Such as?



Assuming for a moment this is correct, you wouldn't want to try to reduce deaths?

I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone could believe incidence of violent crime would increase with less guns. Or maybe I'm retarded, I don't know.

Most fled to find opportunity and new lives. I don't think anyone was opressed and forced to leave because of guns. Starvation and unemployment for sure. Fleeing from their government? No.



This has always been in my head too. It's an armed population, I don't know to what extent, but I've always believed this to be a possibility. Would it happen though?
How many deaths of burglar happen every year compared to accidental deaths, or family member gone psycho deaths? I'd imagine the last two are way higher figures than the first.

Lulz. Violent crime went up in England following the gun ban. It went up a lot. A real lot. To such an extent that there was almost no violent crime at all before the gun ban took place. Now you are more likely to get mugged in London than you are in NYC. That's because the assholes of London know they can pretty much do anything they want because not even the cops have guns.

Also, I'd like to kindly point out the absurd fallacy of gang violence and bank robberies. Yes shades, you're right on the money here. A person that is willing to rob a bank or sell drugs on a massive scale is not going to bat an eyelash at posessing an illegal firearm to more effectively run their enterprise. Right on. Right on. Make guns illegal, and surely these types of crimes will fall precipitously.

I already said this earlier, but the vast majority of these crimes are committed with illegal guns already.

Can I write a book about you? I would title it, "The Quivering Liberal."

Alienation, despair, and a broken culture are what cause gun violence, not the existence of guns.

Drugs would be the obvious example. The basis of my personal political philosophy can be described by this quote by Barry Goldwater:





As far as why anyone would believe incidence of violent crime would increase, read thodoks' explanation. I thought it was quite clear how it works.

But basically, deaths is a very limited statistic. It doesn't capture how many people were maimed, critically injured, or generally just messed up in some way. Guns have a higher probability of outright killing, and knives, for example, have a high probability of critically injuring someone, but not killing. It might be that you reduce deaths by removing guns (if you could actually remove them), but the dramatic increase in critical injuries might make the overall benefit only marginal. Just ask yourself this question: would you stab 10 people in order to prevent 1 from being killed? Maybe it would be better for the 10 people to be stabbed, but not much. That's why I would much rather address the underlying causes of crime than its symptoms.

It's not about guns specifically, but the monopolization on the use of force. At the time this country was founded, it was illegal in nearly all of Europe (perhaps everywhere) for non-nobles to possess weapons. A man wearing a sword at his side was a STATUS SYMBOL of nobility. Why do you think that the stereotypical "angry mob" carries torches and pitchforks and other farm implements? It's because it was all they were allowed to own that might do harm to other people, and the people who made those rules were the people they were afraid of being harmed. The RULERS. Serfdom is slavery, and 90% of Europe was enslaved in the 18th century. The French Revolution, which changed all of that, was INSPIRED by the American Revolution. You're welcome.

Subsequently, the vast majority of Europe has at one time or another been subject to the rule of a totalitarian regime, be it the Nazis, or the Soviets, or another occupying power. Hell, the French Revolution never even came to Ireland until 100 years ago. So any weaponry that the population may have had was forcibly repossessed by the state, leaving the people with nothing. That has never happened in America, and it is the ONLY way that guns could be eliminated in America. Nobody here wants that to happen.

Americans NEEDED guns in the 19th century. We were expanding into a wild frontier, something that hasn't existed in Europe since before the gun was invented. In the wild west, "the law" was few and far between. One had to protect oneself. Hunting was to kill predators as well as food. All the predators have been gone from Europe since the times of Grimm's Fairy Tales, and the game was always the exclusive property of the Crown.

Admittedly, the need for Americans to own guns had greatly diminished, and has been replaced by a "cult of the gun", which is largely irrational. People don't really NEED guns to protect their homes and most businesses. Most Americans don't have guns to protect their homes, they rightly rely on the police. Hunting is a tradition only, not a source of food for nearly all hunters. The belief that guns are need to fend off an overreaching state are a fantasy. Just look at what happens to ACTUAL armed insurrections in this country like the Branch Davidians. That's the reality of fighting the US Government.

What it comes down to today is that we do not want to give up our Constitutional Rights against unreasonable searches and seizures just to rid the nation of guns. If such a governmental campaign were allowed, there would be legal precedent to allow such searches and seizures for literally anything, and in its aftermath, the only people with guns would be the absolute worst of the criminal elements.

Read this that I posted a few weeks ago in the marijuana thread: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1709&p=2637498#p2637498



Now imagine if if every gun were owned by a criminal or at least someone who is willing to break the law to possess one. Those willing to break a gun possession law would be a lot worse than those willing to break a drug possession law, I can assure you, not even to mention the dealers.

I may agree with you that the world be a better place if there were no guns in America, or if there were no cocaine, or heroin, or meth. But in answer to your initial simplistic question, that is just not feasible.

Ya can't get thar from heah.

Even though what you say here is probably true, the reason people immigrated to the US was not solely about the monopoly of the government on the use of force. It might have been one of the reasons but it is not THE reason.


I understand that banning guns overnight would not be a wise idea. It would do more bad than good. The process of banning guns would have to be a very careful and slow process. But as long as there are a lot of people who believe in the right to possess a gun, you will keep having these awful incidents.

I'd be interested to know how you make this connection.

Uh... good point? ...


So, since your argument for banning guns has been completely obliterated, you now expect us to believe that doing it "slowly and carefully" miraculously makes it a good idea?

I was looking for the sarcasm smiley..is it not obvious these incidents will continue? 'cos they will while the guns are there.

They'll continue anyway. There's this place called Mexico. People will still get guns, they'll just own them illicitly.

You avoided my Switzerland argument. Ownership of assault rifles in Switzerland is compulsory there. Why don't they face our gun problems?

If you take away my guns. You just leave more vulnerable to becoming a victim in one of these tragedies. You also increase the potential magnitude for these tragedies.

With your amazing grasp of logic, I find myself wondering why you aren't teaching philosophy at Oxford.

precisely. the criminals will still own guns, they just won't be registered. there will still be armed robberies and break ins at people's houses. sure, you probably won't have the mother shooting her son at the shooting range, but that's not an end all/be all situation anyway. how often does that really happen?

Well I think you're in the minority insofar as the "problem is too widespread so we shouldn't bother" philosophy goes. I completely agree that to rid society of an ill, you need to fundamentally change the pre-conditions that allow for the ill to exist in the first place.

As afar as the "deaths vs injuries thing goes - this is all very abstract. I don't buy it. You'd need to be able to prove that a class of people would regard guns and knives to be interchangeable in the absence of each other as a weapon of choice in the commission of crime.



You better provide a credible source for this info, Jack, 'cos it smells like BS to me.



You could restrict access to firearms without dispossessing the police force. There are many countries around the world like this.




Try me.




I wouldn't expect organised crime related drug supply or armed bank robberies to be much affected.

However, I would expect disorganised crime by people from low socio-economic backgrounds to be affected.

You're assuming that most gun related crime is of the former variety. The truth is, and I can only speak from experience of having to represent these people every day in court, is that the latter is much more prominent.



I'd prefer "The Quivering Liberal Pussy", if you don't mind.

First, welcome back.

I think the "disorganized" crime would be effected, but it might get worse. I'm just guessing here, but I suspect the more intimate nature of knife crime (or pepper spray or whatever) could lead to worse things than straight up gun crime. Robbing someone with a knife is harder than with a gun, so you would end up with a more desperate and thus most likely more violent criminal base.

First of all, I'm not saying we shouldn't bother. I'm saying removing guns from society is not the solution.

And guns and knives are not interchangeable, and that is the point. In order for a robber to get the same income as he would with a gun, he'd have to perform more robberies, and against more helpless people.

If anyone was wondering specifically why the 2nd amendment was put in its place, this is it.

two must reads for both pro- and anti-gun control advocates: the swiss experience, and the japanese experience. it's not as cut and dried as you make it out to be LW, but the essence of your argument is spot on.

japan and switzerland have two of the lowest firearm-caused homicide rates in the world. their respective stances on gun control, though, could not be any different. japan has rather draconian gun control laws, and the swiss require that every soldier keep their firearm at home (because every swiss male is made to compulsorily serve in the swiss army, there is necessarily an extremely high percentage of homes with guns). to me, this is evidence that the culture of the locale in which gun-control is attempted is every bit as important as the nature of the legislation that attempts to control the firearms. if two diametrically opposed policies produce similar results, shouldn't it stand to reason that perhaps other considerations merit as much scrutiny as the policies themselves?


i know you were addressing LW, but lemme take a shot at this.

this book outlines the history of british gun control and its effects. reason magazine has an excellent shorthand history of the effects of the gun ban.


...except that they'll likely fill the vacuum left as legal gun suppliers no longer find it profitable to sell guns, thus allowing organized crime to become the sole purveyors of illicitly bought, sold, and traded firearms. outlawing guns will do for firearms what american prohibition did for liquor, what the drug war has done (and is doing) for drugs, and what anti-prostitution laws have done for poon. PD did a good job outlining why and how this happens a few posts back.

Does noone want to present the argument that maybe people in America should have the right to own guns because, well, we generally believe in liberty and we generally allow citizens to own whatever private property they desire?

I mean, it's not like the right to own guns is imbedded in the spirit of the way our country was founded and the things that make our country a place where people can go to be free.