The evidence provided to me with the cites leads me to conclude that the gun-control’s arguments about gun safety and homicides are, at the least, questionable. (See ayn? providing cites can have an impact. :D)) As they were my only basis for argument here, I don’t have anything else to contribute.
Sua
My biggest problem with the “guns deter crime” argument is not that I don’t believe it’s possible: I don’t know how many times a gun in the hands of a (so far) peaceful-and-honest citizen has in fact deterred a crime, nor even what the order of magnitude of such occurrences is, but people assure me that it has happened and I believe them.
But (in addition to S. Norman’s well-made point about there being little correlation among different societies between levels of gun ownership and levels of crime), I dislike the “guns deter crime” argument primarily because it seems to me to be a red herring about crime. That is, if you defended yourself with a gun and caused a criminal to avoid you, you didn’t necessarily reduce crime incidence at all. For all you know, you just deflected a crime away from yourself and onto another potential victim who didn’t happen to have a gun and didn’t successfully deter the criminal. You have a perfect right to do this, of course, in the interests of your own safety, but calling it “crime reduction” doesn’t seem valid to me. It seems to deflect attention away from the question of “how do we reduce criminal activity?” and toward the question “how do I keep criminals away from me?”
Another analogy, to go with DDG’s Martian Rottweilers: consider the case of a polluted river from which people need to get their water supply. If the proposed solution focuses primarily on individuals’ getting private water filtration systems, those who can will do so and they’ll have clean water. Those who can’t, or who don’t know about the pollution, will be poisoned. If nobody tries to fix the pollution problem at its source, the river will go on getting dirtier. Eventually, the toxins will probably overload the private filtration systems, and then everyone will be in really bad shape: the river’s far dirtier and will need much more work to make it clean, and in the meantime even those individuals who thought they were safe are vulnerable again.
It seems to me that responding to the problem of armed criminals by increasing the number of armed civilians is taking a “private filtration system” approach to crime. As picmr pointed out, a heavily armed “vigilante” populace in the long run will mean more heavily armed criminals, and an even more dangerous situation for the part of the populace that isn’t armed. It’s a society-wide game of chicken played with deadly weapons, and I see no reason to expect that the criminals will be the ones to cave in first. At some point, even gun-owning peaceful-and-honest people will start to feel that there are really too many guns around for everybody’s safety. And the longer that point is delayed, the harder it will be to clean up the weapon situation once we get there.
Now that doesn’t mean that I favor taking everybody’s handgun away, because I don’t. In fact, I probably would be inclined to permit more gun ownership than current laws allow, although I’d probably have stronger rules about registration and education. (For example, if drivers have to pass both a practical and written test about the laws and techniques of car operation, why shouldn’t the same hold for gun owners? And if drivers need to learn about not driving drunk, why shouldn’t gun owners have to pass a minicourse, say, on anger management? Let people own and operate dangerous possessions, absolutely, but make them demonstrate first that they are aware of the dangers and responsible enough to handle them.)
I really do respect gun owners’ wish to own guns for sport or protection or just because they like 'em. But I think that the argument that it’s automatically good for society when more people own guns, because “guns deter crime”, is a pretty feeble one. Yes, guns may tend to keep criminals away from the gun-owners, but I want gun-owners taking a broader, more responsible approach to the problem of crime. I want them to be concerned about achieving the sort of things that really have been shown to reduce criminal activity, such as low unemployment, improved education, stronger communities, neighborhood policing, and so forth. Yes, it’s certainly possible to work for these things while also wanting a gun for your own safety; but in my experience, the “guns deter crime” argument in practice tends to be shorthand for “guns will deter crime from ME, so don’t you dare interfere with my right to own one.” This is not really a solution, IMHO.
Tomorrow I’ll dig up the stats that appear to show that areas where concealed carry is liberalized see a drop in personal crime (robbery, assault) and an increase in property crime (burglary, auto theft). Crime sucks in any form, but it’s better if people don’t get hurt, don’t ya think? A robber who knows that a good portion of the citizens are armed is less likely to risk his neck with confrontational crimes; as a result, even the unarmed receive benefits from concealed-carry permits.
Problem is, drinking water is a necessity; we all don’t have to expose ourselves to a high risk of being mugged on a daily basis (well, not most of us, anyway). Crime is better likened to something like a hurricane. Say you live in an area where a hurricane may strike; do you prepare for it yourself, or do you wait for the government to come up with a plan to protect you?
So we, the law-abiding, should just surrender now, and pray that the criminals don’t kill us with the guns they already have, because criminals might get worse? I’m not following you here…
Because cars and the rules of interacting with road signs, signals, and millions of other drivers are very complex, while guns are “point and click”? And who pays for all this? All taxpayers? Gun owners? What about people with low incomes who have to live in high-crime neighborhoods; will they who are most in need of the personal protection a firearm can provide be economically denied that protection?
You want gun owners to be more responsible? Well, today I spent 4 hours answering the phone at the local rape crisis center…what socially-responsible things have YOU done lately?
And by god, you actually make sense here, because you argue one thing that many gun-control advocates don’t seem to understand: many social factors, not the mere availability of guns, affect the crime rate, poverty most of all. Given that, I fail to see how this jives with your above-suggested training/registration bureaucracy; wouldn’t that money and time be better invested elsewhere?
**
I think that’s reasonable for people who want to hunt or carry a weapon in public. But following your car example I don’t have to register it, take a driving course, get a license, or carry insurance unless I’m driving on public roads.
**
I pretty much with you on this. As a whole I don’t believe guns are the cause of our troubles nor do I believe that they are a solution. Although on a personal level I do believe that they are the most effective weapon for self defense.
**
Don’t pin that all on us gun-owners. The anti-gun crowd could certainly follow that advice as well. I think ending the war on drugs might help things a bit as well.
Well to be honest I’m more concerned about myself and my loved ones then I am about you or society in general. Uh, not that you aren’t a spiffy person or anything. One of the big reasons I’m a fan of concealed carry is because I think it might serve to protect me from a criminal not all of you.
Marc
Thanks for the replies Max and Marc. Some comments:
MT: Tomorrow I’ll dig up the stats that appear to show that areas where concealed carry is liberalized see a drop in personal crime (robbery, assault) and an increase in property crime (burglary, auto theft).
Yes, I’ve seen this research, esp. that of John Lott, and while it may reflect an actual effect of concealed-carry laws, the best we can say at present is that it’s extremely debatable. The changes are not significant enough, and the causes and effects are not sufficiently well isolated, for us to conclude that increasing the scope of gun ownership and gun rights will really reduce crime, or even violent crime, overall, rather than just deflecting it away from some gun owners.
*Crime is better likened to something like a hurricane. Say you live in an area where a hurricane may strike; do you prepare for it yourself, or do you wait for the government to come up with a plan to protect you? *
Naturally you take common-sense measures to protect yourself from any danger where you can. But see, this is that same “it’s about my safety” mentality that I am worrying about. If you just focus on your individual protection and “wait for the government” to handle the larger issues in some unspecified way, you are being commendably prudent on your own behalf but you can’t really call it an approach to public safety.
Your analogy is also a little flawed, I think, in that private safety precautions against hurricanes don’t usually contribute to the hurricane problem. But widespread private gun ownership does contribute to the problem of armed crime. Having a thriving nationwide (and international) firearms trade does make it easier for criminals to get guns, and I think that rational gun owners have to be prepared to acknowledge that and accept some responsibility for trying to counteract those problems. Too many gun-lobby types (although not so many around here, it seems to me) seem to have the attitude “Well, I have a right to own guns, and if widespread gun ownership exacerbates violent crime, it’s not my problem.” Naturally, non-gun-owners then feel, as picmr said, that these people are being selfish, isolationist, and indifferent to the safety of others. And that is not the sort of person you’d really want to see carrying a gun!
So we, the law-abiding, should just surrender now, and pray that the criminals don’t kill us with the guns they already have, because criminals might get worse?
Well, I’ve heard that sort of argument before, and it seems usually to run something like this: “it might have worked to restrict gun ownership back when there were no guns, but now there are so many that we can’t afford to do it because then only outlaws will have guns.” This is the arms-race argument reduced to a domestic scale, and I don’t really buy it. It might be somewhat valid in the case of an outright and total ban on guns of any kind (which I don’t hear anybody seriously suggesting), but it certainly doesn’t apply to all types of gun regulation. The easier it is to get guns, the easier it is for criminals to get guns—that’s just the way it is. So at some point, the domestic “arms race” as a crime-fighting approach will see the costs significantly outweigh the benefits. Again, I don’t think that the reply “well, at this point the benefits still outweigh the costs for ME, so I oppose regulation” is sufficient.
And who pays for all this [gun registration, education and training]? All taxpayers? Gun owners?
Some of each, just as with registration and education for automobiles. Taxpayers certainly have an interest in making our gun culture safer for everyone, and should pay a large chunk of the costs for it. Gun owners are also responsible for their choice to own an extremely dangerous possession, and should bear some of that cost directly. Yes, this is more difficult to do for low-income gun owners, which is just one of the reasons that private gun ownership should not be our only, or even a major, technique for fighting crime.
You want gun owners to be more responsible?
Now now, I’m not saying gun owners aren’t responsible. I’m just trying to supply some perspective, from someone who is sympathetic to many of the aims of gun owners, on why many gun owners’ attitudes frequently look so irresponsible to non-gun-owners. All this “they’ll get my gun when they pry it from my cold dead fingers and the government is out to take away our rights and if you’re pro-gun-control you’re an enemy of liberty and you’re leaving me and my family defenseless against vicious criminals who need killing [great, Testy! :rolleyes:]” stuff comes across sounding like “I ONLY CARE ABOUT MY OWN RIGHTS AND TO HELL WITH THE EFFECT ON THE REST OF SOCIETY.”
I’m serious, you people simply have no idea how much you often look (to most of the rest of us) like part of the problem, not part of the solution. There would not be so many (often useless and/or redundant) gun-control laws passed if it weren’t for the fact that lots of your fellow citizens are more scared of you than of the government. I know that this is not an adequate representation of how you really look at the problems of guns and crime, which is why I’m stressing the need to balance the “MY gun rights” focus with recognition of the broader consequences of gun culture.
And by god, you actually make sense here, because you argue one thing that many gun-control advocates don’t seem to understand: many social factors, not the mere availability of guns, affect the crime rate, poverty most of all.
Why, thank you. 
Given that, I fail to see how this jives with your above-suggested training/registration bureaucracy; wouldn’t that money and time be better invested elsewhere?
No, I don’t think so; just because the availability of guns isn’t the only or even the chief factor in crime doesn’t mean that money and time spent on regulating them aren’t well spent. And perhaps most importantly, they will serve to make the law-abidingness of gun owners more visible, knitting gun ownership into the framework of a socially responsible community where it’s obvious that people are willingly balancing their rights with their responsibilities. Skipping the paperwork just reinforces the image of this shaggy cave-dwelling militiaman clutching an automatic rifle and growling “You fing bureaucrats leave me the f alone with your f***ing regulations.” Not a model of responsible citizenship.
MG: I think that’s [registration and training] reasonable for people who want to hunt or carry a weapon in public. But following your car example I don’t have to register it, take a driving course, get a license, or carry insurance unless I’m driving on public roads.
Mmm, not quite analogous. It’s basically impossible to use a car for its major function without making use of the public roads (unless you happen to have a vast private estate with private roads all over it, which is not the case for most car owners). You don’t expose yourself or others to much automobile-related danger going back and forth in fifteen feet of private driveway. Guns, on the other hand, are eminently usable (and stealable) and fully capable of destruction even if they’re nowhere near public property, which is why I think it makes sense to regulate ownership even of guns that never leave their owners’ houses.
*Don’t pin that all [neglect of other anti-crime measures] on us gun-owners. The anti-gun crowd could certainly follow that advice as well. I think ending the war on drugs might help things a bit as well. *
Hear, hear.
*Well to be honest I’m more concerned about myself and my loved ones then I am about you or society in general. Uh, not that you aren’t a spiffy person or anything. One of the big reasons I’m a fan of concealed carry is because I think it might serve to protect me from a criminal not all of you. *
Well, as I said, while this is very natural, it isn’t the way to make your fellow (non-gun-owning) citizens feel that you genuinely care about public safety issues. This is why gun owners also need to be more visible and vocal about acknowledging the public dangers exacerbated by gun culture and the ways in which they want to take responsibility to help counteract them.
So it’s MY fault that Bubba the Burglar decides to get an illegal pistol from his buddy Joey the Gun Runner? How do you figure?
Is the creation of prescription drugs responsible for people getting addicted to Ritalin? Is the creation of the automobile responsible for people committing Grand Theft Auto? Is the creation of fertilizer responsible for the Oklahoma City Bombing? HELL NO.
It IS possible to reduce crime without hindering law-abiding citizens. Run a search on “Operation Exile” sometime.
But it’s NOT “basically impossible” to use a gun for it’s major function without making use of public roads (sidewalks, alleys, etc.).
Or maybe we need fewer people like Rosie O’Donnell telling the world that everyone who owns a gun is evil.
SPOOFE replied to me: So it’s MY fault that Bubba the Burglar decides to get an illegal pistol from his buddy Joey the Gun Runner?
Nope, that’s not what I said. It isn’t your fault. But the fact is that the more guns there are in circulation and the less oversight there is on the process of getting and keeping one, the easier it becomes for Bubba and Joey to do their deal. Your indignant response that since you’re not directly responsible for criminal activity you shouldn’t be “hindered” in any way in your non-criminal activity is exactly the sort of reaction I’m expressing concern about. That’s the “f*** public safety, don’t mess with MY rights” attitude that wrongly convinces many people that gun ownership advocates are selfish and irresponsible.
*But it’s NOT “basically impossible” to use a gun for it’s major function without making use of public roads (sidewalks, alleys, etc.). *
Right, that’s exactly the point I was making to MGibson. It doesn’t really work to restrict gun regulation only to guns that will be used on public property, the way we restrict (most) car regulation only to cars that will be used on public property: and that’s because cars generally pose no threat to safety when confined to private property, which is not true for guns.
*This is why gun owners also need to be more visible and vocal about acknowledging the public dangers exacerbated by gun culture and the ways in which they want to take responsibility to help counteract them.
Or maybe we need fewer people like Rosie O’Donnell telling the world that everyone who owns a gun is evil.*
That too. Demonizing “gun nuts” is certainly not conducive to rational public discourse about guns, but neither are angry gun owners who indulge in “gun-nut” rhetoric about the inviolability of their gun rights and ignore the ways in which gun culture intensifies problems of guns and crime. In other words, two wrongs don’t make a right.
I would definitely tend to disagree with this, and I am very fond of slippery slopes. It only takes one good shot from a handgun to stop a guy, doesn’t matter if he’s holding a bazooka or guided missle launcher. The pistol is the ultimate self-defense weapon: extremely powerful, small, and quick(ish, depending on where you keep it). Crimes are not like urban warfare, there aren’t armies of criminals waiting to gang up on people. Even the bad guys don’t want to die.
Well, I agree that crime has myriad causes. However, the “unemployment, improved education, stronger communities, neighborhood policing, and so forth” is a complicated issue. When compared to your “me me me” argument against defense it makes even less sense to me, honestly.
That is, we (as gun control advocates) propose that legal concealed carry laws nationwide would dampen the criminal element because the bad guys simply won’t know if the person they are about to attack will have a gun. You posit that we should instead educate everyone (and so forth). By allowing for everyone to conceal-carry a gun we are letting everyone defend themself. You find a problem with this in that not everyone will get a gun. But then you expect that everyone will be educated and thus curb criminality? Seems like the ideal is on the other foot 
As you might guess any program which encourages greater government influence in society is automatically suspect in my book and, if the same or a similar effect can be achieved without government influence then that’s the preferrable choice.
Well…perhaps in this case, I’ll agree. I’m hazy on what “gun culture” is and how it creates crime, but I was just a poor suburban kid. Didn’t move to the city, the city moved to me
Hypothetical Situation #1: I invent a new weapon, effectively a handgun constructed entirely of lightweight nonmetallic parts. They are easier to hold and aim. Oh yeah, they also don’t set off metal detectors. The US Government makes a law making it a felony to manufacture or possess one and the law is defended on the basis that it would be incredibly costly to replace all existing metal-detector systems with alternative weapons-search protocols (the specifics of which haven’t even been invented), and it is also argued that if they are never made legal, there won’t be many in circulation.
Hypothetical Situation #2: After careful consideration of all issues, the government makes possession of weapons-grade plutonium an arrestible offense, and furthermore makes it an act of terrorism punishable by life imprisonment to be in private possession of any nuclear weapon with a payload of more than 200 kilotons. Despite intensive lobbying on behalf of people who believe that they would be safer from domestic oppression and assault by urban organized violence if they were in possession of such a disincentive, public opinion was so firmly in favor of nuke control laws that the politicians thumbed their noses as the lobbyists and enacted these laws. “I just think I would never breathe free if I had to worry about which postal workers and investment bankers had a tactical nuke or two in the basement, know what I mean”, said Representative Keith Fernandez.
How’m I doing?
Doing great, ahunter. Except your weapon already exists in the form of a ceramic-style zip gun.
Or so rumor has it.
When we legalize the possession of handguns there could be provisions for this built in the laws, of course (you know how those lawyers are about “recording devices known or unknown” :)).
Weapons grade plutonium? Personal nuke possession as a tool of self defense? Pure slapstick!
arl: That is, we (as gun control advocates) propose that legal concealed carry laws nationwide would dampen the criminal element because the bad guys simply won’t know if the person they are about to attack will have a gun.
Well, if I thought there was solid evidence (as opposed to the far-from-unassailable initial findings in that direction produced so far by groundbreaking studies like those of John Lott) that concealed-carry liberalization really would have that effect, and if I thought that the resulting decrease in danger from crime would be significantly greater than the increase in danger from having lots of (human and fallible) citizens carrying loaded weapons around everywhere, I’d be behind you all the way on that one.
But since at this point I’m still pretty skeptical about both of those claims, I think for the present I’ll continue to believe that the “root-cause” anti-crime measures I’ve advocated (e.g., reducing poverty and unemployment, improving education and the justice system) will be more effective than liberalized gun laws when it comes to overall crime reduction.
While I concede that Lott’s numbers don’t demonstrate a definite cause-and-effect relationship, they do indicate a striking coincidence and merit further study. Because he has produced at least some evidence to support his hypothesis, I find Lott’s ideas (that states allowing concealed carry see a drop in violent crime and a rise in property crime, for those tuning in late) much more compelling and believable than your idle speculation that “a robber who winds up facing a gun just goes and robs someone without one, so there’s no net benefit.” If you believe that that’s the case, show us some figures in support. But I’m not gonna waste both of our time arguing about your “gut feelings”.
aynrandlover:
Do you think that this might mean they they will shoot first and threaten later?
eg: Guy walking home down a street late one night, comfortable in the fact that he’s got a gun in case anyone attacks him. In fact, it’s in his pocket and he’s got his hand on it because he knows it’s a dangerous street and he doesn’t want to take any chances.
Criminal sees said Guy walking down the street. Doesn’t know if guy’s got a gun or not. Doesn’t want to risk it (cause everyone owns a gun these days) so he shoots Guy (he’s got a silencer so no-one really hears it), walks up, takes Guy’s wallet and runs off.
Second point (regarding crims pinching guns)
I saw a TV program recently about an inventor who has created a handgun which will only fire if the firer is wearing a ring that contains a microchip that activates the gun. If the chip is not within 100cm (or something) of the gun then it will not fire. Each chip is unique to the gun that it belongs to, and the chip is embedded in a ring that the gun owner need not take off at any time.
If these techno-weapons replaced conventional handguns and were manufactured, controlled and distributed by (say) the government, do you think that it would have an effect on violent crime?
Ah, good! So you would feel the same then about Dr. Kellerman’s study in the October 7, 1993 New England Journal of Medicine, showing a striking coincidence between having a gun in the home and the incidence of murder. Certainly not conclusive of any caus-and-effect relationship, but, since he’s produced at least some evidence to support his hypothesis (that the presence of a gun in the home correlates to increased risk for the residents) don’t you think this merits further study as well?
sigh…allow me to quote myself, from this thread where we argued about that very study:
Two problems with your snide little comment: first, Kellermann’s study showed a stronger co-incidence between renting one’s residence and being murdered, and living alone and being murdered, than between owning a gun and being murdered. In short, even assuming that causation exists for the measured factors, the study provides more evidence that people should get mortgages to be safe than that people should be disarmed to be safe.
Second, that debate and this one are not analogous. Here, I confront a baseless opinion (“robbers will just go rob someone without a gun, so carrying firearms doesn’t affect the crime rate”) with evidence that, while not determinative, merits further study. In the other debate, the Kellermann study was countered with a parade of contrary data. Can you see that there is a difference between “unsupported opinion vs. merits further study” and “merits further study vs. study to the contrary”?
Hey, a little bit of snideness goes a long way sometimes. However, I apologize for my use of it here. Unfortunately, I wasn’t involved in the Kellerman discussion in the thread you referenced; my prior SDMB experience regarding Kellerman resulted in no such admission from gun control opponents that the study had any worth at all.
Please forgive me for including you with the posters in that thread who were quite unenthusiastic over studies which cast doubt on the efficacy of gun use in preventing crime. Perhaps my confusion was due to what you told me there:
In my experience, which admittedly does not include much discussion with you, Max Torque, those who focus so much attention on the supposed intentions of the researcher usually have no interest in the studies themselves. Lest you think I don’t understand your point regarding real research vs. “gut feelings”, here’s what I had to say about that later in the thread from which I drew your Kellerman comment:
(And I shouldn’t post without at least reviewing the thread to which I’m posting. Again, I apologize.)
MT: *Here, I confront a baseless opinion (“robbers will just go rob someone without a gun, so carrying firearms doesn’t affect the crime rate”) with evidence that, while not determinative, merits further study. *
Hey now, wait a minute here, Max. Nobody actually put forward that “baseless opinion” as fact; at least, I didn’t. The point I was making was simply that it is equally “baseless” to assert, as many members of the gun lobby do, that “guns deter crime” just because some gun owners managed to deter individual crime attempts against themselves. Such incidents don’t provide any evidence at all that those criminals don’t in fact “just go rob someone without a gun” (except, of course, in cases where they are incapacitated or killed by being shot, in which case you’ve got a different set of problems), thus leaving the overall crime rate undiminished.
So in fact I never did assert that guns don’t deter crime overall; my point was that individual experiences of gun owners who’ve frightened away criminals do not constitute evidence that guns do deter crime overall. I agree with you that to determine the actual net effect, if any, will require more research in the form of carefully controlled statistical studies. And I agree with you that the evidence Lott’s studies have provided so far, while interesting, is insufficient.
Actually, IIRC (and I may be completely misremembering), Lott’s figures in More Guns, Less Crime did show a substitution effect not only between personal (violent) crime and property crime in concealed-carry counties (which was already mentioned in this thread), but also between counties in concealed-carry states and surrounding counties in adjacent states with more restrictive gun laws. I’ll have to check the book when I get home unless anyone has it handy or has a quick link to the figures online.
Of course, if it is true, it’s at least as good an argument for liberalized gun laws across the board as it is anything else.