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.

[Jack]

i dont drink and i dont do drugs but i can still be overcome by anger but i would like to think that i would never go on a rage trip and start shootn people left and right but you never know i might you might anyone might. is it bad that i allready have a gun to use if such happens i guess in a way it does but i belive that if people wanna hurt other people there gona do it no matter if they have a gun or not when i got my 1# gun what was on my mind was that it was a real russian sks and not some cheap china or yugo modle. i never got any of them thinkn i was gona use them to kill or hurt anyone i guess my point would be that if we didint have guns people are still gona kill each other thell just find some other way to do it and i for one would rather be shot then stabd to death by a butter knife.



all my guns are lockd in a safe and i norm dont have ammo for them the only time i have ammo is when i go out to the range.



i love guns always have and always will and i hope im always able to keep my right to bear arms but even if such a law is passed ima keep them anyways.

[Barkmann]

You want Gun Control?? BAN ALL GUNS

This post has been edited by Barkmann: 09/07/07 4:51pm

[Shred and Burn]

I love my shotty.

I don't keep it loaded, but I have a box of shells next to my computer. I figure I can get 2 or 3 in before an intruder gets through the front door.

I'm afraid if I keep it loaded, Carol will be dusting someday and accidently take me out.

[Stryker9]

Unfortunately if suddenly every firearm on this planet were to
disappear, man would invent something else to take its place.
Of course, man has already invented a weapon so deadly that
it can kill & maim many people in one showing but he disregards
its potential ability every time he uses it. The Motor Vehicle !!

JIM

[Capt. Andtennille]

You want Gun Control?? BAN ALL GUNS

And just how do intend to get the bad guys to turn in thier guns? Answer: you can't and they won't. Since only the good guys would turn in thier guns, you are left with an bunch of victims with no way to protect themselves from the bad guys. Most people, by a HUGE margin are not criminals, probably something like +99%. Now wouldn't the odds be much more tilted in favor of the good guys if EVERYONE had guns? If I'm at the mall with a crowd of 1000 people and one nut pulls a gun and starts shooting, the odds that he can take out 20 or 30 of us go WAY down if a few are armed and can stop him.

Here in the U.S. our Constitution guarantees the right to keep and bear arms. This is for three primary reasons. Hunting, defense (self and country) and most importantly, so we can rise up and overthrow an oppressive government. Be careful before you give some bureaucrat that much power over your life.

[Capt. Andtennille]

The majority of murders are between people who know each other.

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.

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.

You are more likely to be the VICTIM.

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.

Then perhaps you shouldn't have a gun. Don't try to make that choice for me.

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.

Without her gun SHE could have been the dead one, not to mention the perps subsequent victims. I love it when a story ends well.

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

Read the book. It's a thorough analysis of crime statistics in the US ofver a multi-year period. It also touches on other countries as well. While there may be exceptions, the evidence is overwhelming that when you increase the accessibility to guns for law-abiding citizens, crime goes down. For example, up until the 1970's it was very common in Isreal for terrorists to take a machine guns into malls, schools and Synagogues and open fire. That doesn't happen anymore because the Israelis realized that armed citizens could stop the attacker before they did much damage. That's with only about 15% of Israelis licensed to carry.



Sorry about the large size of the picture above. How do you insert thumbnails?

[Jack]

you cant reson with the left wingers



when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns

[M@ster of Dis@ster]

you cant reson with the left wingers



when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns

Police and army won't?

[Capt. Andtennille]

Here is an article by John Lott from yesterday's Washington Times:



Article published Sep 7, 2007
D.C.'s flawed reasoning



September 7, 2007


By John R. Lott Jr. - In asking the Supreme Court to let the District of Columbia ban handguns, the city has a simple argument: Whatever one thinks of the Second Amendment, banning handguns is a "reasonable regulation" to protect public safety. The problem for the city is that anyone who can look up the crime numbers will see that D.C.'s violent crime rate went up, not down, after the ban.

D.C. notes that criminals like to use handguns to commit crimes. We all want to disarm criminals, but, as long as one recognizes the possibility of self defense, at best the city's claim can only be part of the story. As with all gun-control laws, the question is ultimately whether it is the law-abiding citizens or criminals who are most likely to obey the law. If law-abiding citizens are the ones who turn in their guns and not the criminals, crime rates can go up, not down.

The city's brief focuses only on murder rates in discussing crime in D.C. Yet, in the five years before Washington's ban in 1976, the murder rate fell from 37 to 27 per 100,000. In the five years after it went into effect, the murder rate rose back up to 35. But there is one fact that seems particularly hard to ignore. D.C.'s murder rate fluctuated after 1976 but has only once fallen below what it was in 1976 (that happened years later, in 1985). Does D.C. really want to argue that the gun ban reduced the murder rate?

Similarly for violent crime, from 1977 to 2003, there were only two years when D.C.'s violent crime rate fell below the rate in 1976. These drops and subsequent increases were much larger than any changes in neighboring Maryland and Virginia. For example, D.C.'s murder rate fell 3.5 to 3 times more than in the neighboring states during the five years before the ban and rose back 3.8 times more in the five years after it. D.C.'s murder rate also rose relative to that in other similarly sized cities.

Surely D.C. has had many problems that contribute to crime, but even cities with far better police departments have seen crime soar in the wake of handgun bans. Chicago has banned all handguns since 1982. Indeed, D.C. points to Chicago's ban to support its own ban. But the gun ban didn't work at all when it came to reducing violence. Chicago's murder rate fell from 27 to 22 per 100,000 in the five years before the law and then rose slightly to 23. The change is even more dramatic when compared to five neighboring Illinois counties: Chicago's murder rate fell from being 8.1 times greater than its neighbors in 1977 to 5.5 times in 1982, and then went way up to 12 times greater in 1987.

Taking a page from recent Supreme Court cases, D.C. points to gun bans in other countries as evidence that others think that gun bans are desirable. But the experience in other countries, even island nations that have gone so far as banning guns and where borders are easy to monitor, should give D.C. and its supporters some pause. Not only didn't violent crime and homicide decline as promised, but they actually increased.

D.C.'s brief specifically points to Great Britain's handgun ban in January 1997. But the number of deaths and injuries from gun crime in England and Wales increased 340 percent in the seven years from 1998 to 2005. The rates of serious violent crime, armed robberies, rapes and homicide have also soared.

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).

Jamaica banned all guns in 1974, but murder rates almost doubled from 11.5 per 100,000 in 1973 to 19.5 in 1977, and soared further to 41.7 in 1980.

Evidence is also available for other countries. For example, it is hard to think of a much more draconian police state than the former Soviet Union. Yet despite a ban on guns that dated back to the Communist revolution, its murder rates were high. During the entire decade from 1976 to 1985 the Soviet Union's homicide rate was between 21 and 41 percent higher than that of the United States. By 1989, two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, it had risen to 48 percent above the U.S. rate.

Even if D.C.'s politicians want to keep arguing for a ban based on public safety, hard facts must eventually matter. If they can't see that gun-control laws have failed to deliver as promised, may be the Supreme Court can point it out for them.

John R. Lott Jr., author of "More Guns, Less Crime" and "Freedomnomics," is a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland.

[Capt. Andtennille]

when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns

Police and army won't?

If only the police had the ability to be in attendance at every crime...

[M@ster of Dis@ster]

when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns

Police and army won't?

If only the police had the ability to be in attendance at every crime...

Just pointing out the clever play on words isn't really correct.

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. Scroll to the bottom of this blog page (see below) to see ALL the stats and see how Lott cheery picks the numbers. For example, you don't hear from Lott that the average homocide rate for the whole 4 years prior to the gun ban appears to be significantely higher than the averge for the next 10 years after the ban. You don't hear that he picked the year 5 years before the ban specifically because the murder rate had a big dip that year, but immediately bounced back to a much higher number the next year (still 4 years before the ban)!

In fact, I added the numbers on the graph an the results are this...

In the 9 years prior to the ban the murder rate was about 32 per 100,000
In the 10 years after it was 29.5 per 100,000. So it actually dropped, even though it is clear in the 9 years prior the graph was tracking upwards, and after the ban it mostly tracked downwards (though with a lot of fluctuations per year for both).

Read it yourself. Scroll to near the bottom.

http://timlambert.org/category/guns/washington/

Lies, damn lies, and statistics they say. If you simply read Lott's article without investigating anything, you think the Washington experience was a slam dunk case against gun control. Look at ALL the stats and realized he twisted them beautifully to support his argument.

Anyway, I don't feel passionately about this issue, but just playing a little devil's advocate here. I would theorize that Lott's entire article is an exercise of cherry picking specific statistics and dates from places where he can make the numbers work. Unfortunately, it is hard to find an article that seems to be written by a non-right wing or left wing source. It would be interesting to see a combo of all the numbers from every place that had a change in hand guns laws, see the graphs on homicides and major crime over this period (not a cheery picked number), and compare those to similar places at the same time period that maintained the status quo. That would be a good study, but good luck trying to find it.

[Kleerance]

I guess some you cowboys never would dare to live in Europe. We don't have a "constitutional right" to own guns. Still we have (at least in Norway) a society that is less violent than U.S. My allegation is that "oppurtunity makes thief". Meaning that if guns are quite available it easier to use them (for good or bad). It's like alcohol policy. There's more consume of alcohol when the availability in easy. That's a fact. So in comparison - Easy supply for guns means more killings by guns. Simple as that.

[Jack]

when guns are gone next theyll wanna ban knifes sticks stones and everything else that can hurt a man what you need to ban is human nuture and good luck with that. all you can try to do is make it harder for people to get there hands on them but even that seems far off



i hate that peoples familys friends kids are killed by firearms but its not there fault its the persons if there band then we just want have any deaths by firearms anymore thell be by other means.

[Wino Ph.D.]

Capt. That propaganda picture with that lady and her gun is hilarious.



I can see the next frame. The intruder takes the gun from her and then he has it. I don't advocate banning guns, hey I like to go shooting sometimes myself, but I also don't think people need to walking around packing heat, at least not in the US.



We definitely have an issue with it here but banning them would never work so we need a more reasonable solution.