Who exactly made this claim, when, and where?
This reportsays there are “similar rates” of crime in the USA and other industrialized nations.
The Brady Campaign still opposes Shall Issue, and says so on their website.
And while I’m working on cites, one in support of my previous post about non-gun homicides in the US: AMERICAN HOMICIDE EXCEPTIONALISM
Isn’t anybody going to point out that Wyatt Earp got the city council to ban guns in Dodge City?
By that definition, even the Holocaust wasn’t a holocaust.
And who do you think originally owned the vast majority of those guns? In the UK very few criminals have guns because it’s just not an option for most people. You don’t know anyone with a gun, most people barely ever even see guns. Guns aren’t part of our culture so it’s really crossing a line for a criminal to use one. There is also, of course, much less motivation to carry a gun when the punishment is so harsh for just having one (so a criminal with a gun cannot so easily blend in) and more importantly because 99% of the time no one is going to start shooting at you.
So your theory is that Americans are simply more murderous? Maybe you’re right (your post makes sense to me), but I still see no reason for them to make it so much easier for themselves. Also, you say that rates of other crimes are lower in the US, and I’m too lazy right now to check a lot of stats, but I did notice the US has the most prisoners in the world, both per capita and in raw numbers, although that may be largely down to other factors.
As for the control group, just where do you find one when comparing crime statistics?
Makes sense, but apparently guns account for almost 40% of homicides in the US. I’d be surprised if a significant portion of those wouldn’t have been prevented had the killer not had access to a gun.
I have to agree with Airman Doors on this aspect. We have no easy way of isolating the various contributing factors but at the very least I don’t think anything I’ve seen points yet to a serious spike in casual gunplay since the expansion of CCW, shall-issue licensing (where licensing applies) or even stand-your-ground laws.
Eh, I’d say* self-defense* is what’s a “human” right: in the case of the USA, in turn, use of the specific modality of gun ownership to exercise it is recognized and protected as a civil right within this polity due to its circumstances. A different society with different circumstances may judge that it does not require easy access to that level of force.
Guns don’t kill people, it’s mostly the bullets!
Don’t take this the wrong way, but this probably means our positions are so far apart that there will be no meeting of the minds. I’m not dismissing what you say, just saying why I’m not sure I can debate anything at this juncture.
FTR, I’ve made two arguments in this thread directly relating to gun control. One was rather weakly in favor of more gun control, one was, I think, fairly strong against gun control. And I made a comment on the level of gun violence in this country - which is extreme, by any measure - without commenting on what solutions (if any) would be most effective in dealing with it.
Interestingly enough, based on this, you have jumped to the conclusion that I’m sufficiently extremist on gun control that there’s no point in even talking to me.
Nope.
I think IME your position has always been fairly balanced and middle-ground on gun control in general, and I didn’t see anything in here to change that opinion.
I just can’t imagine categorizing the level of firearms-related violence as a “holocaust” by any definition of the word.
Did I make another incorrect assumption?
IIRC, they only banned Open Carry.
Looks like I was the one misreading you, then. My apologies.
No need. I probably typed too tersely before. All I was saying was it just seemed like your assessment of the current level of gun violence was so far different from my perception that there must be something I’m really not seeing.
The UK’s very restrictive gun laws were not passed in the early 1990s. Shotguns and rifles have been tightly regulated since the Firearms Act of 1988, and handguns since the Firearms Act of 1997.
Obviously that didn’t happen, so I’d say what it SHOULD teach us is that having ordinary citizens carry guns is less risky than was previously assumed, and the actual ‘problem’ of firearms deaths in the US has other causes. That does not seem to be the lesson learned universally, however.
I’ll just say that I’m militantly unsurprised that carry conceal type laws opening up haven’t lead to gunfights in the streets by ordinary citizens. By and large ordinary citizens, even those who carry firearms (openly or concealed) don’t go about shooting each other in gunfights, as anyone who has ever been to a firing range would know…if they ever went to said firing range, where everyone is armed. I’ve in fact never seen an altercation with weapons fired or even threatened at the range I go to, and I’ve been going there for years.
-XT
The title of this thread uses the word “holocaust”, so Miller may well just have used that term because it was bouncing around in his subconscious.
Restricting gun ownership to responsible law abiding adults, requiring them to get a permit for their weapon, works.
The real question is how long will it take for these legally owned weapons to find their way into the hands of criminals?
Or for those “responsible, law abiding” adults to stop being so, if they ever were? To have a fit of anger that results in somebody getting killed who would have survived if the only weapon raedily available were a knife or a club (see the domestic violence statistics)? Or to finally act out a fantasy or a psychosis that they’d kept successfully hidden from whatever cursory investigation was done (Loughner, for example)?
A change from may issue to shall issue is a different thing than a change from no concealed carry to allowed concealed carry. Which are we debating here?
I’d say the former shouldn’t make much difference at all, while the latter is more debatable.