You are intentionally characterizing our arguments, which is just as dishonest.
So two things to consider: [1] gun violence in Canada is a direct result of guns brought in illegally from the US. One of the ways Canada tried (and failed) to deal with that was a gun registry, so that police could confiscate un-registered guns (presumably the ones from the US).
[2] Switzerland isn’t the example you want to use. Gun ownership there is a requirement of service in the military. Essentially, all men are required to keep a rifle at home and be trained in its use. That doesn’t translate to the scenario of gun ownership in the US.
“Gun ownership” isn’t the variable you need to consider with your charts, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m not dismissing your stats, I’m saying that they aren’t showing you what you think. Although in most of your graphs it “appeared” as if there was a nice straight line meaning homicides go up with guns. The countries above the line to me suggests an influx of illegal guns.
I’ve gotta run, but I can tell you from a Canadian perspective, if suddenly they required all men over 25 to be trained and own a gun, the variable of “gun owners” would suddenly go up. But the criminal element causing homicides and gun violence would still be the same, still committing murders. If you did the opposite, and took away all the hunting rifles, your variable would go down, but the criminal element would still be the same.
Some how, we need to address the issue of criminals having guns.
An assertion is not a cite. Either there is or isn’t a link between guns and homicide. The best metric that I can think of to determine that is by counting gun homicides per capita. I did so, and there’s no link. If there’s no link, then on what basis are you making an assertion?
Switzerland isn’t the only country I compared. Legal gun ownership isn’t the only statistic I compared. You said that comparing the US to Brazil, Colombia, Russia, etc. isn’t meaningful so I cropped those out and left only modern, Western nations. You said that only counting legal guns doesn’t capture the whole image, so I figured out a way to count all guns. If we’re cherry picking data here, it’s the data that you chose to cherry pick. I just found what you asked for and put into a graph, and it didn’t prove your point.
Again, gun ownership isn’t the statistic I’m using. Make sure you actually read and think about what you’re seeing. Gun death is the statistic we’re using. If your assertion is that decreasing guns period will decrease the rate of homicide, the data isn’t showing that. If you want me to do some funky math to try and separate legal guns from illegal, smuggled guns, I can do so. But personally I’d be willing to bet that it still won’t change anything.
I’m happy to look up and graph any data you want me to that you think will prove your point.
Ultimately, that’s the fault of gun prohibitionists using “reasonable regulations” as a cloak for de facto bans. As a result, suggesting that (for example) a training requirement for gun ownership is like suggesting a literacy requirements for the franchise – a defensible idea in theory, but utterly out of bounds in practice because of associated historical baggage.
Here, because you probably are entirely missing the point, let me address this point again, but please read the previous post as well in case you skimmed past it.
You’re asserting that when Canadians commit murder, they use an illegal gun from the US. I’ll trust that that’s true. But now, say that I want to kill Bob. When I go to kill him, I have the choice between a knife or a gun. I choose a gun. It ends up as a gun homicide. Fine.
But the question is, if I didn’t have the option of the gun, if the only option I had was to use the knife, would I be less likely to go ahead and kill Bob? If the answer to that is ‘no’, then it’s irrelevant whether or not guns are available. If I’m going to kill Bob no matter what, confiscating and destroying every gun on the planet still doesn’t save Bob.
Now your assertion is that if guns are available, legally or otherwise, I’ll be more likely to go ahead and kill Bob. If there was only knives, clubs, or other weapons available, I’d give up and let him live. Hence, if we can decrease guns – legal, illegal, whatever – homicides will decrease
But that’s what graphs 2 and 4 are about. They’re showing that when guns aren’t available, people just use a different sort of weapon. If you block the illegal smuggling of guns into Canada, Canadians will use knives. You can assert otherwise all you want, but the data backs it up. Spain has something like 7 times less guns, including illegal guns, than Switzerland from best I can tell counting up all deaths by gun. If someone’s using a gun to commit murder, probably it’s an illegal gun. And yet, Spain has more murderers. They just use knives.
The belief that one’s personal irrational hot buttons ought to dictate the rights of others is all too widespread. (Perhaps the difference between hoplophobia and homophobia is the iota controversy of our times.)
I have to call BS on this argument. The state doesn’t build you a church if your congregation can’t afford one, or provide you with a printing press if you can’t afford one. Right to be provided with counsel is the special case (justified by the fact that it only becomes an issue in situations where the government has proactively taken custody of you, rather than a situation where you and the government are simply minding your own business).
Sage Rat, the waters may be a bit too muddied for an reasonable discussion, but I’d like to at least try.
When I said that I didn’t like the use of “gun ownership” in the stats, my key disagreement is that this is a multivariable problem. No 2-d graphs are going to properly compare and contrast two different countries.
I say this, because within the the variable “gun death” at least four sub categories emerge: 1) classic domestic husband kills wife with owned/registered gun (or vise versa) 2) classic violent crime of mugger/robber shoots victim. 3) gang violence 4) accident.
Each of those deaths I see as different, requiring different laws to deal with. Gun control debates have a tendency to involve two people talking past each other, discussing different scenarios.
Likewise, we could break the variable of “gun death” into at least four sub categories based on the type of gun: 1) hang gun 2) shotgun 3) hunting rifle 4) assault style military grade type weapon (uzi, mp5, m16, ak47)
Again, two countries could have the same number of gun deaths, but one is based on 10 hunting accidents, the other 10 gang members died from a drive by using uzis. Each country could have 100 registered guns. But the resulting deaths/crimes are entirely different.
An assault rifle ban in the first country makes no sense, but requiring training would; and requiring gun registration in the second wouldn’t make any sense, but a crack down on assault rifles might.
That is why the single variable discussion so far isn’t cutting it.
Toronto suffers from a lot of gang violence, for example, “In 2005, Toronto media coined the term “Year of the Gun” because the number of gun-related homicides reached 52 out of 80 murders in total;[8] almost double the 27 gun deaths recorded the previous year.” (from wiki)
I need to deal with some stuff, I’ll be back later to finish.
Say that Swiss mostly have rifles whereas Americans mostly have handguns, and so by extension Canadians mostly have handguns. I presume you would think this is meaningful because a person with a rifle has a more difficult time going out and shooting someone and subsequently that depresses the Swiss number of murders. If that was so, then why do the Swiss have more gun-deaths than Canada? I’m not seeing any particular reason to give weight to the idea that people are more or less likely to kill people based on the available weapons, from what I know and what I can see. You’re proposing the possibility, which I like. It’s good when you throw out things to consider, but at the same time one could hope that you’d look at the data and consider your points and whether they seem to have merit.
And when it comes to question of gangs, lovers, suicides, etc. well I mean that’s why we compare multiple nations. You might not be able to compare two countries without knowing all that, but if you have a lot of countries, it all balances out. And more importantly, if the link is so damned obscure that even when you correct for income (which is related to gang violence, crime, etc.) that you’re still quibbling over the possibility that domestic violence might be the Big Issue…I’m sorry but no. If there was a connection, there would be some hint about it.
Okay, here is an article outlining the assertions I’ve been making.
"When Toronto criminals go shopping for guns, their weapons of choice are 9mm and .40 and .45 calibre handguns, new police statistics reveal.
They’re compact, easy to smuggle – and particularly lethal when combined with a high-capacity magazine."
"Some 831 weapons were designated [criminal] as such up to Dec. 18 and, of that number, 111 pistols and revolvers were traced to a U.S. source, although the statistics do not indicate where they originated [meaning which state]. "
"Several major break-ins last year targeted gun owners in the Toronto area.
“A shotgun inside your house makes a beautiful weapon for a gang member,” Press said. Dozens of recovered guns couldn’t be traced because serial numbers were removed, he added."
That last part was for Susanann. The guns in Canada used for crimes are either stolen from registered gun owners, and brought in from the US (some of which are probably stolen from registered gun owners).
I highlight Toronto to point out the fact that Canada is a large and sparsely populated country, with 3 large cities, so just lining up stats comparing Canada vs the US aren’t clear enough. Just as someone tried to compare a small town in Kansas with Chicago. Two very different areas with very different problems.
Okay, if they just use knives, why do Americans need guns, what benefit are they? Why does Susanann feel safer with a 12 gauge instead of a 12in cleaver? And why does the US military issue M-16s and M-4s?
You ask about trying to kill Bob, what weapon would you chose? Is it all the same to you?
I will fully admit, if Bob broke into my house at night, I would much rather a gun than a knife of a bat. If Bob is a lot larger than me, if he’s armed with a knife, if he’s on the other side of a river and I can’t physically reach him. A gun is a great way to kill someone, do you disagree?
If on the other hand I need to kill Bob without making any noise, and if he’s asleep, a knife seems like a much smarter choice.
If I don’t want to leave a lot of blood, I might choose a rope or a plastic bag.
Or just run him down with my car. Slip arsenic in his drink.
Or feed him delicious but high cholesterol meals until his heart gives up.
Guns are a very easy way to kill someone, and a very effective means of threatening someone.
So tell me, if you were going to rob a bank, would you use a knife, or a gun?
The answer to your question is that without the option of gun, the task of murder becomes considerably more difficult, and I would think less likely.
If Bob was going to try and kill you, what would you rather he had? Bare hands, knife, or gun? I ask this because if a gun isn’t an option, the ability to defend yourself goes up. Bob might still try to kill you, but do you think having a gun makes him more or less likely to succeed?
Confiscating every gun could save Bob, because it could give him more of a chance.
So yes, murders continue and people switch over to knives, which is why almost all areas I know of have some restriction on carrying knives.
Your statement circles back to the dismissal of gun violence. If they don’t use a gun they’ll use something else. So should we just let it happen?
Again, all that says is that when Canadians have access to a gun after they’ve decided to kill someone, that’s what they choose. It’s not any sort of evidence that Canada, placed on the border of a country without guns, would have fewer murders. Decreasing murders is really all we’re concerned with.
Think of it this way, I’m using all of the available information in the entirety of the internet and I can’t establish even the slightest hint of reason to think maybe possibly there’s some data out there to show a link between the existence of guns and the choice to go kill someone. It may well be that there is some statistic that if I knew – like the average size of gun per country used in a crime or the average type of crime committed with a gun – that I could find that correlation. But, I doubt I can find that sort of information, and I really doubt that you’ve seen it either. So, why do you believe that there is a link between the existence of guns and the choice to go kill someone? If you don’t have some sort of data that you’re deriving your ideas of correlation and causation from, then why are you discounting the information that you have seen?
A gun, actually (compared to a knife). People are more likely to die of a knife wound than a gun wound. Knife wounds cause you to lose blood faster, so even if you weren’t hit anywhere particularly vital, you’ll still probably die. With a gun, unless it hit somewhere vital, you have a decent chance of being found and having your wound stopped before you bleed out.
The Fear of the Gun is not based on reality.
I have no idea what the rate is of people being successfully killed by bare hand. I doubt that it happens often enough (except to babies) to be a meaningful statistic.
That’s what this is about now? I seriously doubt that the process goes, “hey I have a gun, I should go kill someone.” Just like Susanann’s bizarre assumption that Canadians moving to the US should be more likely to commit murder.
So no, the presence of a gun should not alter a person’s desire to kill, nor their desire to commit violent crime (is armed robbery a violent crime?). What the presence of a gun does, at least in my view, is make it much easier to kill or commit violent crime, for those that want to.
You still haven’t answered my question, although admittedly I threw out a bunch of them. If knives are so effective, and guns so useless, why the insistence to have guns? Why put guns in the 2nd amendment and not knives? Why not sleep with a knife beside your bed? And carry a concealed knife?
At this point, I can’t tell if you’re being serious, or using the “knife is worse than a gun fallacy.” Everything in your posts seems to suggest that you think guns aren’t lethal, or threatening. And that this whole debate is simply because people have an irrational fear of guns.
Is the solution to all this simply giving guns a new image?
Odd that Googling “ninjas in the trees” fallacy shows this thread, and your post. Care to make up any other fallacies? Or just continue to use the classic “call everything you don’t like a fallacy” fallacy?
If four people break into my home while I’m there, I would rather all of us were armed than all of us were unarmed. My fists against four guys’ fists? Hopeless. My baseball bat against four guys’ baseball bats? Nearly hopeless. My gun against four guys’ guns? Well chances are good that at least one of the four is going to get shot dead. And if they know that to begin with, they’re going to reassess just how good an idea breaking into my house is. In fact I would go so far to say that the odds would be even better if we were all armed with full-auto submachine guns: They can only kill me once; if I get lucky I could kill all four of them.
Guns allow a beleaguered minority to sell their lives more dearly. Why do you think that when the cops respond to a report of an armed assailant they go the whole entry-team thing of twenty guys in body armor and long guns? Because that’s how worried they are about what one guy with a gun can do on his home ground.
