It does seem counter intuitive, but think about it this way. Criminals don’t want to put their life at risk, if they did, there are higher paying jobs than crime.
If they know when they break into a house or rob a person, they might be confronted by an armed citizen, they’re less likely to break into that house.
I seem to remember between 30% and 50% of convicted felons worry more about an armed citizen than police officers.
And, note: I didn’t say the solution was (although my personal opinion is), I implied that less guns doesn’t prevent it, and more guns won’t increase it.
Says who? Criminals, especially violent ones, are not models of rationality. If anything, violent criminals are more likely to engage in risky behavior, not less.
Ok; I concede that in the literal sense of a direct correlation, the premise of the OP isn’t true. Ignorance fought. :o
I do think Lee was onto something:
In other words, guns aren’t a problem within a healthy society, and an enormous problem within an unhealthy one.
IMO one of the more poisonous fallacies of the gun rights/control debate is the notion that there are Regular People and there are Criminals, each in their own ironclad silos, and never the twain shall meet (except in “self defense” hypotheticals, and to a considerably lesser extent, in actual self-defense scenarios). One can comfortably argue that felons shouldn’t have guns and law-abiding citizens should, but what about groups of young men sitting around parking lots, bored and drunk on beer and testosterone? How about the neighbor who’s told you twenty goddamned times to turn your goddamned stereo down or not park in his assigned parking spot, and now wants to show you he means business? How about the ex-husband or boyfriend who hasn’t quite taken “no” for an answer, and doesn’t take kindly to your dating his forever one and only? And so on and so forth, so unfold millions of similar tense, confrontational situations that don’t quite fit the Valiant Citizen vs. Bent-Nosed Crook in a Striped Shirt and Eye Mask hypothetical—just one or more ostensibly law-abiding gun owners, perhaps enjoying their final few moments of law-abiding, if not of life.
I don’t favor gun bans or anything of the sort; I acknowledge the personal right to bear arms. But I just can’t see the ubiquity of firearms as a panacea, or even benign.
One way of looking at the entirity of Human History and interaction, even at a personal level, is to boil it down to assigning people pidgeon holes in which to keep themselves, being outraged if they don’t stay in them, and trying to punish or kill people if they don’t stick to those roles.
No, criminals aren’t a problem within healthy cities, and an enormous problem within an unhealthy one.
Guns are inanimate objects, like cars.
Cars are not a problem in areas with low traffic. And cars are not a problem in areas with high traffic. Bad Drivers are a problem in areas with high traffic.
Did you notice how you had to leave out half of my statement for that little part to make sense?
My personal opinion is that giving people the ability to defend themselves makes for lower crime rates, however that’s not the point I’m trying to get across.
The point I’m trying to get across is less guns does not equal less violent crimes.
Yes indeed the easy access and availability of guns in the inner city is why the crime and murder rate is so low in the urban environment. There are lots of guns therefore the crime rate is low.
And, if in any given population, 3% of the drivers are “bad drivers” than your probability of being in traffic with them is much higher during rush hour in Boston than in rural Idaho on a Tuesday night.
Being next door to VA, with what amounts to little gun control at all, not requiring strip searches on anybody coming into DC from VA, and the old tautology, “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns,” works overtime when talking about people who started out as outlaws. Outlaws want guns and only have to drive a few more miles to get them. DC’s ban was more symbolic than effective because we need more effective national legislation to keep the bad guys from getting guns.
We also need to train the ones who already have guns to shoot accurately. Then we can cut down on the number of innocents killed in gang shootouts. I hear the Army has reduced standards enough that a felony conviction or two won’t stand in a recruit’s way.
You cannot purchase pistols unless you are a resident of the state in which you are purchasing them. This has been a federal law since 1986, and supersedes any state laws.
Edit: Virginia has a mandatory 30 day waiting period between pistol purchases. This is more stringent than many other states, and completely unnecessary in my opinion.
I didn’t demonstrate it, however it seems to be relatively self evident to anyone who’s seen the statistics.
Just as knife ownership doesn’t increase violent crimes.
Gonzomax tells knowing untruths in gun debates. He still insists that there was no such thing as a handgun during the Revolutionary War, and that, if they existed, they served no military purpose.
It’s not worth engaging him.
I think you’re on to something here. It’s got to be more about the number of people than just the precentage of the population that’s armed. Over 1/3rd of adults in NH own guns, but we average less than 10 gun murders a year. (the last time I looked, almost half of our murders a year are stabbings. weird.) With less than 1.5 million people, the entire state is dwarfed by the populations of some of the bigger US cities. So there are a lot of guns, but there’s not much crowding, especially when many towns insist you can’t build a house on less than an acre of land - my own town insists on two acres; they’re still trying to decide what legal action to take against a neighbor of mine who defied that edict. Lots of armed people all spread out makes for less conflict than when they’re crowded, I think.
What’s to stop a Virginian from driving guns into DC, filing off the serial numbers, and selling them by the truckload to whoever’s got cash?
Speaking of which, how do you think all those handguns got into DC?
All of DC’s many suburbs are in either Maryland or Virginia. I’ve known many people–myself and my family included, at one stage of my life–who technically reside in one of those two states and still identify as a Washingtonian without anyone questioning it.
That’s what I used to think, as well. But then explain Switzerland.
Here’s what I think exacerbates crime:
Population density
An “underclass.” A racially or ethnically identifiable class of people who are treated as second-class citizens. At one point or another in U.S. history, that was anyone who was not white Anglo-Saxon protestant.
Rampant (actual) poverty. Some have suggested income disparity between lowest-paid earners and highest-paid; I think actual poverty plays more of a role than disparity.
