FA_Q2
Gold Member
Annotated or not those numbers are bullshit because they are filtered. "Gun deaths' is an asinine statistic and meaningless. No one cares if they are shot and killed or if they are stabbed to death. A look at the actual source numbers without filtering them show that homicides are essentially unaffected by gun control at all and that is what matters.This is the kind of BS that shuts down intelligent debate.that is why I post.......anti-gunners are not addressing criminals...they are focusing all of their efforts on laws that will not stop actual gun crime, or mass shootings, but will make it harder for law abiding people to access guns.
We have issued alternatives.....the anti-gunners keep proposing laws that do nothing to address gun crime, they have been actually shown how those laws fail to stop criminals and mass shooters but they do not care.
The simple fact is, when you catch a criminal with a gun, you need to lock them up for a long time...that is how they do it in Japan..if you are felon caught with a gun in Japan....you go to jail for 30 years....it has stopped hardened Yakuza from using and carrying guns....it has stopped the next gang war that was brewing in Japan....
You need to aim gun control at the criminals who use guns....not law abiding people...in Chicago...a felon caught with a gun can be back on the street with a court date in less than a week....and often they go out and murder people......and if they are actually sentenced...they serve less than 2 years...and get out and then shoot people.......
You are wrong...you can't stop possession of guns by criminals...they can't do it in France, Britain, Australia....they have done it in Japan with 30 year prison sentences...they also fine the Yakuza bosses millions of dollars when one of their minions shoot people........
Britain did what you said, they confiscated guns....and their gun crime rate stayed the same....after spiking.......and now it is up 4%.....
That link you gave....is based on liars polling the uninformed........the liars doing the polls don't tell he uninformed poll takers what they mean by background checks, or that background checks will not stop criminals and mass shooters from getting guns.......
So those links are pretty silly if you want real action on gun crime.
1) How exactly are you defining "gun control"? Long jail sentences for criminals who use guns are a measure of gun control, and you praise Japan for doing such. It might be a measure of gun control that you agree with, but it is a measure of gun control. Virtually no one of note is actually saying they want the government to go door to door and take all the guns away from law abiding citizens. Trying to equate all gun control with confiscation is intellectually dishonest, and I'm pretty sure you know that. It's also worth noting that Japan, in addition to the legal penalties has EXTREMELY STRICT gun control laws. Moreso than any other country you mentioned.
2) Your opinion of the polls is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. They are merely a measurement of what people think and what their opinions are. If 90% of people wanted to abolish the Second Amendment, it wouldn't matter how flawed the methodology of the study is. An ignorant, biased, or overzealous person's vote counts for the exact same amount as yours. As such, choosing to ignore numbers like that is putting your head in the sand. If people aren't willing to make genuine arguments in defense of the right to bear arms, and they can't give legitimate proven reasons as to why the right is important, the country will move on without them, and they'll lose those rights forever.
3) You are flatly wrong about gun control having no effect in other countries. Go ahead and call the numbers liars, but they are what they are. All numbers are latest figures available.
Firearm Homicides per 100K Population: USA- 3.43, United Kingdom- 0.23, France- 0.21, Australia- 0.16, List of countries by firearm-related death rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Murder rate per 100K Population: USA- 3.9, France-1.2, UK-1.0, Australia-1.0, List of countries by intentional homicide rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Correlation does not equal causation, but if you're trying to defend gun rights, you are fighting a seriously uphill battle trying to claim that the correlation doesn't even exist. And I'll go ahead and predict the next argument. "Oh my God, a wiki article? Anyone can change that! We shouldn't take that seriously at all." But the wiki is FULLY ANNOTATED by actual scholarly sources. So please, if you're going to waste everyone's time by deflecting and trying to attack the veracity of the source. At least have the decency to post what you think the REAL numbers are. If you can't, know that the average person is going to rely on those numbers because they are readily available, backed up by scholarly sources, and more authoritative than what some guy on a message board is saying. Try to overcome your confirmation bias.
Unaffected? Are you crazy? It is far, far lower than in the US.And the homicide rate is unaffected.A big, huge point that all of you gun nuts ignore is that in countries where there are strict gun laws, the criminal element also has far, far fewer guns. That is a fact, a fact whitch you guys not only ignore, but you prant on and on about how if we have strict gun laws, only the criminals will have guns. That is simply not true.Guns rarely used for self-defense in US - Yahoo News
For every justifiable homicide involving a gun, 32 criminal homicides carried out with a firearm occurred. Also, gun owners are far more likely to hurt themselves or others, than to use them for self defense.
And 90% of the homicides happened in the ghetto.
A fact that 'anti-gun nuts' refuse to deal with. It is why you have to color ever statistic that you look at with 'gun' this or gun that rather than an objective look at how gun control measures actually effect crime rates (and specifically homicide rates).
These Laws Are The Reason Canada Australia Japan And The UK Have Such Low Gun Homicide Rates - Business Insider
The only countries that have a higher homicide rate (homicide by any means) than the US are not first world, developed countries, so you cannot, reasonably, compare them to the US. You cannot compare countries like Honduras or South Africa to the US.
Homicide rate per 100,000: US = 15,241; UK = 724; Turkey =2,320; Switzerland = 54; Sweden = 93; Spain = 399; Romania = 397; Portugal = 130; Norway = 29; Australia = 262; Bahrain = 6; Bulgaria = 144; Canada = 610; Croatia = 49; Cyprus = 19; France = 839; Finland = 121; Germany = 690; Hungary = 139; Italy = 590; Japan = 646; Monaco = 0; Malta = 4; Netherlands = 179; Belgium = 185; Burmuda = 5; Hong Kong = 35; Czech Republic = 92; Denmark = 47; Greece = 118; Iceland = 1; UAE = 39.
All of these countries have much stricter gun laws than the US. All of them are progressive, developed, first world countries. All of them have a far, far lower murder rate than the US--murder by any means, not just guns.
Having strict gun laws DOES lower the homicide rate.
Mapping murder throughout the world News The Guardian
Yes, ineffective because I am actually looking at the data that is relevant not data that fits my preconceived notion that I want it to fit.
You see, comparing the homicide rate between the US and England, for instance, is idiotic. It means nothing whatsoever.
WHY is our homicide rate higher? You demand that it is guns but do not provide a single piece of evidence showing CAUSATION. That is what is missing. Guns are not even close to the only difference as I ALREADY POINTED OUT and you completely ignored. What about culture, racial/ethnic diversity, borders, law, population, population density etc. You have controlled for NONE of those. Take your pick – gun control passed in England, Canada or other places have not changed the homicide rates IN THE PLACES THAT THEY WERE PASSED IN.
Why do you compare the homicide rate in one nation to our own rather than the homicide rate before and after the law was passed in the nation it was passed in? Because THAT does not fit the narrative:
I have done this all opver this board. You might have seen these links several times.Except that gun control laws do not change homicide rates at all. They certainly do not bring down other crime rates as well.Actually, the less guns there are in circulation, the less likely criminals have access to guns. In countries where there are strict gun laws, the criminals also have less guns.Correct.
.... and??
This is the case over and over and over again everywhere gun control is tried. It simply does not pan out.
Credible
Many of the graphics are from Just Facts
England:
Australia (using their own governmental data):That assertion is not backed up by facts.Fallacy. Even with universal background checks bad guys will get guns.Without universal background checks, you are guaranteeing that bad guys will more easily be able to get guns.
The NRA opposes universal background checks, and want's everybody (even crooks) to be easily able to buy from a private seller with no checks of any kind.
You figure it out.
What do you think? Bad guys will be deterred by a background check? No one will sell to a bad guy without a bvackground check? Think, man! Think!!
Sure, they will be deterred. Background checks will eliminate the possibility of many guns from their purchase. I never said it would make it impossible, just that it would be much harder.
The fist problem that you have failed to address (and has been pointed out many times) is that the law is completely unenforceable. Tell me, how is a law that CANNOT BE ENFORCED supposed to make it more difficult for criminals to buy guns?
Second, there is no data showing that further gun control measures will do squat to reduce crime or homicides. What is the ultimate goal here? If it is safety then gun control falls flat on its face.
The ultimate goal of any gun control measure must be to reduce crime. This is most easily measured in homicides as that is the most prevalent target of gun control:
England outright banned guns and the effect on homicides? Zero. That is the base problem that you have with gun control laws - if you are willing to commit homicide or any other major offense then the extra law that says you cant have a gun is utterly meaningless - period. This has flushed out a myriad of places all across the globe as well as here. All your assertions are NOT backed up by any hard data.
And England is moving for more restrictive laws - if it doesn't work we can always try more right? That is exactly what gun control advocates want here. We have a shit ton of gun control laws on the books and all you can come up with is more that is not effective in the first place.
If outright banning does nothing, what makes you think that background checks that are completely unenforceable will be effective?
In several states as well as relaxing gun control laws:the direct data disagrees with the assertions of that paper though.What a whiny little pussy you are. Here asswipe, read it and weep: Did gun control work in Australia - The Washington PostNo, it isn't dumbass. Now go play, you bore me.
Null and void. The further you carry this without backing up your assertion, the more ridiculous you look.
When you mess with the data you can make it say anything you want. Mess with it by, say, taking large amounts of time and covering up the fact that there was almost no change at all in homicide rates from 96 (when the law was passed) and 03. Why, if the law was affective at all, did it take 7 years to see ANY GAINS?
Why are the homicide rates going down being attributed to a law that passed 7 years before it started to occur?
Its also noteworthy that the overall incidents have been on a downward trend for a long time - both before and after the law passed. Looking at the raw data shows that the law itself likely had zero impact on the actual number of incidents in general. There is no real drop after the law passed or change in direction from before the law passed.
Using raw data instead of allowing Washington Post authors do your thinking for you will show much more information.
Australian Institute of Criminology - Homicide statistics
Canada (addressed in the end of my post and governmental data again):So, here we go again.
Clearly I am going to have to remake this argument in a few places so I am going to rework another post I did in one of these other threads. For those of you that heave read this from me, skip it. For the rest of the slow class: gun control advocates have no evidence supporting their demands. I ask the OP, how are the gun advocates on the 'wrong' side when you have no data to support your point where they have tons.
All over the place on this board I am seeing people demanding gun control and making a wide variety of claims about what we need or do not need but one thing is utterly lacking IN EVERY FUCKING THREAD: facts. I can count the number of facts used in the 10+ threads calling for gun reforms on one hand. Get educated, we have passed laws already and we have metrics to gauge their effectiveness.
First, common misinformation techniques must be addressed because you still find all kinds of false claims about higher 'death' rates with lax gin laws that are outright false. The metric we need to be looking at is homicides. Lots of people like to use 'gun' deaths but that is a rather useless term because you are not really measuring anything. That term is not fully defined and it is not as easily tracked and compared with different years as a solid statistic. I also hope that we can agree that what instrument kills the victim is irrelevant. If gun deaths are cut by 25% but knife deaths increase the same number by 50% we have not made progress. Rather, we regressed and are worse off. The real relevant information here is how many people are killed overall and whether or not stricter gun laws results in fewer deaths or crimes. That is what the gun control advocates are claiming.
Another common misinformation tactic is to compare US deaths to those on other countries. comparing international numbers is also utterly meaningless. Why, you ask. Well, that's simple. Scientific data requires that we control for other variables. Comparing US to Brittan is meaningless because there are thousands of variables that make a huge difference. Not only the proliferation of guns that already exists and the current gun laws but also things as basic as culture, diversity, population density, police forces and a host of other things would need to be accounted for. That is utterly impossible. Mexico and Switzerland can be used on the other side of the argument of Brittan and in the end we have learned nothing by doing this. How do we overcome this? Also, simple. You compare the crime rates before and after gun legislation has passed. We can do that here and in Brittan.
Gun Control - Just Facts
Here we see a rather large spike directly after gun laws are strengthened and no real increase after they are removed. Washington apparently did not get the memo that homicides were supposed to decrease after they passed their law.
Here we have Chicago where there is no discernable difference before and after the ban. Again, we are not seeing any real positive effects here. As a matter of fact, the rate has worsened as compared to the overall rate in the country even though it has slightly decreased. Form the caption:
Since the outset of the Chicago handgun ban, the Chicago murder rate has averaged 17% lower than it was before the law took effect, while the U.S. murder rate has averaged 25% lower.
Then we can use this same tactic in measuring the effectiveness in Britton. Lets actually look at the real numbers over there as well:
Oops, even in Brittan, when we account for other factors by using their OWN crime rates, we find that gun laws have NOT reduced the homicides they have suffered. Seems we are developing a pattern here. At least Chicago seen some reduction though it was far less than the national average decrease.
Then, you could always argue, what happens when we relax gun laws. If the gun 'grabbers' were correct, crimes rate would skyrocket (or at least go up). Does that happen:
Guess not. The homicide rate in Florida fell rather rapidly and faster than the national average. In Texas we get a similar result:
Then there are other statistics that do matter very much like the following:
* Based on survey data from a 2000 study published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology,[17] U.S. civilians use guns to defend themselves and others from crime at least 989,883 times per year.[18]
* A 1993 nationwide survey of 4,977 households found that over the previous five years, at least 3.5% of households had members who had used a gun "for self-protection or for the protection of property at home, work, or elsewhere." Applied to the U.S. population, this amounts to 1,029,615 such incidents per year. This figure excludes all "military service, police work, or work as a security guard."[19]
* A 1994 survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Americans use guns to frighten away intruders who are breaking into their homes about 498,000 times per year.[20]
* A 1982 survey of male felons in 11 state prisons dispersed across the U.S. found:[21]
• 34% had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"
• 40% had decided not to commit a crime because they "knew or believed that the victim was carrying a gun"
• 69% personally knew other criminals who had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"[22]
Clearly, claiming that gun control leads to better outcomes is blatantly false. Look at the data, it is conclusive that gun laws most certainly do not have any positive impact on homicides or any other meaningful metric. If you have information that states otherwise then please post it. I have yet to see some solid statistical evidence that points to gun control as being a competent way of reducing deaths. I hope I have not wasted my time getting this information. Try reading it, it will enlighten you.
In conclusion, over 10 separate threads have simply ceased to continue because not a single lefty here has any response to the given facts. I have serious doubts that the OP will be any different but I wait with bated breath for one single person to actually support their demands with something that resembles fact. So far, I have received nothing.
I try and I am always looking for a good debate. Sometimes its hard to find here.Thank you for the well thought out response. I wish everyone here would do that rather than just take the talking points from the NRA or the far left for that matter. We might actually be able to fix the problem that way. I was just giving you a hard time about the clip. If you were arguing for gun control the pro gunners would say you don't know anything about guns and blah blah blah.
I figured about the clip. I don’t get angry about misstatements like many here seem to do. The use of the word ‘clip’ and ‘magazine’ is separate from the actual point even if it was inaccurate.
This is likely the largest are that we are goig to disagree on but I hope that I can show you the lightI don't dissagree about someone having two .45's for example. But why even appose a ban on high capacity magazines then? Wouldn't two .45's with say 16 round magazines be more deadly yet? Since there aren't any examples of the high capacity magazines being used for defense I think at worst it doesn't hurt anything. At best maybe some guy has to reload and drops his clip and gets tackled.
I guess I view every life as being very valuable. If you can save a few lives in a mass shooting then why not try? Will it drastically effect the overall homicide rate? Probably not, I still like to think the mass shooting are very rare, but again every life is valuable.
You ask why does it matter then? I hold life just as important as you and think that we should try our damndest to save every person we can BU*T (and this is a BIG but) there is a line that we need to acknowledge. The reality is the safest and BEST government to live under if safety and preservation of life is the metric you are measuring would be fascism or despotism. That is a simple truth.
Preservation of life is important but not at the expense of freedom. Where you want to air on the side of protection I am absolutely against that concept. I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS air on the side of FREEDOM. Whenever you wish to take anything away, be it a big gulp, a large clip or smoking, I err on the side of freedom and fight it with every breath I take unless there are real and tangable benefits that can be proven AND those benefits outweigh the cost in freedom.
For example, the restriction on the right of free speech that makes yelling fire in a theater (or other crowded place) illegal is a sound restriction on freedom. The right to privacy that has been taken by the patriot act CLEARLY has saved lives and protects us but the COST is way too damn high. The patriot act is terrible law. Life is not the ONLY thing to consider here, our freedom is also an important consideration. The cost is low and the payoff high as related to that cost. The payoff with a restriction on magazine size is not only not proven but utter conjecture. It lacks enough reasoning for me as well as I can fabricate a large capacity magazine with ease, aquire one that is already in circulation or use more than one weapon (ie, the 2 guns example that I gave earlier). My beef here with your idea is essentially this: you want to limit freedom because YOU don’t see it as a large loss of said freedom. I also do not have a need for large cap mags, don’t own any and have no plans on purchasing the, but the idea that freedom is taken from people without what I consider due diligence in the reasoning goes against everything that I stand for.
The people that created the patriot act likely used your exact same logic. DO you think it was applied correctly there? Are you comfortable with how far this hole goes? If limiting 10 is allright, why not 5 or 1. That, BTW, is NOT a slippery slope argument. It is the same logic applied universally and it is the logic that can and WILL be used again and again...
Every life is valuable. EVERY FREEDOM IS ALSO VALABLE. Do not discount freedom.
And many that have worse homicide rates ALSO have stricter gun laws. As a matter of fact, ALMOST THE WHOLE WORLD has stricter gun laws. I do not aspire to be like the rest of the world.I agree with much of what you say about viewing numbers from other countries. You would have to admit that Russia is often given as a pro gun argument when it is really not valid. So how do you counter that? Well pointing out the low homicide rates of countries with strict gun laws. For the sake of the US I hope that the number of guns is in fact not much of a factor in homicide rate. It could be other countries ban the violent video games, or violent movies, or some of the drugs we use to treat mental health, or do better policing.... But given that all the countries with much better homicide rates do have more strict gun laws, I think that would be a mistake to not look into it further.
That said, IF, and only if, the statistical analysis showed that gun laws in those countries was a factor in the lower homicide rates would such a comparison be valid. As the data does NOT support that claim, such data is meaningless. You might as well claim that every country that has a lower homicide rate is does not contain states, or a congress, or have a bill of rights, or does not sell hummus on Tuesday. All those would be just as meaningful. FIRST you need to establish that gun laws have a positive effect, AND THEN you compare the gun laws with our gun laws. That is the ONLY logical order to do it in.
How about we look at Canada. First, we need to address your thumbnail. It is not cited. It does not explain itself at all. It does not even use the metric we are going by: homicide rate. It does not even mention the country that it applies to. I REALLY hope you did not pull this from a blog. Essentially, you should not even have posted itHow about we look at Canada?
In 1991, Bill C-17 tightened up restrictions and established controls on numerous firearms. Since about then the violent crime rate went down through 2007. They currently have a homicide rate of 1.6 which is drastically better than ours. Not a perfect comparison of course, but is there something to learn from this? There may very well be. Is it wise to completely write if off? I think that would be a mistake.
Really, I KNOW you can do better than that
It took some digging but here we go:
Police-reported crime statistics in Canada, 2011
official Canadian source on this with some good data.
All violent crime (except sexual assault against children) have been on a gradual down trend since 1980 and the data in your thumbnail is outright false. There is simply no dicernable way for me to fit the increase in your cite with the actual numbers. It looks as though the gun law had little to no effect in canida as well with the homicide rate starting at 2.5 and decreasing to just under 2.0 after a decade
We can see that directly after the law was passed (I did not check the date but I am going off of your 1991 timeframe) a sharp increase in homicides tool place, leveled out the next year and then continues the same downward trend that had been going on the previous years. Note: I am NOT attributing the spike to gun laws – spikes happen and that is a given. That trend line dies not really change at all. As far as I can tell, this is not a good piece of evidence for gun control, the law does not look like it altered the trend at all.
Further, the piece that interests me quite a bit is the fact that attempted murders and actual murders have CONVERGED a lot after the law passed. That went from a full point in difference to just .1 difference. That is, 40% of attempted murders FAILED and now a pithy 2% fail. Possible that might be due to people lacking protection but the criminals not lacking the offensive means to kill? I believe that is likely but I would need to pull up more evidence to support so I will just leave that as an interesting thing to think about for the time being.
All said and done, I don’t think Canada is the example you were looking for unless you can present this data in another way.