Also, couldn’t we compare crime stats in high gun ownership areas vs low gun ownership areas? Preferably trying to make “all other things being [as] equal [as possible]”?
In America, looser gun laws do not seem to increase violent crime rates, and tight restrictions do not decrease violent crime rights.
As a general rule, I think you’ll find that more violent crime happens in urban centers, and less as you move out into suburbs, and less still as you move out to rural areas. Gun ownership is probably inversely-related to that. The more rural / suburban areas are probably more likely to own guns than city-dwellers (or at least more likely to admit they do when a stranger calls their phone and asks them in a survey).
Because those gun laws were ineffective.
I guess the message you take away is that gun control doesn’t prevent crime. The message others take away is that gun laws need to be much stricter to be effective.
How much tighter would you want the laws to be? And, why should we try them since none so far have worked?
Depends on how many gun deaths we’re willing to tolerate.
If pouring 1 cup of water on a house fire fails to put it out, do you give up and let the whole neighborhood burn down?
I’d like to see the murder rate reduced by half. So, what’s your plan?
"gun deaths’ are a meaningless stat, as most "gun deaths’ are suicides, which I consider a basic human right.
Hard to say. No other first-world nation has gun homicide rate as high as 1/2 of US, so there’s no example to go by.
Do you not care that gun suicide has a far higher success rate than any other method?
And what about gun-related “accidents”?
Is it true that “others” argued against the adoption of looser laws by, among other tactics, asserting that the looser laws would increase crime and a “wild west” scenario was likely?
That’s true but how many first time buyers do you think buy their first gun from a private party? I know plenty of people whose first gun was a used one but almost none whose first gun was bought from a private party. A lot of people are not comfortable doing that for their first gun.
Widespread is sort of a relative term here isn’t it?
We have permits here in Virginia and I suspect that less than 1% of Virginians carry. (some 65K of Virginia’s 8 million+ residents have a carry permit and frankly most of THEM don’t carry on anything close to a regular basis)
So- you got nothing, then? :rolleyes:
What’s* your* plan for significantly reducing the murder rate in the USA via gun control?
They’ve done studies of states before shall issue laws were passed with after shall issue laws were passed and tracked them against states that did not have any changes in law and overall the results were that gun permits made practically no difference in the level of violence in states. I think this is mostly because the number of people that carry is small and self selective.
They’ve done studies based on approximate gun ownership and the level of violence and murders in general and it devolves into an argument about whether the methods of gauging gun ownership is any good; whether it is fair to count all gun ownership or only legal gun ownership; whether you are correcting for the right things; where the causation correlation lies. The biggest problem is the fact that so much of gun crime is committed by people who are not in legal possession of the gun they use to commit a crime that including gun ownership by criminals in the calculus is re3ally just saying that there is a correlation between violence and the prevalence of criminals in your state.
Meh, the Japanese and South Koreans seem to have figured out plenty-effective methods for committing suicide without using a gun. I’m not convinced that getting rid of guns would really change the suicide rate much. Canada, Australia, and England (countries that are routinely held up as success stories by gun control advocates) don’t seem to have done much to cure their suicide problems.
Comparatively few people die from gun-related accidents. It’s probably not an issue that merits national attention or major societal changes. In other words, we’ve got bigger fish to fry than the accidental-gun-death-non-epidemic.
Probably for the 20th time:
America’s suicide rate is dead fucking average for industrialized nations. Whatever our suicide rate would be absent guns, there is really no reason to believe that we would make a huge dent in suicide rates overall by outlawing guns unless we can outlaw tall buildings and rope as well.
The vast majority of guns recovered from persons arrested and accused of crimes were either bought “on the street” or stolen. The percentage of people convicted of murder that did not have a criminal record is relatively small. If you add in gang affiliation, then you are basically left with domestic violence.
How do you know that’s water?
I think the number of gun proponents who claim that widespread gun ownership makes a region safer is pretty small. Most of us just don’t agree that widespread legal gun ownership makes an area significantly more dangerous. And no one claims gun ownership will make a place violence-free.
You’re correct that the flip side of the OP’s question would be appropriate to ask the Wayne LaPierres of the world, but I don’t think he represents most opponents of gun control.
I don’t know where you’re going with this, but I would suspect that a large portion of first-time gun owners obtained their guns from older family members. That’s a private party transfer.
No place is violence-free, but to use a rather unfair comparison you can compare no-permit states like Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming to cities that until recently had strong gun bans like D.C., NYC or Chicago. I say “unfair” because in those examples cause and effect are probably reversed: areas with low crime and violence didn’t see a need for gun control, while big cities with major crime problems have usually enacted gun control to try (with little success) to curb crime. It’s like comparing a society of genteel tipplers to the drunken derelicts of a skid-row bowery. Someone trying to reform the latter would probably say “loosen the ordinances on alcohol!? Are you insane??”
Do you have any evidence to support this idea? My first gun was PPT from family. My kid’s first guns will be PPT because I will give them one (I have plenty more).
In general widespread can be relative, but in the case of states moving from no issue or may issue to shall issue or unrestricted, the trend from 9 (18%) to 42 (84%) - there is no definition of widespread that wouldn’t fit this fact pattern.
I think you’re wrong. Mostly because your figure of 65K is significantly off the mark. Permit holders have been increasing year after year recently. After AG Herring tried to revoke reciprocity there were several articles that talked about the carry climate and out of state vs. in state permits. This says there are near 420K permit holders in Virginia:
(my bold)
Fortunately, Terry McAuliffe reversed the AG’s position.
I think gun rights people want to claim that, but I really don’t see many of them moderating their views to differ from the Wayne LaPierres of the world. Every single gun debate is peppered with slippery slope fearmongering about people taking away guns, and gun people refusing to cede an inch. Sure, I get it, they’re winning, but if I can’t judge them on what they say and do, then that’s basically saying I’m not allowed to offer counterpoints.
We’re never going to get rid of guns, but we can get good gun control. When these people start voting in Democrats and stop mentioning guns as a reason they can’t vote liberal, I’ll believe them.
If we’re talking about how its silly for liberals to claim that stricter gun control seems to lead to more violence, then its absolutely correct to look at the converse and demand to know where all the violence-free zones are with guns being ubiquitous in many areas. As a liberal, I know the question you asked was framed in a way to result in a favorable outcome, so if you want gun control people to answer that question, then you can do the same with the contrary.
The problem is that most gun owners don’t claim that more guns makes people safer. Gun control advocates do, however, claim that fewer guns will make us safer. So pointing out places that have guns aren’t violence free doesn’t actually contradict gun owners. But finding places that have guns that are as safe and aren’t violent war zones does contradict gun control advocates’ claims. The positions aren’t symmetrical.
It isn’t “guns are good” vs. “guns are bad”. It’s “guns are bad, and we must restrict the ability to obtain them and reduce their numbers” versus “guns are useful tools, fewer guns doesn’t make you safer, and the policies you promote to reduce gun violence will do no such thing”. These are fundamentally different arguments.