Comparing different countries isn't statistically significant. Among many other variables, one country could simply be less violent than the other. Therefore any comparable stats would give you misleading conclusions. A lot of people love to point out that those conclusions are 'common sense' when it's far from that. They are conclusions based on insignificant data. The only significant stats you can pull are stats of the same country. There's a few countries that have banned guns that saw a rise in overall crime (and gun crime) the years following the legislation: Australia and the UK. For all the hundreds of millions of guns in the US and a steady rise in the sales of guns each year, gun crime has been decreasing. Murder has also been decreasing.
Our call to action in this country should not be more and more guns. The first instinct should not be violence. Should we have guns? Yes, but there HAS to be some kind of limit on the kind of gun and who's allowed to own them. For example, why do you need I.D. when you want to buy prescription medication, but in some states you can walk in and walk out five minutes with a gun, with no form of identification at all?
You mean like how we limit what kind of drugs you can buy? How is that working out? People must only be buying the legal ones since everything else is against the law, right? Did you read anything I wrote in my last few posts? If you make a certain gun illegal, only the criminals will have them. Why shouldn't regular people be able to defend themselves with the same guns the criminals could have?
My point is that you can't assume automatically that more guns does not always equal less crime, and more importantly, less killings. Saying more guns in the Aurora shooting would've prevented less deaths, if the teachers had been armed those children wouldn't have died, is very ignorant to say. You seemed to dismiss what I said in my last post. People get obtain illegal drugs, yes, but we require everyone to have an I.D. to buy Sudafed just to make sure they aren't running some kind of lab. But somebody like James Holmes can buy thousands of rounds of ammunition without any form of identification and no record kept, so nobody ever thinks to be alerted. Guns can take away lives of people against their own will. Drugs ruin lives of people because their own stupid decisions. So why should their be more restrictions on drugs than against guns, which can be more dangerous? I'm not saying get rid of guns completely, that's obviously not the answer. But something more HAS to be done about gun regulation.
Yeah, In my opinion, those who want to have/use/own guns should by law go through a rigours training program of how to use the weapon officiantly and safely. No one should just be able to walk into a shop and a few hours later come out with a gun like its a liquor store. Its like a bow and arrow, or any other weapon used to kill or injure. You can't just pick it up and expect to be an expert. Of course this is another matter entirely, and this thread is already off the rails Anyway, Travz21, how then do you think we should combat this source of crime if America stays as it is and doesn't bring up a gun restriction?
Eh... Well how do we combat these mass shootings that have been happening in America last year? Something clearly isn't working when thats still happening in the US.
I kind of understand where you're coming from, but that's still kind of a poor excuse. There are bad people everywhere, but we have to at least try and make it more preventable for those bad people to harm others.
When's the last time you heard about somebody successfully defending themselves with an assault rifle? The odds that someone will be in a situation where someone wants to kill them is astronomically low and the odds that when in that position they actually have time to pull out their assault rifle to defend themselves is even lower. There's no reason why we should let everyone have these assault rifles when in the long run it'll do a whole lot more harm than good (if any good at all). Also, I don't buy the argument that laws restricting assault weapons won't make any difference. They most certainly will. Not every person on the street has the ways or means to get a gun illegally. It's not like black markets are around every corner. You have to know where to look and know the right people. And many people simply don't.
So you think these people that shoot up schools just randomly do it because a gun is around? These guys are psychos and are driven to harm people. They will get guns regardless if they are legal or not. There's multiple examples of that already happening in other countries. Just like how people still get drugs even though they are illegal. I said this before, but legality doesn't stifle demand. It doesn't even make it harder to get whatever is in demand. It just changes the supplier. Except when it's an illegal product the price will be through the roof and there will tons of crime surrounding that product. Too many emotional arguments in this thread. Yes, guns are bad. But gun control only reduces the number of guns responsible law-abiding citizens own. This is why crime goes up when they are made illegal. The bad guys have all the guns and the only protection you have are the police who can't prevent crime. All they can do is respond to the scene after you've been robbed, murdered, raped, etc. So in reality you'd have no protection at all. All the criminals would have to worry about is getting out of there before the police come 20 minutes after you call them.
But yet, most of the these shootings that have happened over the past year were committed with guns that were obtained legally, and TOO EASILY. Your argument seems like if we made gun control stricter, there would be absolutely no guns at all and everyone would become psychotic and commit more crime because law-abiding citizens didn't have guns, when if fact all the crimes you mentioned can happen regardless of guns or not. Just like people can commit crimes with a knife or a bat, people can protect themselves with a knife or a bat. Once again, I'm not saying we should completely ban guns. But there needs to be stricter rules enforced when it comes to obtaining a gun, whether that be yearly back round checks, mental health screenings, waiting periods, etc., we can't just sit back and say, "well that's gonna happen anyway, so we might as well let it be"
More people are killed by hammers and clubs than rifles. They need to register these hammers and make them harder to obtain. It is way out of line. I can't believe the president is letting this slide.
Have you read anything I've said? At least those things were invented for everyday uses. Guns weren't invented for anything except to harm and kill people. You cannot compare those two things.
I could ask the same question. Again, tighter gun control leads to more crime. It's evident in history. So saying we need more gun control just because they are 'only' used for killing things just shows you don't care about the crime aspect. So what is your goal? Because it's not preventing crime. Is your goal to make things harder to buy just because you don't like them and you think it has no personal value? That's what it seems like.
No, it's because these mass shootings have been happening, but no one wants to sit there and do anything about it because it's not gonna help. It's evident in history you say? Not always. There's places like Japan or Germany, which have the strictest gun laws in the world and also have some of the lowest crime. I've said multiple times that I like guns. But why is it so bad to make someone get a backround check, or at least in private gunshops, make the people carry identification to buy things? Just because the 2nd amendment says you're entitled to something, doesn't mean it should just be handed to you. You should have to show that you're responsible enough to handle it. And in the cases of these mass murder shootings that have happened over the pass year, something obviously wasn't done right to let those people be able to obtain firearms. Crime isn't just the issue, it's death. And I just don't agree that adding MORE guns to the equation would prevent those wrongful deaths.
Google UK gun crime and right on the first page you'll find articles with stats from British government crime reports which show gun crime has increased since the ban. Google image UK gun crime and you'll find these on the first page: