NOTE: This is not a claim that this is the only reason to for the 2nd Amendment. This thread is for the discussion of claims that the murder rate and/or the total death rate(including accidents and suicides) would go up if the 2nd Amendment were abolished, versus claims that we would see a drop in the murder rate and the total death rate if it happened.
Personally, I think the suicide rate would go down, despite claims that if people want to kill themselves they will find a way-guns make it easy and fast.
Abolishing the 2nd wouldn’t change any laws about gun buying,owning, or carrying. Do you think there would be new federal laws restricting guns, or widespread state laws doing so?
Are we to imagine a country only where the 2nd Amendment were abolished, or are we to presume that in this hypothetical there will be some additional gun control enacted?
I think that we can safely assume that without the backing of the 2nd Amendment some states would tighten gun laws to restrict access. Going on the assumption that this is true, do you think the murder rate and/or the total death rate would rise, or lower?
Since criminals don’t care about the law, no.
The bulk of handgun deaths are suicide.
Total death rate, no idea.
I haven’t investigated suicide rates, so I couldn’t say. At a glance, there doesn’t seem to be much correlation between these charts:
Sweden, for example, has a higher suicide rate than the USA, but only 20% as many guns. Japan has, effectively, no guns, and a noticeably higher suicide rate.
I’m willing to believe that there may be a correlation between gun ownership and suicide in the US, but that could easily be correlated to poverty (living in a dangerous neighborhood), mental illness (general paranoia), and people who want to commit suicide going and becoming the owner of a gun. For purposes of argument, I’ve chosen to not investigate the subject and to assume that guns do raise the rate of suicide, but I suspect that if there is any correlation, that it’s either not a causative factor (rather that the reverse is) or that it’s simply not the most notable factor of all other things that you could work on. There are likely other things that you could do which would be more effective and more productive for society, and not risk the intents that the 2nd Amendment were enacted for.
(I’ll also note that I hold euthenasia and suicide as a basic rights of life, so I don’t really care one way or the other whether guns do or don’t cause suicide.)
I am curious about accidents. I find it plausible and likely that gun ownership leads to accidents. I mean, we talk about keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally unstable or mentally incompetent. But, in a very practical sense, that’s what all children are. Granted, they can and will most likely leave that state and because they’re small and cooperative, generally it’s not an issue in life, but they really don’t have the right appreciation of the world and themselves to be safely left with a device that can equalize their killing potential with that of a police officer.
On the other hand, it’s plausible that the sort of kid who thinks it’s funny to point a thing that can kill people at their sibling, is also the sort of kid who is otherwise going to do dumb and scary things like pushing their sibling over the edge of a cliff just to see what happens. Fundamentally, kids are just tiny humans and are going to kill themselves or others through general stupidity and/or evil intent given whatever comes to hand as anyone else.
But, probably, my guess would be that accidental death rates would go down. Guns are a reasonably effective way of killing someone, compared to most other techniques, and requires very little strength. But I also suspect that accidental deaths would decrease by a rate much lower than most gun haters would be expecting.
ETA: I’m writing with the assumption that the OP is assuming that all of the guns already in existence go magically into an alternate dimension and stay there.
Not directly, but it would permit changes that are now constantly frustrated by claims based on the 2nd’s existence. The OP would get a more useful discussion by listing the changes he thinks would become enabled.
Please don’t. Just go on the assumption that there would probably be a fewer amount of legally owned firearms, dependent on what laws states eventually pass.
Likely no significant change. I suppose, maybe, after a century, with less guns in circulation, maybe a small decrease. But certainly nothing significant in the next couple of decades. States or cities with strict gun control in the uSA do not seem to have any significant reduction in violent crime.
Not much in the near future, significant change after several decades.
The country is already flooded with guns. The only thing that would work is confiscation of all the guns, destroying them, then passing very strict gun control to purchase a new gun.
Doing that would drastically lower the number of gun deaths.
I think any changes caused by this would get swamped by other factors (like changes in demographics or improving medical care) and be very hard to pick out of the statistical noise. For example, I suspect Australia is the premiere example of “if you get rid of guns, here’s what happens”, and you’ll probably have a hard time convincing people that it significantly altered the total death rates as long as charts like this exist.
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Yep. Even with complete removal, you’re unlikely to see anything drastic, let alone with the rate of decrease in arms ownership that you would see allowing for natural removal of guns over the course of the next century, based on the passage of local laws.
All calculations must take into account the increased risk of invasion from England.
Notably, in Australia, I believe that they went out and collected as large a set of guns as they could each time they raised the restrictions, so you would expect to see some sort of raising or lowering of the graph at a single moment, rather than a relatively smooth transition.
Still pretty vague. All you can say is that fewer guns = fewer opportunities for gun deaths = fewer gun deaths. “They’ll just find other ways instead” is not a supported statement.
I know it is vague, but I also know that there is no way to phrase it that doesn’t invite hijacks.
That seems logical, but it is not bourne out by the evidence. Indeed: “fewer guns = fewer opportunities for gun deaths = fewer gun deaths” is not a supported statement. In any case, why are we more concerned about “gun deaths” than knife deaths or bomb deaths or any other death?
So we’re just dismissing evidence we don’t like, such as the entire rest of the world? Interesting.
We *are *concerned with reducing killings overall - why do you think otherwise? You hear about guns because that’s where the most opportunity lies, in terms of how many lives we can save and how readily it can be done. The 2nd as it is commonly interpreted today stands in the way. That’s the thread topic, and let’s identify attempted diversions from it as soon as they appear.