I would be interested what kinds of crime have sky rocketed down under.
I was talking to a Brit cop and he assured me that rape, assault, muggings, burglary were way up since they instituted even tighter gun controls.
I would be willing to make a wager that criminals love the gun control laws.
But to be honest, I could care less. I do not care that someone doesn’t like me having a Torah, Quran & Bible right next to Anais Nin.
I don’t care that the westbororo baptist jerks like to protest or that baby lovers protest baby killers.
I respect a Bill Of Rights, not a Bill of needs. I have the right to own the semi auto guns in the AWB despite what they look like. Its silly to ban a mini ruger with a pistol grip but not the same gun without a pistol grip.
Stupid morons banning guns based on looks??? If I had judged books by their cover I never would have read Bukowski.
To Czarcasm and the OP, how do you both feel about the success of gun control measures in Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, South Africa and Thailand? Since the lack of tough gun laws is clearly to blame for gun violence in the US, surely these five countries (all of which have comparatively strict gun control legislation in place) are much safer places to live than the good ol’ US of A.
Why would our crime rates skyrocket when not every household had a gun to begin with, and when it is actually against the law to use lethal force to defend against property crime?
That’s like saying that a lot of guns is bad because, hey, look at Somalia! If you don’t limit yourself to countries that are similar to America in most other ways (like, say, Australia, to name just one good example), your comparisons are inherently flawed. If you don’t see that, I’m not sure it’s worth debating you, no offense meant.
No. Gun bans are written by quite clever people (clever people that want civillians completely disarmed) for morons.
Morons like the soccer mom who has been frightened shitless her little christ child will get gunned down at school even though there is a greater chance they win the lottery.
Morons like dipshit hunters who are unaware their hunting rifle is nothing more that an “assault weap:rolleyes:n” on a different looking stock, yet support “assault weap:rolleyes:n” bans.
Morons like handgun owners that support mandatory training for gun owners, unaware that they have opened the door for potential mandatory training a Marine sniper couldn’t pass.
The morons are the people who support these laws and elect the people who write them. The people who write them know** exactly **what they are doing!!!
Who would want to control for variables and other such scientific, fact based goobledegock?
If we have 2 countries, country A and country B - country A has no laws on gun control and everyone can own anything they want, and country B has a magical force field that prevents all guns from existing within their borders and hence have no gun crime. They’re otherwise demographically, economically, and culturally similar.
Country A enacts their first round of gun control laws ever. Country B, of course, stays gun free as they always were. Over 10 years, they both experience a 50 percent drop in murder rate.
Now, would you conclude that Country A reduced the murder rate because of their new gun control law? Well, sure, you would, but I mean, would a trained epidemiologist or other statistician?
The murder rate has been going down across first world countries almost across the board for most of 20 years, regardless of changes in gun control policy. Why that is is debatable, but it’s very likely that the prime mover variable(s) are not gun control policy.
How so? It was both a stupid law that didn’t aim to do anything useful (it banned cosmetic features), and it also resulted in no change in levels of crime which were already so minute as to be irrelevant to the guns it was aimed at. Is that talking out both sides of your mouth? What do you feel are the contradictory arguments about letting the AWB sunset?
I would say that Mexico and Colombia are similar to America in a very significant way. Colombia is a major manufacturer of illicit drugs, Mexico is a major trafficker of illicit drugs and the United States is the world’s largest consumer of illicit drugs. There is no doubt in my mind that the War on Drugs is the primary reason our society is so violent. Not that drug legalization would prevent mass shootings perpetrated by the mentally ill.
I would not say Australia (or England for that matter) is perfectly analogous to the USA, either. There are plenty of cultural differences. To use Australia, two examples of significant differences that jump to mind are that Australia has a larger proportion of its population living in urban areas and that it is more ethnically homogenous (Australia is 90% white).
It is stupid to say that gun control would reduce violence in America just because it may have reduced violence in Australia; it would be equally stupid to say gun control would not work in Australia because it isn’t working out so well in Mexico. There are too many variables at work to make either blanket statement.
Violent crime doesn’t appear to be up in Australia. Murder and robbery are down, while assault and sexual assault are up. If you notice, almost all of the increase in sexual assault was attributed to situations where the victim was under 15. Either they have had a huge influx of violent pedos or reporting in that area has been drastically increased. My money is on the latter.
Here’s another study that I’ve seen posted in other threads, and should be relevant here. John Mace - This study is saying that the rate of decline in deaths due to firearms doubled after gun control was implemented.
Sorry, but it’s not my responsibility to go sifting through your link on a quest for the evidence which you claim supports your position. I no longer go on these kinds of quests . . . in my experience the cited sources pretty much never stand up to scrutiny.
Please post the actual data here. If there is solid data which will stand up to scrutiny and supports your position, you should have no trouble posting it.
124 incidents, 73 without injury, 51 with injuries, 12 fatalities
So what would be the relevance of Australia to either the pro or con side of the US gun debate?
“A Brit cop” is hardly a persuasive source. Why not look at some actual data, as reported here.
Anyway, anyone who thinks that gun control will have an effect in either direction on “rape, assault, muggings, burglary” in the UK has a fundamental lack of knowledge of UK society. Hint: if nobody uses guns for self-defence/protection in the first place, then removing the guns will have no effect on people’s ability to protect themselves. And therefore there would be no reason for “criminals [to] love the gun control laws”.
That depends. If there isn’t a wave of mass shootings in Australia will you accept that gun control does work…or is this a one-way hypothetical where only evidence against counts?
Yes, to an extent. I will accept it as a solid piece of evidence that gun control reduces the number of spree killings.
It’s somewhat one-way, since the antis in this thread seem to be putting their eggs in the Australia basket. In my jurisdiction (the United States), I am not aware of any gun control law which has reduced gun murders in general or spree killings specifically.
Therefore the default conclusion is that gun control does not work.
The antis claim to have found new evidence that gun control does work – the example of Australia. If that evidence turns out to be weak, then their whole argument collapses. On the other hand, if that evidence turns out to be solid, then it’s a solid point in their favor but they still have the problem that gun control hasn’t worked in the United States.
Would it be possible to drop this “antis” tag? It’s a cheap and dishonest way to throw everybody that isn’t 100% pro gun rights into a huge pile and treat them as a monolithic group that all think alike.
How is it that if the Australia example doesn’t pan out their whole argument collapses, but if it does pan out it’s just a weak example?