> I am sorry, but it will stop if guns are banned for ordinary people. How many school shootings happen in China or India?
I don’t know about school shootings, but guns are banned in Puerto Rico and the island has 4 times the homicide rate of the US and 6 times the homicide rate of India. Pakistan has way more guns than most Latin American countries but much lower homicide rates.
Homicide rates in the new world have been vastly higher than in Europe and Asia for hundreds of years, long before modern gun control. At the turn of the 20th century, the homicide rate in the US was 10x higher than the UK: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/humfig/images/11217607.0002.206...
Pop quiz: from the chart of homicide rates in the UK, tell me when the major gun control legislation happened.
> “I see no mechanism by which those laws would reduce mass shootings. A mass shooter would simply ignore them.”
And yet, there does seem to be a strong correlation between “countries with stricter gun control laws” and “countries that have low rates of gun-related deaths and homicides”.
Canada has between 6-8X fewer gun fatalities per capita compared to the United States - both homicides and unintentional/accidental gun death rates are much lower. [1]
> I would think things like strict gun control in other countries could lead to a different ratio of murder to other violent crimes.
You'd probably be wrong. Must gun related fatalities are either self-inflicted or accidental. Murder usually occurs in a fit of rage between people who know each other, i.e. found a cheating spouse, road rage, drunk and stress, etc. You don't need a gun to kill someone, and I would wager most murder occurs through some sort of beating/strangulation.
Further, the United States is 121 on the list of intentional homicides on wikipedia[1], where as Greenland (Denmark), which arguably has tougher laws is 26 on the list. However, if you compare the list to those of the poorest nations, you'll find a much stronger correlation. violent crime is far more correlated to the wealth per person in an area than gun regulation.
Gun control is more-or-less just a politically charged topic that is used to garner votes from the public based on emotional pleas.
>America obviously needs gun control and I don't particularly care if it takes talking about massacres or gangbangers to get there.
What is it about American gun control in particular that causes Europeans/South Africans/Canadians/Australians to care so much about what goes on in another country?
If it were just about saving lives you should get much more upset about the smoking rate in china, or parts of europe for that matter.
For instance you won't find me insisting that Switzerland pass harsh anti-smoking laws because I think they should, regardless of what their citizens want, just because they have more smoking related deaths than we do.
>No one can argue against there being a correlation between number of guns and number of gun related crimes.
Actually there are plenty of examples of countries where that doesn't hold.
For example our gun ownership is much higher than any country in the top 20 for intentional homicides.
And Canada, Switzerland, France, Sweden and Norway have a very large amount of guns, but very low homicide rates.
Should Canada get rid of their guns as well? They have half the guns, but far less than half the murders. If guns were causing homicides what explains all of these anomalies?
In fact from comparing the wikipedia list of countries by intentional homicide rate to countries by gun ownership, I can see no obvious correlation between the two.
> If fewer guns is really not the answer, then how many guns do you think you'll need to eradicate gun violence?
Even Europe with its in my humble opinion draconian gun control has not eradicated gun violence.
If gun control is the answer, why is it failing Brazil? They are actually considering making their gun laws more in line with ours. [1] They have a violence problem that is very likely a glimpse into the future of an America with European or Australian-style gun control.
The guns are not committing acts of violence, the people pulling their triggers are. To solve the gun violence problem, we need to understand why people desire to commit an act of violence.
> Or is it not a matter of sheer numbers, but who gets killed?
In the UK, it was the Dunblane incident that triggered this (you can google it). In the 1990s, some madman with gun just strode inside a high-school at Dunblane in Scotland and started indiscriminate firing. Many teachers and students were killed and after this event, the UK government just outlawed the guns in the hands of civilians.
Maybe, in USA such an extreme event hasn't happened yet, so they have not banned guns yet.
> What country is close enough to the US in size, heterogeneity and number of guns so that you can make a fair comparison?
In terms of number of guns, no other country is. That's the point: other countries made decisions and implemented policies to severely restrict access to guns, and the predictable result today is that there are far fewer guns and much less gun violence.
The decision to restrict guns is a long-term decision - it won't reduce gun violence overnight, but it will reduce gun violence over decades.
The study, which just appeared in Volume 30, Number 2 of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy (pp. 649-694), set out to answer the question in its title: “Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence.”
The findings of two criminologists – Prof. Don Kates and Prof. Gary Mauser – in their exhaustive study of American and European gun laws and violence rates, are telling:
Nations with stringent anti-gun laws generally have substantially higher murder rates than those that do not. The study found that the nine European nations with the lowest rates of gun ownership (5,000 or fewer guns per 100,000 population) have a combined murder rate three times higher than that of the nine nations with the highest rates of gun ownership (at least 15,000 guns per 100,000 population).
For example, Norway has the highest rate of gun ownership in Western Europe, yet possesses the lowest murder rate. In contrast, Holland’s murder rate is nearly the worst, despite having the lowest gun ownership rate in Western Europe. Sweden and Denmark are two more examples of nations with high murder rates but few guns.
> Well, I suppose you can examine gun crime statistics in the rest of the world and see that the US gun death numbers per capita cause of death are higher than anywhere except failed states and war zones. Do I need to cite this obvious state of affairs? I can if this part is really in doubt.
Interestingly, some of the most violent countries are in South America. Where on earth is the largest diaspora of southern American people located outside of southern America?
> Control is largely possible where there is a political will, case in point being Australia and their rather sudden shift and it’s rather obvious results. Deaths from all guns, legal and otherwise, are down, due to concerted efforts to remove guns from circulation.
Why did the US see the same crime rate drop in the same period despite doing nothing?
> What to say, legalese was always intended first and foremost as clear precise language, not as a gatekeeper hurdle or occupational shibboleth.
Indeed. "Shall not be infringed" is clearly understood in plain English.
> Certainly countries with [...] fewer guns experience less shootings
Yes, which is the opposite of your claim that an armed population prevents mass shootings.
An armed population enables mass shootings, which is why, in total, per capita, and heck, probably even per gun, the US has the most mass shootings outside of actual organized armed conflicts anywhere in the world.
But it's a wholly irrelevant metric. The argument is 'we should restrict guns in the US because they're causing more people to be killed than in other countries'. But if in other countries people are being bludgeoned, then what good would restricting guns do? Hence, you need to compare murder rate, not gun murder rate. This is such an obvious point, I don't see any way someone using only gun deaths in the US isn't begin deliberately obtuse.
"Can you provide some sources for this assertion?"
Well how about an obvious one, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... . Of course it's easy to pick a bunch of countries, like say based on GDP and then completely ignore geographic and socio-economic circumstances and say 'look at horrible the US is!' (this is the tactic most anti-gun lobbyists use - taking Western Europe and comparing the gun deaths there to the gun deaths in the US, and then go all 'tss tss look at how backwards the US is').
But if you look at the total number of homicides, the US is in the middle of the pack, with less homicides per capita than say Argentina, or Lithuania, or Turkey; and the same as, say, Iran - which I imagine (although I'll admit I haven't looked into it) has very strict gun laws. Or even Mexico - but then people say 'but but drug war!'. Sure, but so is the US; i.e. a large percentage of homicides are part of drug-related crime violence. It's easy to cherry pick a few countries that have lower homicide rates than the US and say 'it's because of stricter gun laws'.
And yet Switzerland is near the top of that list (i.e., few homicides - depends on how you sort it, obviously :) ) and the Swiss have gun ownership rates comparable to those of the US! Could it be (gasp!) that overall economic prosperity, social homogeneity and income equality are better predictors of homicide (and other crime) rates? No that can't be it, we need to take the guns away!
>Legal gun sales, gun licenses, etc are tightly regulated not unlike Australia.
Yet you have 7 times the murder rate.
>If it isn't guns that is the problem, then what is it?
Obviously it's not the guns. America has 7 times the guns (per capita), but 7 times less murders (per capita).
Going by your example there is an inverse linear relationship between guns ownership and homicides.
>Maybe. But where would you even find illegal weapons if there are hardly any unaccounted for legal ones to begin with?
We have 300 million guns in America, they are nearly all unregistered. There is simply no way to remove them.
Furthermore if you tried to confiscate them, there are literally tens of thousands of heavily armed people just waiting for the government to try to take away their guns.
The death toll would dwarf any killings you could prevent.
If you banned all guns the black market price would skyrocket and many of those 300 million guns that are currently just sitting unused in basements would end up on the streets.
The only possible outcome is that after the initial carnage, chaos and insurrection, law abiding citizens give up their guns, while hundreds of millions of guns are still circulating in the hands of criminals.
Then once the violence stops, thousands of gun enthusiasts will start manufacturing more firearms. You cannot possibly understand how seriously many American's believe in our right to own firearms.
Discussing banning, or Australian style restrictions is a moot point--it cannot happen in the foreseeable future.
> Let me say this again: the problem of personal safety has been solved better (people are safer) in every other developed nation without ubiquitous firearms.
Don't these countries have lower murder rates than the US has non-gun-related murder rates? As in, even if you removed every gun in the US, and even if all the crimes that would otherwise be committed with guns now just don't happen, the US still would have a higher murder rate than these countries.
(This is off the top of my head, please correct me if I'm wrong.)
In which case, it seems unlikely that the US' murder rate can be attributed to guns. You don't explicitly blame guns yourself, but I think this is worth noting. (And "civilization and the rule of law" isn't a solution, it's an applause light.)
> As a European I find the level of gun violence in the US to be shocking
this is probably a perception problem. the uk doesnt have guns but has much higher violent crime with knives. in some ways, stabbing is much more violent and interpersonally malicious than pulling a trigger. there is a very close prevalence of violent crime per capita in US and UK, its just that stab wounds are easier to trest than gunshots.
the US has above average gun violence per capita, but acting like its some widespread danger is largely a construction of fear-driven media and sensationalism. most of US gun violence numbers come from highly localized pockets like detroit, LA, and chicago. its not a problem in almost all of America.
> Sweden and the usa are quite similar for gun homicide. Moreover, they are for exactly the same reason.
Eh? Sweden has 1.2 intentional homicide per 100,000 people. The US has 6.3 [1].
France and the UK have 1.2, Germany has 0.8, Japan has 0.3.
The US has 5.8 homicides using firearms only [2].
Fun(?) fact: in the US, about 1,000 per year are killed by police [3], which amounts to about 0.3 per 100,000. An American is about as likely to be killed by police as a Japanese person is to be killed by a murderer.
> Saying the USA has more homicdes than other countries is a laughable statement.
No. It is a trivially verifiable fact. Which you don't deny, so why is it "laughable". Is 3+4 = 7 also "laughable"?
> Of course we do, we have more guns. This is ENTIRELY to be expected.
Again, you seem to be violently agreeing with me: more guns ? more deaths.
> We have a drug problem not a gun problem.
That's an interesting non-sequitur, especially considering your statements above "of course we do [have more homicides], we have more guns". Guns and homicides are casually and statistically related.
> banning something makes it go away
So few words, so many mistakes:
- most of these countries do not "ban" guns. They just highly regulate them.
- no-one is trying to make guns "go away" or ban them entirely
- not all things are the same. Drugs are not the same as guns
- Australia, for example, changed their gun policy to be much more highly regulated and homicides dropped and mass shootings (previously ~1/year) disappeared
> I don't know if this number is correct, but I just can't understand why guns are still allowed in USA.
Lots of reasons. One is that if congress tried to pass a law doing so, the supreme court would probably stop it thanks to the 2nd amendment. And changing the 2nd amendment is politically infeasible for a whole host of reasons (many states don't have the requisite support, AND calling a constitutional convention opens up a ton of other issues). Oh, and there's literally 300,000,000+ guns floating around in the US. How the hell is the government supposed to collect all of those? How of the budget are you willing to spend on that? Europe hasn't exactly had the most luck trying to disarm THEIR citizens, why would it work in the US with less governmental trust? [0]
But aside from the constitutional and practical reasons... "gun ownership" and "homicide rate" are basically uncorrelated worldwide. You'll often hear otherwise, but the two most common sidesteps are to change to "gun violence rate" instead of "homicide rate" (which includes gun suicides but drops murder by other means) or to only include "western" countries which has its own set of issues. Lies, dammed lies, and statistics!
Finally, even if your goal is only to reduce mass murders, restricting guns isn't really a great way to do that. The Nice truck attack [1] with 87 dead, Oklahoma City bombing [2] with 168 dead, and the more recent Kyoto Animation arson attack [3] with 35 dead all show that guns aren't exactly required to kill a bunch of people. (and also completely ignoring 9/11) Forcing people away from guns to other methods might actually increase deaths in such situations.
> Try living in a country with gun control laws for a bit and see where you feel safer.
You mean like the UK? The UK has a horrendous violent crime rate - four times that of the US. So if people were "afraid" in proportion to actual risk, they should be more afraid there than in the US, no?
Or do you mean like Sweden? Sweden's reported rape rate is about twice that of the US.
I actually do live in a country with gun control laws. I live in New York City. And I don't own a gun. But that doesn't mean I have to accept unfounded claims about how bad guns are.
The truth is that the statistics are ambiguous. Every time gun laws change in the US, partisans claim it'll have a huge effect but the actual effect is hard to measure. Florida didn't become "the gunshine state" when they liberalized CCWs. (Rape rates did somewhat decrease there, but it's hard to connect that reliably to the change) On the margin, neither tightening NOR loosening gun laws is a panacea.
I'm not sure whose "consensus" you're referring to, but it's not the consensus of criminologists. The gradual loosening of CCW restrictions nationwide came only after very careful study repeatedly determined there's no significant increase in violence when more people are carrying hidden guns. You're free to believe there's some sort of "threshold effect", that if we got gun ownership levels below some magic number X, that suddenly everything would be better then, but at this point that's just an article of faith - there's no math supporting it.
I don’t know about school shootings, but guns are banned in Puerto Rico and the island has 4 times the homicide rate of the US and 6 times the homicide rate of India. Pakistan has way more guns than most Latin American countries but much lower homicide rates.
Homicide rates in the new world have been vastly higher than in Europe and Asia for hundreds of years, long before modern gun control. At the turn of the 20th century, the homicide rate in the US was 10x higher than the UK: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/humfig/images/11217607.0002.206...
Pop quiz: from the chart of homicide rates in the UK, tell me when the major gun control legislation happened.
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