That was my prior view. Now my view is, “well fine, you can have one, just don’t shoot anyone with it.”
For some reason, I just imagined a what-if situation where firearms were summarily outlawed in some place, because “you’ll put your eye out!” 
The study you linked to cites Kellerman. You just debunked yourself.
When talking about violence in societies, we should not look at just murder rates but at all attempted murders also, not just the ones that are successful.
Both.
If someone with a firearms licence wishes to purchase a firearm- any firearm, be it a shotgun or a rifle or a handgun- they need to obtain a Permit To Acquire (PTA). Part of obtaining the PTA involves telling the police why you want the gun- and if you put “self-defence”, your PTA will automatically be declined and you’d probably be issued with a “Show Cause” notice as to why the police should still consider you a fit and proper person to hold a firearms licence.
Let’s say you buy a pistol for target shooting (genuinely), and end up using the pistol to shoot someone in self-defence. The police will want to know why you had a loaded handgun on your person (and it had better be a VERY good reason), why you had loaded magazines or spare ammo nearby, and how you had time to get your gun, load it, and shoot the Bad Guy ™.
There are circumstances where it would be reasonable to have a gun and ammo nearby in your house- say, you’ve just returned from a hunting trip or range trip, and were carrying your gun into the house to put it back in the secure storage facility when you were confronted by the Bad Guy- but as a general rule here, if you shoot someone in self-defence you’re going to be in as much shit (legally) for shooting them as they are for threatening you in the first place…
Hopefully I’ll never have to find out for certain, though.
Wow.
No “I heard this guy breaking into my house and feared for my familiy’s safety, so I went and got the gun and some cartridges from the locked gun cabinet and loaded it and…”
I wasn’t sure what you meant by this, but Kellermann is one of many cited researchers in that link.
According to my link posted in the previous paragraph he appears to be a pretty stand up guy.
"but as a general rule here, if you shoot someone in self-defence you’re going to be in as much shit (legally) for shooting them as they are for threatening you in the first place…"
Can you use a knife or spear or ball bat inside your home agains an armed intruder and what about on the street? Or did the bad guys give up their guns too? *:: Do you,y law have to just stand there while a crackhead kills your wife and kid ,so you don’t go to prision before the crackhead? :: *
I used to be impressed by Aussies but …
As a UK citizen who has lived in the US for the last 10 years, I have had exposure to both ends of the gun control spectrum. Like 90+% of Brits I was bewildered as to how America could allow what seemed like such extensive caranage that resulted from allowing its citizens to have almost unfettered access to whatever weaponry they wanted. I would still prefer to have a society in which the police generally don’t carry guns because they don’t need to. However, in the US it is difficult to get there from here as there are already so many guns out there, and many in the hands of criminals who have little hesitation about using them. Although still a firm believer in gun control, I confess that if I owned a convenience store in south-west Atlanta, I might well by myself something to keep under the counter.
There is huge misunderstanding about how things are in the other (UK/US) country. I am sick of hearing how the UK banned handguns and crime went up because people could no longer defend themself. a) crime didn’t go up. b) people did not use handguns for self-defence anyway: it has been prohibited to get a gun citing self-defence as the reason since 1946, and c) there were only 160,000 handguns anyway, often kept in clubs. Did criminals get suddenly emboldened by the fact that the chance of a victim having a handgun in the home dropped from about 0.1% to close to zero? And while the odds of their being a shotgun stayed the same at probably 2 - 5% (there are over 2 million shotguns).
Depends. If you grabbed a kitchen knife or a cricket/baseball bat, or a golf club, or a tennis racquet, or anything else one might presumably have lying around their home, then you’d be on pretty solid legal ground (again, depending on the specific circumstances). We do have a right to self-defence here, and people exercise it all the time. Sometimes they use firearms in the course of events, and there are consequences for doing so- which involve possible court proceedings and the loss of their firearms licence. They’re not inevitable, but they are possibilities that serve to discourage people from reaching for the shotgun every time they hear a noise downstairs.
They never really had them to begin with. Your average ne’er-do-well in this country is not packing a .45, and never has been. Call it a cultural difference- we’re very much like the UK in this regard.
This is so stupid I’m not going to dignify it with a response.
Basically, nope.
A jury might very well acquit you (depending on the overall situation), but the police would almost invariably revoke your gun licence if you used this defence- which is separate from the other legal ramifications of shooting someone in self-defence.
I think the legal term in the US involves having a “Duty To Retreat”, if that helps explain things a bit.
Well if you stop a car for burned out headlight, outdated plates, etc. and find an illegal gun you can confiscate it and arrest the owner. That sounds good to me.
I’m not sure, but I have heard rumors that people sometimes drive without a valid licencse, Does that mean we shouldn’t require driving licenses? If driving is outlawed, only outlaws will drive.
In my state it is known as the “Back to the Wall” law. If I am threatened and have no chance of escape I may shoot the attacker. By the same law, my back is to the wall anywhere inside my home. I may not, for example, shoot someone for stealing my car, or shoot a thief who is leaving the house.
Consider the number of people killed in automobile accidents and the potential massive energy savings.
Not to mention the reality TV show oppertunities if networks wanted to just camp out near busy highways and film the outlaw drivers duking it out for control of the interstate system. 