So? How often does that actually present a problem in Canada?
You’re the one who said that the weapons you would allow "are quite effective against home invaders, etc. " and “personal firearms are good enough for home-defense”. I mean, I specifically quoted the post back to you and everything.
Civil society also includes (per your wiki cite) such institutions as sports clubs, professional institutions, and (interestingly) citizen’s militias. It is often quite acceptable (sometimes expected) to show up to these kinds of gatherings armed.
People killed every year by step-ladder accidents: about 300
People killed in 2011 by rifles: 323. And only a fraction of those are “assault rifles”.
But if the Canadians, with their gun-control regime, don’t actually need guns for home defense very often, that should tell you something. What it should tell you is that a gun-control regime is better home defense than having a gun in the house. “Only outlaws” will not have very many guns, if they can be busted just for having them in a manner proscribed by law. Outlaws know very well that they live always on society’s edge and must always be very careful not to fall over it.
You’re probably wrong, again. About 47% of American households own a gun. Due to the number of apartment owners vs. single home owners, I bet the percentage that own stepladders is lower than 47%.
BrainGlutton, you do realize that the only serious rationale for protecting a right to keep and bear arms is to provide people with some sort of means of self-defense, yes?* Otherwise owning or shooting guns is just a hobby. I mean, we don’t outlaw bowling or stamp collecting, but if it turned out bowling balls or cancelled stamps contain some substance that can be used by terrorists to kill people we’d probably ban them pretty quick.
Now, if you want to argue that there is no need for a right to keep and bear arms in a modern society, go right ahead. But don’t pretend like you’re offering some kind of “compromise” on the issue of whether or not we should protect the right to keep and bear arms by saying “Well, let’s start by eliminating the right to keep and bear arms…”
*Actually, I believe several states have actually enshrined “hunting” as a valid reason to keep and bear arms in their constitutions. But then there are all sorts of things in state constitutions.
A valid comparison between Canada and US would be to compare US states’ areas that border Canada with the corresponding areas inside Canada. Such a study has been done.
Centerwall, Homicide and the Prevelance of Handguns: Canada and the United States, 1976 to 1980, American Journal of Epidemiology, 1991, Vol. 134, No. 11, pp. 1245-1260:
“As compared with Americans, Canadians in the 1970s possessed one tenth as many handguns per capita. To assess whether this affected the total criminal homicide rate, the mean annual criminal homicide rates of Canadian provinces were compared with those of adjoining US states for the period of 1976 to 1980. No consistent differences were observed: criminal homicide rates were sometimes higher in the Canadian province, and sometimes higher in the adjoining US state. Major differences in the prevalence of handguns have not resulted in differing total criminal homicide rates in Canadian provinces and adjoining US states. The similar rates of criminal homicide are primarily attributable to underlying similar rates of aggravated assault.”—Centerwall, Homicide and the Prevalence of Handguns: Canada and the United States, 1976 to 1980, American Journal of Epidemiology, 1991, Vol. 134, No. 11, pp. 1245-1260.
Centerwall was really not a pro-gun researcher:
Centerwall, Author’s Response to “Invited Commentary: Common Wisdom and Plain Truth”, American Journal of Epidemiology, 1991, Vol. 134, No. 11, p. 1264:
“Finally, is the prevalence of handguns a determinant of the homicide rate? According to the analysis under discussion, evidently not. If you are surprised by this finding, so am I. I did not begin this research with any intent to “exonerate” handguns, but there it is—a negative finding, to be sure, but a negative finding is nonetheless a positive contribution. It directs us where not to aim public health resources. In a world of limited funding, that is almost as important as defining the target.”—Centerwall, Author’s Response to “Invited Commentary: Common Wisdom and Plain Truth”, American Journal of Epidemiology, 1991, Vol. 134, No. 11, p. 1264.
Sometimes we don’t object as much to the disabling of one specific potential utility so much as the attitude, institution, and precedent represented by the meddling and disabling in the first place. Especially when the meddling doesn’t achieve any measurable increase in safety. I can’t speak for everyone, of course, but I’m certainly not so afraid for my life that I feel any need to keep a loaded gun in my home. Nothing could be further from the truth; I’d be every bit as happy without one. But what I can’t abide is someone else telling me I’m not allowed to, not even if I take appropriate and proven effective precautions for the safety of others.
There is no sane reason to require that guns be stored with their working parts separated and put into different rooms, each of which has been designed for the purpose. That’s a simply bizarre level of nanny-state micromanagement. “In a locked safe when it’s not under your direct control, loaded or unloaded is up to you” is as far as I would be willing to go.
And so perpetuates the ridiculous argument that you only need guns as protection from other people with guns. Nonsense. Most criminals are young and male, which are as a group more physically powerful than pretty much any other. Without weapons, in defense scenarios people are at the mercy of their own physical prowess. Or numbers. I’m sure the idea that some home invaders only have knives instead of guns is some great comfort to some woman living alone. Or an older person. Or someone who just isn’t fucking macho man randy savage. Or a person who’s outnumbered.
You’re also drawing a conclusion not based on anything stated or presented. Someone said that Canada’s gun access laws are more geared towards sport shooting rather than defense, and you issued a non-sequitor that they’re therefore not needed for defense. A case was not made as to that being the reason.
The above, of course, treats gun control as a magic wish granting Genie. It assumes that even if a ban on guns meant that it took guns out of the hands of criminals, which has obvious issues, and even if you were to make all weapons entirely vanish, then you’d just be left with physical prowess, numbers, and initiative as the factors in the ability to defend yourself. Guns are an equalizer - a little old lady who can use a gun has a fighting chance against an attacker. If you make guns vanish, you haven’t eliminated the threat to the little old lady, you’ve just made sure that the power is entirely in her attacker’s hands.
Could we drop this stupid step-ladder thing? Step-ladders may cause deaths but that’s not their purpose. Guns are manufactured for purposeful destruction of targets, game, people. Apples and oranges.
I’m confused. Did this study count all homicides, or only homicides committed using guns? That’s the only valuable statistic. I couldn’t care less if there was a higher homicide rate due to strangulation in Canada. People aren’t usualy strangled by people who intended to strangle someone else. Same can’t be said about people who shoot at others; passersby are often hit.
I think the search for your country to model took a wrong turn at Canada. You’re looking for Fantasy Land.
It was difficult to find the original article, but here is a reprint.
I concur with everything in Lumpy’s post #41.
First I don’t agree about the sole purpose of guns but let’s assume it’s true for this argument.
If guns, which are manufactured for nothing more than the destruction of people are actually used less for the intended purpose than the accidental injuries caused by ladders you just strengthened the argument for ‘responsible gun ownership’ and helped prove that we, as a nation, are very responsible when it comes to gun ownership.
So Thanks!!
Lots and lots of people in Canada have guns, though. The only thing that different crime rates in Canada proves is that guns don’t have fuck-all to do with crime rates. What Canada doesn’t have is a huge prevelance of Southern “honor culture” idiots who can’t handle getting angry without getting violent, a militarized police force that creates huge financial incentives for armed gangs to dominate the drug trade, or as many neglectful parents creating broken people who grow up to murder their spouses.
Since Obama hasn’t given the order to care about these things to his disciples, we have to keep spinning in circles about guns instead of actually addressing the causes of murder in America.
I’m sorry, do the people in New York, Detroit and Oakland all participate in this “Southern” honor culture?
Yes, black people come from the South, if we must go there.
So, naturally, being from the South, blacks have exhibited this “honor culture” throughout the 20th century?
Well, yes. That, in addition to poverty/crime, is what accounts for the high levels of inner-city violence – a Southern-derived macho-honor culture where slights and insults demand violent redress.