Living without the fear of guns is. It’s a huge, blessed relief and IMO, in a mature democratic society, a basic right.
No it wasn’t obvious since your sentence was conditioned on a point I never made.
Besides which, I explicitly asked you if you wanted a list of gun control laws which don’t work and you don’t deny giving me a vague response.
Anyway, this is the last time I will ask you: Please tell me your definition of “strict gun control laws.” I need to know since it will help me to understand your apparent position and it will also help me avoid wasting time if you ever do request me to point to a gun control law which does not work.
Your choice.
Even when it is clear that an example of an ineffective gun control law is what I want, and yet you still do not provide one, leads me to think you aren’t serious about having a real discussion. Seriously, what’s up with your insistence that I explicitly pose my request in the form of a question? Anyway, if you didn’t take note of what I said in post #55, let me repeat that I do not claim to know if gun control laws account for the differences in gun violence between the US and other similar nations. Why you think my position is “apparent” is beyond me. In conclusion, my choice is, forget it.
Did Australia ever have a constitution that implied that owning firearms was a fundamental right? Did it have large numbers of people claiming that banning guns was part of a totalitarian conspiracy to abolish freedom? Was there a thriving black market in guns even before they were restricted? Do the minorities in Australia live in impoverished urban centers where they battle over the illegal drug trade? Were there hundreds of thousands of Australians who were amateur gun smiths, who had the knowledge and the machinery in their basements to illegally make guns? Does Australia have enough of a drug problem that cartels for smuggling and distributing contraband are experienced and entrenched?
I submit that gun control worked in Australia simply because the population was amenable to having it work. If you banned guns in the USA, you’d get Mexico, not Australia.
Lol, given that you were never serious about having a real discussion, I am not interested in playing your games.
You have strawmanned me and weaseled. You refuse to answer simple questions so that I can understand your position.
Again and again I ask you to define the phrase you used and you simply ignore my reasonable request. I have no interest in such a discussion.
This exchange is concluded.
Bye.
Wow, then I have this basic human right, right now! I have the best of both worlds! I own multiple guns AND I live without the fear of guns!
How awesome is that? 
Must be those Skrælings! 
Another thing is that the homicide rate varies a lot by race. The black Homicide rate is several times higher than the white homicide rate.
Also if you go back to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of…_homicide_rate
and look at the homicide rate by state, you can see they vary by a factor of ten or more. Some American states have homicide rates as low as low European countries.
Some “shining success” stories from the UK:
Firearms: cheap, easy to get and on a street near you
Or just search “Illegal guns in Britain” for lots more.
It is and it’s happened despite the '94 AWB sunset, more states approving shall-issue concealed carry permits and a significant increase in firearm sales.
A right that I enjoy every day. There is no reason to fear guns.
The conclusion would be that gun control laws as implemented in the US don’t work, whereas gun control laws as implemented in Australia did work. The crucial difference being of course that the Australian laws were federal. It is to no-one’s surprise at all that restricting guns in just Washington DC or Chicago didn’t work, since there are no border controls between states. I agree such bans or controls are virtually worthless.
Another significant difference was that it was enacted by a (newly elected) conservative government. So it was pretty hard for opponents (of whom there were plenty) to paint it as part of some socialist or one-world plot.
Links taken at one or two removes from the OP:
Did gun control work in Australia?
Further links from within the above article:
Do Gun Buybacks Save Lives? Evidence from Panel Data [PDF]
The Australian Firearms Buyback and Its Effect on Gun Deaths [PDF]
ho hum, I come a law enforcement family, street cops and fed agencies, and paid my way being a street musician and hanging out with what is referred to as new age travelers across the pond.
Muggings/rapes/thefts of all kind go unreported in both the NY/NJ area and over the pond. Personal first hand experience and family affirmation both say that cops themselves actively suppress crime figures to portray a better picture. Besides, if I wasn’t real lazy and totally unconcerned about crime ( crime exist, so do my rights, one has no bearing on the other )
I could find stats that support that crime has indeed gone up.
Having been a roguish traveling musician and street dweller I have the knowledge gleaned the hard way, not from the comfort of academia. You really thinks its safe,eh? Let me take to the streets of London, I’ll show you stuff to really make you sick.
Sweet, gun related death went down. Less rapist were killed by gun owners. Golly that’s swell!..
If cars were outlawed there would be less speeding tickets/car related deaths - except in wealthy people who can buy the privilege like Trump bought a NYC carry permit but Purple Heart Vets can not, the wealthy would have armed guards and or carry themselves and the serfs wouldn’t be able to. . Out law cars and only the wealthy could be in car wrecks.
I prefer dangerous freedom, I know the fascist want to take away my guns, I wish they would do it themselves instead of sending in the clowns, oops I mean various fed agencies.
Do it yourself! MOLON LABE!
So it’s okay for you to quote some idiot who completely ignores the facts when making his point, but when we show actual data that calls his bluff, you decide that you’ll completely ignore the same facts because you find London a scary place?
I guess this is the proper forum for witnessing, so do carry on.
I really wish that people who push for such laws would admit that they are worthless BEFORE they get passed. Anyway, there have been a number of gun control laws passed in the US at the federal level, for example the NFA of 1938; the GCA of 1968; the Brady Act; and the AWB. Were those all worthless too?
Do you support the repeal of worthless gun control laws?
Also, why is it (apparently) so obvious that banning the carrying of firearms in a particular area or region is worthless?
Last, where is the actual data to show that gun control in Australia actually worked?
It’s true. You know what they say: Guns don’t kill people. Skrælings kill people.
15 years ago I worked with a man who was so terrified of guns and crime that he refused to set foot in the city of Minneapolis for fear that he would be shot. He was so fearfull that he even refused to drive through the city. He’d drive around it.
Obviously, that’s an irrational level of fear. Unfortunately, when people own these kinds of fears, they are very fanatical about them and reason doesn’t enter into the picture. If it did, they wouldn’t have these fears in the first place.
The interesting thing was that he and a bunch of his buddies took a trip to Edinburgh, Scotland. When he came back, he crowed about how safe he felt as he and all his gay friends drunkenly roamed the streets of Edinburgh at 3am. And of course, he was very very upset at me for pointing out that he was probably less safe there (noting assault and robbery statistics) than roaming the streets of Minneapolis at the same time. He ‘felt safe’, and that was it.
Why do people keep saying this? It’s not true:
And mass shootings in Britain despite the disarmament laws passed explicitly in response to the infamous Dunblane school shooting: