Gun Control, A rational discussion Options

[Bargod]

I thought we'd take this discussion off the pic thread and give it it's own area. I'll start with the quote from Junkie:

Guns don't kill people. Crazy people kill people. With a gun, knife, or a wet noodle people are going to be violent with each other. I have several guns. Most of which have not been fired in years. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to shoot anyone but if someone chooses to come into my house uninvited they very well may get a double barreled chest full. Do I think the average person needs an assault rifle? Hell no. But should they be able to keep guns for defense and hunting purposes? For sure.

I have no bias towards one side or the other and find this an interesting topic. I know many people feel strongly one way or the other. I'm not one of those people.
Having said that, I would like to point out that "Crazy people" don't kill people. The majority of murders are between people who know each other. Guns make murder much easier to accomplish. So, gun owners are often the most successful murderers. This, of course, does not make all gun owners bad people. Anyone can lose their cool and when combined with alcohol can act out in violent ways. This is why it is illegal to carry guns into bars. If some drunk guys get into a fist fight nobody is likely to get killed. If somebody pulls a knife, things are going to get worse. I had two waiters who worked together get into a fight and one hit the other in the face with a pint glass. The glass just missed his carotid artery and his eye. What do you think would have happened if that guy had a gun? The guy who only has a scar on his face would have no face. The buddy of the guy that got hit in the face was close to breaking the attackers neck until I stepped in. What do you think would have happed to that guy after his friends head got blown off. Hell, in his drunken panic he could have shot at me just for being there. These two waiters drank together regularly. They got into a fight over who won the most pool games in the bar they were in before they came to mine. They were betting a nickel a game!!!

I won't say all gun owners are potential murderers, but you are less likely to kill somebody in a murderous rage if you don't have a gun. This is one of the reasons I don't want to have a gun in my house. I like to drink and sometimes I get very pissed off at people.

Guns do protect homeowners. Last year a little old lady living in public housing down the street from me shot and killed an intruder in her home. He was unarmed, but she didn't know that, and he wouldn't have needed a weapon to do bodily harm to her anyway. She's an example of the positive side of gun ownership.

I also don't buy into the "more guns means safer citizens" arguement. Australia has very strict gun control and it's murder rate has gone down. The reason? There are fewer murders involving guns. This means that what could have been a murder is more likely now just an assault.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2004/06/08/1127171.htm

I personally think Michael Moore is a self agrandizing ego maniac, but he made some decent points in Bowling for Columbine.
It is very unlikely that incident would have been possible if it weren't for the weapons they used. Even if they were limited to revolvers and single shot hunting rifles it would have been a different result.

I don't claim to have any answers, but I'd like to hear other oppinions on this.

[Bargod]

Read "More Guns, Less Crime". The stats you always hear about this includes gang members who knew the other gang member they murdered (for example). Same with the stats about "children" being killed by guns.

While this is true, the majority are still considered "domestic disputes".

Anyhoo, a quick check on google I was able to find out how Lott's article cherry-picks stats on that Washington thingy. He picks very specific years to argue to make his numbers work.

This is why I don't trust the writings of anyone who is "FOR" or "AGAINST" gun control. They have an agenda so their "statistics" are biased.

The Republic of Ireland banned and confiscated all handguns and all center fire rifles in 1972, but murder rates rose fivefold by 1974 and in the 20 years after the ban has averaged 114 percent higher than the pre-ban rate (never falling below at least 31 percent higher).

The Republic of Ireland has always had one of the smallest murder rates in the world, as well as some of the strictest, if not THE strictest gun control laws. The laws started in the 1920's to remove the weapons from the war that divided the country into the Rep. of Ireland and Northern Ireland. In the 1970's it was made stricter to prevent the flow of weapons to terrorists in N. Ireland. In 1971 there were only 10 murders in the entire country. In 1974 the murder rate increased to 51. Was this because of the gun control laws? No. It was because of the terrorist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF - protestant para military group, one of the terrorist opposition groups to the Provisional IRA) blew up car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan killing 33 and wounding 300. Gun control laws had nothing to do with that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_and_Monaghan_Bombings
Today Ireland still has some of the lowest murder rates in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count...y_homicide_rate

International homicide patterns
The homicide rate is considered the most reliable measure in comparing crime levels among nations. The United States, which has a reputation for being more violent than Canada, generally reports a homicide rate three to four times higher. In 1994, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported 23,305 homicides or nine per 100,000 Americans.

In the United States, where approximately four in every ten households contain a firearm, about 70% of all homicides in 1994 were committed with firearms.7 In Canada, where gun control laws are generally much stricter, the proportion of homicides committed with firearms (33%) is less than half that. When homicides committed with a firearm are factored out, the difference in the 1994 rates between these two countries is less dramatic ­ 1.4 per 100,000 population in Canada versus 2.5 in the United States. In other words, much of the difference in the homicide rates between the two countries can be explained by a much higher use of firearms in the United States.

A comparison to other western countries, however, shows that Canada's homicide rate was at the higher end in the mid 1990s. Of the countries surveyed, the United States (8.5), Northern Ireland (6.5), France (2.4) and Scotland (2.1) had higher homicide rates. The other European countries showed lower rates: Switzerland (1.1), Sweden (1.8), England and Wales (1.4), Germany (1.7), Italy (1.7) and Norway (1.0).8 However, there is no clear pattern between homicide rates and the rates for other violent crimes among these countries (see Table 2).

This is taken from The Correctional Service of Canada.

Reducing guns doesn't just leave guns in the hands of criminals. Criminals use guns bought on the black market and ditched after crimes. If you reduce the flow of weapons, you reduce the number of guns sold on the black market.

Still, the statistics put Virginia squarely in the midst of the argument. Data once collected by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) tracked the source of guns used in crimes that were collected by city police across the country.

In New York, four out of five guns came from out of state. The single largest source of those out-of-state guns? Virginia (with Florida, North Carolina and Georgia right behind).

The statistics run up the East Coast. In the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia together supplied more than half the guns found. In Camden, New Jersey, a poor city over the Delaware River from Philadelphia, Virginia was the source of one out of six guns. Virginia was the biggest out-of-state source in Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Each region of the country has its own sources of guns. Chicago drew many from nearby Indiana, but also from the deep South; most Miami guns came from Florida, but its out-of-state sources were Georgia, Texas and California.

"They're going from low-regulation places towards high-regulation places," said Daniel Webster, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, who last year produced a national analysis of state regulation of firearm dealers.

It's simple supply and demand - guns are easier and cheaper to get with fewer regulations, so a network springs up in response to the demand for guns in cities where they are harder to get.

Taken from here.

Personally, from looking at the little non-biased info I can find on the net, the problem doesn't seem to be making stricter gun laws, but enforcing the laws already existing. It's too easy for "Bad Guys" to get guns.