How/when/where has this been demonstrated?
Some of the most violent/dangerous cities in the US have the most stringent gun laws and outright bans for starters.
I just remember reading a small paragraph-long blurb in a gun magazine about some survey. I do not believe it’s any sort of official figure, but it’s the only one I’ve seen. I could research it at some point, but I’m kinda pressed enough with research for college stuff as it is.
It doesn’t really seem like that much to me, considering the sheer number of gun owners in the country and the amount of crime that occurs. I think the figure includes defensive uses where the gun is never fired, so really as far as a statistical estimate goes, it’s probably not wildly off (then again, it’s only gonna be as accurate as statistics are on average 
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This just means that lawmakers in violent/dangerous cities are more inclined to enact stringent gun laws, doesn’t it?
That, as well as the fact that the gun laws that they have enacted don’t protect people, nor do they stop those inclined to a life of crime from continuing said career.
Really? My zoning laws won’t let me put up a 16’ fence covered with barbed wire, I can’t have a house with no windows, the fire dept makes me have at least two methods of egress, I don’t think I can have gulag-style klieg lights sweeping my neighborhood and I’m pretty sure I can’t have anti-aircraft missles mounted on my roof to prevent terrorists from crashing planes into my house. I don’t think the post office would deliver mail if I had landmines either.
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It may be unlikely right now, but right now we do have guns and right is right now. Rome was a republic, like us, for centuries before becoming some guy overthrew the government and established himself as emperor. You can’t just worry about “right now”, you have to worry about the full scope of the existence of the US as a nation. What can plausibly happen a hundred years from now is unknowable, but it can certainly be said that the stronger a position the people have against an abusive government, the less likely the government will be abusive.
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Hitler (yeah yeah, Godwin’s law), was a popularly elected leader in a republic, just the same as us. He popularly oppressed (and slayed) several unarmed minority groups, and as a precursor to doing so, all Jewish people in the land were deprived of their firearms. (PDF) This makes a pretty good argument that when the government wants to abuse you, they’d rather you be disarmed first, and that being in an democratic society does not protect you as an individual. You might read up on the Japanese internment camps and the Trail of Tears, for instance.
Not to say that being armed will save you. But certainly it allows the possibility to fight back if you’ve got wide enough support and a leader. But moreso, it makes it so that the logistics to oppress you are greater. It might be a tiny weight, but a tiny weight on a tight balance can swing things either way. It really just depends on a lot of other factors. But either way, you’d rather have what weight you can on the side of preserving freedom, especially when there’s no conclusive evidence that denying anyone the right to firearms actually saves lives or lessens crime in any way. All evidence so far is that when someone wants to kill, they find a way. Humans are inventive buggers, and on the individual level a gun just isn’t all that much more useful for killing than poison or a knife–or an illegal gun.
In 1999 there were 28,800 gun deaths in the US. http://groups.google.com/group/talk.politics.guns/browse_thread/thread/651ac36ed8c01570 For comparison, in 2000 there were 42,000 auto related deaths in the US. Healthgrades Health Library
Over time this has changed. In 1980, 52,000 people in the US died in auto accidents. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E03E3D81239F932A25753C1A967948260 In 1980
This link shows the US by decade. http://www.wvdhhr.org/bph/oehp/hsc/briefs/eleven/default.htm
We are not making progress with firearm deaths as we are with auto deaths.
I do not support most “gun control” measures. Trigger locks are an exception. A lot of teen suicides could be prevented by having trigger locks where the keys are not kept in the same place as the firearm.
I see this line of thinking often, but rarely anything to back it up. If someone is intent on killing them self, and there was a lock on the gun, why would they not move on to option number 2? A running car in a garage or an overdose would be far more peaceful ways to go out.
It takes 5 minutes and a drill, a hacksaw, dremel tool or a file to defeat most trigger locks. The motivated will not be deterred by $3 worth of plastic.
I’ve yet to hear of a teen suicide (besides Columbine-type murder-suicides) that were committed with a firearm (although I’m sure they happen). They’re always taking pills, cutting their veins, jumping off buildings, hanging themselves, etc. Why isn’t there a Rope Control lobby? Won’t someone think of the children???
Takes an 11 year old with an ice pick less than that. He can do 3 of them in about 5 minutes.
They don’t work.
Are you saying the gun laws have never resulted in decreased crime rate? Or are you saying some criminals will still manage to get guns, and therefore the gun laws are meaningless?
I don’t think it’s based on a rational weighing of chances and benefits. I think that, for many people, it’s an issue of feeling powerful vs. feeling powerless.
Think about the many, many scenes in movies and TV shows where one person holds a gun on someone else. The person with the gun has the upper hand. They get to tell the other person what to do, and the other person has to do it. Symbolically, having a gun means nobody can push you around or be completely in control over you.
Seems like this question could be answered easily if anyone bothered to gather data on the makeup of robbery and murder victims. Are gun owners more, less, or equally likely to be robbed or killed than non gun owners? As far as I know, nobody has done this study.
More thanhalf of suicides by 15-19 year old males are by firearm.
The statement that you took issue with is that gun laws do not protect people. I am saying that gun laws only affect those that follow them. Criminals, by their nature do not follow the laws. Therefore, they are unencumbered by them and as such, the gun laws do little good. Taking away the ability for people to defend themselves by banning, or limiting weapons leaves them as targets, which is the exact opposite of protecting them.
No, the motivated won’t. I see your reasoning a lot too. Not all suicides are as motivated as you impliedly claim. Saving half or even 10 percent would be worth it. Locking up guns and trigger locks do not need to be perfect, they need deterrence. Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.
So lets do some math. 2 million a year is 5,479 per-day. Portland metro has about 1 million people, so that means it should have about 1/280th of the incidents - or about 20 per-day. There must be a huge conspiracy at the local news stations, because I rarely see any coverage of what sounds like a pretty spectacular event. We did have a case of a guy at a car wash chasing off a thief with a high-pressure water gun.
No one calls the news to report a non-event.
As I’ve stated repeatedly over the years here, I’ve displayed a firearm five times to stop my house from being broken into while I was home and once to prevent myself from being mugged in an isolated area. Do you honestly expect me to call the police and alert the media in each case?
Call the police when someone is trying to break in your house or mug you? Yes. Not to do so is irresponsible. Thank God you gun owners at least have the sense to call the NRA so they can add you to the list of succesful deterents