There’s some demographics at work here. Most Canadians that live in Florida are older or have money. Groups which have lower crime rates.
Wolfrick:
More nuclear weapons in the hands of that vast majority who are good, decent law abiding countries would unquestionably deter that brutal, stupid minority who view nuclear weapons as an acceptable primary tool for resolving international disputes.
Or does the logic break down at that point? Without getting too far into GD territory, a wacko who walks into the local McDonalds armed to the teeth can kill a lot of innocent people before being stopped, regardless of who else in the restaurant is armed.
Opus1: You bring up the old “nuclear weapons” fallacy. Hint: Area weapons are different from firearms.
Well, which is it? Demographics? or availability of guns? Sounds like you are agreeing with me? … that the difference between the crime rate of Canada and america is demographics and not gun laws?
FYI, many Canadians in Florida dont have money, they may be retiring on a small pension and living in a trailer.
Since the Canadians that move to Florida can easily buy handguns since they are not in Canada anymore, one would expect them to start robbing 7-11’s and banks to get more money.
Some people think if the entire cities of Windsor and Detroit(or Ottawa and Washington DC) (or Los Angeles and Toronto)switched postions with each other overnight, then all the canadians moved to the geographic area of Detroit(a mile away), would immediately have a crime rate the same as Detroit does now. Also, if all the Detroiters moved to Windsor overnight, the ex-Detroiters would commit no crimes.
It would be fun to try it for a year, to see the real effects of Canadian laws. I would certainly like to try to switching 3 cities populations with canada, and see what happens. Lets trade the people of 2 border cities, 2 large cities, and 2 capital cities and see if there is no change in the crime rates.
Id like to trade several of our inner cities(where most of our crime and murders occur) with Canadian inner cities, but I cant find any over there.
Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon – rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything – any time, any place, without asking anyone’s permission. The Atlanta Declaration, L. Neil Smith
Hand-in-hand with the Atlanta Declaration is the Non-agression principal… the idea that it is immoral to initiate force against another person.
And as far as the whacko walking into McDonalds armed to the teeth goes, yes, you’re right about the vulnerability of the general populace to the predations of psychotic or sociopathic persons. But if you or your family were standing in that McDonalds, would you want to wait for a 911 call to bring the police (who will wait outside until the shooter is done) or do you want to draw your pistol and try to take care of the problem on the spot?
It is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to defend yourself and your family. If enough people would uphold that responsibility, then we’d either run out of whackos or frighten them into controlling their impulse issues.
~Wolfrick
ps. My invitation stands… anyone want to learn to shoot?
But just try getting a “death ray”.
Yeah, didn’t they ban those back in the 1920’s?
If the wacko does it in Canada, or europe, he will kill all the innocent people in McDonalds.
If he does it in the United States, he will be stopped by a licensed ccw holder before he kills all of them.
I guess it doesnt make much difference to you if you are the first to get shot and dont care about other people except yourself, but it matters to the rest of us.
Besides that, if he tries it someplace other than the Unired State or Isreal, he might even get away and shoot the customers at Wendys and Burger King too.
Usually wackos like the type that you describe, keep doing it until they finally run into somebody else who is armed: either an armed private citizen or an armed policeman. How soon he is stopped in his murdering is a function of how many in the general populace are armed.
Moderator’s Note: I think I’ll just go ahead and snatch this one up.
Off to Great Debates.
Well, I’m not so sure this is really that far from the actual (if tacit) U.S. view of things. We’ve never seemed very upset over the British or French nuclear arsenals, and we’ve tacitly accepted the Israeli nuclear arsenal as well. I’m not so sure we’ve even always been too unhappy at the prospect of China’s nuclear arsenal, with the realities of the late-Cold War Sino-Soviet split and Sino-American detente. Certainly the proposition that “nuclear weapons in the hands of countries who are good, decent, law-abiding countries”–i.e., us–“unquestionably deter that brutal, stupid minority who view nuclear weapons as an acceptable primary tool for resolving international disputes” has been the strategic cornerstone of U.S. military and foreign policy ever since World War II.
I already know how to shoot... I like it. Does it make me support Guns ? Nope. Quite the contrary. Your taking it to the "you dont support guns only because you dont know them" isnt the best approach.
I dont think that to balance the “who has guns” equation means arming civilians more. It would be better if no one had guns (quite impossible I know). Well we can try to lower gun “levels” and the casualties will be way less. If criminals know people have guns they might become reluctant to do crime… OR less reluctant to shoot people before they draw guns.
Do you really want Housewives shooting out with criminals in McDonalds ? Especially a housewive that hasnt practiced since she got her gun license 10 years ago ? Does that housewive have combat traning too ? Afterall shooting a stationary targets isnt the same as McD shoot outs.
As for the “militia” argument… WHO will invade the US ? Its not like Utah people need to fear Al Qaeda…
Somehow a society armed to the teeth against basically each other should strike most NORMAL people as wierd.
Hmm, that’s not what he said. “If you haven’t tried it, and educated yourself in at least the basics, you are not entitled to an opinion.” He’s wrong, in that everyone is entitled to an opinion, but he’s right in that uninformed opinions are worthy of being scorned and ignored.
Yes - it’s a choice between an armed woman stopping a killing spree, or an unarmed woman being a victim of a killing spree. Not a tough choice.
Is that so?
Well, this actually happened in the United States, in San Ysidro, California, on July 18, 1984. James Huberty walked into a McDonald’s and shot 21 people dead. Guess what? Nobody managed to stop him until police arrived.
In fact, of all the big shooting I’ve heard of in the United States, Icannot think of a single one that was stopped by a civilian with a gun. I’m sure it might have happened sometime, but it seems to be the great, great majority of shooting just keep on going until the cops show up or the guy runs out of ammo.
For all the blather I hear about how an armed populace prevents crime, I see damned little evidence of it. It sure isn’t working in the United States.
It’s a choice between a society where a gunfight can break out at any moment, and one where it’s much more unlikely. We don’t live in the wilderness; bandits and bears won’t come and kill your children. Well, at least around here I don’t have any fear of that. Now, if you do live where you fear for your life all the time, and figure you need to be armed and ready to kill at a moment’s notice (that is, I’m guessing, about how long it takes for someone to whip out a gun and shoot you), then fine. Welcome to the Wild West.
If Canadians can have guns, and not murder each other over their bad driving, then maybe the problem with gun violence isn’t guns, but violence. Making housewives ready to shoot on sight at the restaurant is like wearing a lead vest to pretect yourself from computer screen radiation. And all it does it ratchet up the scale of the problem… wouldn’t you feel much safer if everyone around you probably had a gun, and wasn’t afraid to use it? If that were the case, I don’t think I’d ever go out!
Imagines such a world
Drunken, angry guy comes into McDonald’s, where dozens of parents and children and such are eating. He waves a gun around, yells at people. No one knows his real intent - maybe he’s there to murder everyone, maybe he just thinks this is a clever way to get free food. So, he waves his gun, and shoots, oh, the roof. Maybe it was by accident (he’s drunk, you know), maybe it’s to scare people into obeying him.
So, in response, to protect themselves and their family, two or ten or twenty housewives and fathers and young guys pull out guns, and shoot. Not only is the agressor dead, but there are holes in the wall, and a bunch of diners died in the crossfire.
Comes back to reality
Yeah, sounds great. Sign me up.
No matter how many people have guns, people are still going to be hurt by gun violence. In the case of the guy who goes into McDonald’s to kill everybody, sure, he might only get two victims if someone has a gun handy. On the other hand, in my scenario, a dozen people could get shot when maybe none needed to. It’s a foolish numbers game, where we each imagine ways that our side results in less deaths in certain situations. And my guess is, for every sharpshooting hair-trigger housewife that saves everybody over a HappyMeal, there’s a messy gunfight that puts ten people’s blood on the carpet. The integral of death by time probably works out the same. And personally, I’d rather not suspect that, if threatened, the guy next to me on the street will start shooting things.
Having everybody buy guns to protect themselves is like suggesting they fix their broken radio by buying an ear trumpet. Except using the ear trunpet doesn’t put supersonic lead into the air.
So… seeing as that’s a bit of a hijack…
Like one poster suggested upthread, it’s not a simple problem of “Give everybody guns to make them safe!”, or, “Guns kill people! Take them all away!”. Maybe what we really need to solve is the complex problem of getting people to stop shooting each other… so… why do they do that? I don’t live in the US, so if the question is “Why do Americans do that more that Canadians”, I don’t know.
Within the last couple of years, the shooting at the law school in West Virginia was stopped by three citizens with guns.
The school shooting in Edinboro, Pennsylvania that never made national news probably never made national news because it was stopped - by a citizen with a gun.
Why would you hear on the news about a big shooting that wasn’t because some citizen with a gun put a stop to it? The news media’s not interested in stories where citizens with guns stop a criminal, and when they do publish the stories, they manage to leave out the guns (in the WV case, the media only reported that the shooter was ‘subdued by other students’).
How many of the people in McD’s were packing guns? And I believe there are a lot of crimes in the states that are stopped by people with guns, and it makes you think twice about holding up a 7-11.
And it’s not easy to get a gun in Canada, and there are limitied places that sell them, unless you’re a cop, criminal, or CPRail police.
I’m not sure this is true. Granted, you have to take a course, pass a test, and get a license first. But that done, there are 3 gun shops right smack dab in the middle of Vancouver that I know of. Granted, this is fewer than, say, the number of Starbuck’s, but it’s not that limited…
And I’ll also grant that they tend to sell more long guns than handguns, but with a second course/ test/ license in your wallet, they’ll all sell you handguns, too.
Basically, I’ll add to all the other posters that it’s violence that’s the problem, not whether it’s prefaced by gun or not. Heck, I had some irate motorist throw an empty coke bottle at me while biking home a few weeks ago. Had that coke bottle lodged in my front spokes, it could easily have thrown me off the bike into traffic. It’s not the weapon, it’s the violence.
And yet in Canada, fewer people get killed by gunfire. So what objective evidence do you have that more guns = more safety?
The fact remains that the United States is, among industrialized nations, incredibly violent, and has far more gun violence that countries with FEWER guns. The firearm homicide rate in the United States is *eight times higher than in Canada, which, probably not coincidentally, is quite similar to the difference in handgun ownership (about six to one.) This far exceeds the difference in non-firearm homicides, which is only about two to one. I mean, we’re not talking about a small difference, we’re talking about a friggin’ ENORMOUS difference. All those handguns are not making you safer. They are apparently not making people think twice about sticking up a 7-11. You might wish it was so, but it’s just not. You have more guns, and you have more gun violence. It’s not making you safer.
The rate for other crimes is also higher in the United States. the U.S. has more than twice as many robberies, and 3.5 times as many robberies involving firearms. Serious assault charges are more than twice as high. The U.S. rate for all crimes involving violence and guns is much, much higher than Canada (or any other first world country I can think of.) Where’s the evidence guns reduce crime?
Curiously, the crime rate in Canada for NON-violent crimes is often about the same as the U.S. - stuff like pickpocketing, car theft, and what have you. Actually, car theft is a little higher here. (There’s other weird differences - the U.S. has more shoplifting, Canada has more bicycle theft.) But add guns and violence into the mix and the U.S. rate shoots upward - way, way upward. How are guns protecting you?
The notion that more guns = more safety is simply not supported by what actually happens in the real world. You can talk theory all you want; you’re still killing far more of your own people.
Praiseworthy that you might want to save people here from shooting their foot or head off by mistake. Young children and teens need to learn these rules too... more than most here.
Still what makes guns dangerous isnt only mishandling... what if a loony gets a gun ? Not much use for your safety rules...
The way they put it here one might imagine every criminal has only homicidal intentions. I would guess most just want to rob your money. So in the end the gun toting isnt much about life saving... but feeling secure... or "protecting" your money ?! I would guess so.
So I'd rather see some money stolen than shootouts. Money is repleaceable and your pride/confidence too. More guns might mean the occasional frustrated wacko or reluctant criminal... it would also means crooks might be far less reluctant to shoot to kill whenever citizens start possibly pulling out guns.
If you still guns "level out" the playing... shooting field... then why make it easy to get guns ? Law abiding citizens shouldnt have a hard time passing tests and certifications. (their guns get robbed and sold to criminals thou) Don't bring that militia bullshit either... no one is about to invade the US. People in Ohio and Utah are hardly prone to meet Al Qaeda members either. Policemen and military have jobs to do and better than amateurs.How about that for many of us in Western Canada, we live in an area that had police before it was settled by European immigrants in any appreciable numbers. We do not have the the tradition of “frontier justice” and from settlement on, have had an extremely professional national police force (NWMP/RCMP) to adjudicate disputes between citizens.
Now I am not saying that traditional Canadian deference to authority in the form of police is always a good thing, but insofar as we were raised with the expectation of being able to turn to a relatively impartial constabularly has reduced the likelihood that we will try to settle disputes as violently as our cousins to the south.