away, one of them shot once if I recall. The old man was being hailed as a hero.
I'd be livid if I was there. The bandits where two and better armed, and what was a quick robbery could have escalated into God knows what, with hostages, collateral victims, etc. I'd rather hand over my smartphone and the 50$ in my wallet than being unwillingly subject to what I think it's a far bigger risk. Dunno if it makes me a pussy, but I don't care. I'd rather only criminals having the guns.
I'd be livid if I was there. The bandits where two and better armed, and what was a quick robbery could have escalated into God knows what, with hostages, collateral victims, etc. I'd rather hand over my smartphone and the 50$ in my wallet than being unwillingly subject to what I think it's a far bigger risk. Dunno if it makes me a pussy, but I don't care. I'd rather only criminals having the guns.
The UK does have a higher rate of 'hot burglaries' this is when the homeowner is inside the house when the burglary takes place. In the U.S. criminals will try and enter when nobody is home, it's likely it's because people have guns but at the end of the day the rate of burglaries in the UK and US is still very similar, does it really matter if you're home or not when you get robbed?
65,000 and 108,000 seem to be the best estimate on number of defensive gun uses in the US each year, though both are based on surveys not police data so I'm not sure how reliable those figures are. There is also no definition of what a DGU is, if you get into a heated argument and then you mention you have a gun and the argument ends, is this a DGU even though it was unlikely to ever come to blows anyway? There is only around 200 justifiable homicides annually so I'd guess there is probably around 5,000 or so real DGU each year.
Do we really know that gun control laws would end violence? I seriously doubt that.
But the point about senseless tragedies -- the child shooting his brother, the child shooting his mother, the child killing himself by staring down the gun barrel -- is a very valid one.
At this point we have to ask ourselves what kind of policy analysis are we going to undertake? We could go with anecdotal stories of tragedies or we could with broader data sets.
I'm not a gun freak (nor a Koch brother, despite the suggestion by a poster a few weeks ago that I might be) and I have no intention of ever owning guns. I even go so far as to say that the world would be a better place is all guns and heavy artillery would just disappear.
That said, the overwhelming amount of literature on the subject of control, taking into account spill-in effects, tell us that gun control laws has no effect on crime rates. The question really isn't whether this is no, but why this is so. "Why" is always a hard question to answer, but we can begin with acknowledging that there exists a vast inventory (if we can put it that way) of firearms that precedes the sale of new firearms in any given year. We can also fairly conclude, without making too large a leap of common sense, that criminals would be the least likely individuals to adhere to gun control laws that already exist, let alone adhere to a total ban on private ownership of guns. We're all reasonable caftards who pay our parking tickets and we'd be the first to submit to whatever laws on guns that may arise, but it's hard to imagine that criminals would do the same, as the nature of being a criminal is such that adhering to gun control laws would be contrary to his discernible interest as a criminal.
Thus, the predicament. On the one hand we would likely see fewer accidental deaths under a total gun ban regime, but on the other hand we would see higher crime rates, or at least greater victimization of unarmed individuals who are known by the armed criminal (we just can't assume the criminal will voluntarily agree to disarm himself) to be unarmed. That may be a tradeoff worth making.
I agree. Except for the part about $50, because only chumps carry cash.
Of course if we get people to be responsible gun owners then these accidents will be rare and just be accidents. As dwazza pointed there is a bit of missing social responsibility missing in the US that if we had it would go a long way towards reducing stupid tragedies like this. Overall the country would be much better off.
Not a big fan of open carry or concealed gun permits. Not a fan of people having unlimited access to any number if guns. Not all types of guns should be legal. Not all ammo should be legal. And as I say gun owners need to held responsible for the safety of their guns.
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Oh goody! I bet gun nuts have hardons tonight!
http://www.kwch.com/ak47s-soon-to-be-made-in-usa/30824562
AK-47s: Soon to be made in USA
U.S.-made gun will have same name as the original
http://www.kwch.com/ak47s-soon-to-be-made-in-usa/30824562
AK-47s: Soon to be made in USA
U.S.-made gun will have same name as the original