A knife in the same situation is much less dangerous, as evidenced by the incident in China at the same time where people were hurt, but none so far killed.
Degrees matter.
Regulation of guns would absolutely help nothing unless you ban possession of guns by healthy individuals without criminal record or any other problems - because you can not predict people going crazy, and you can not eliminate all sources of obtaining weapons by somebody very smart, very determined and having absolutely no moral problem to lie or commit any unethical or criminal behavior. In fact, even completely removing all guns from law-abiding citizens would not change that - criminals will still have guns. Only coordinated campaign of terror and totalitarian control from the state - something of Soviet or North Korean measures - can make guns relatively unavaliable to common person. If you doubt that, think about how much successful were governmental efforts to make illegal drugs unavailable.
Given that, I would rather live with relatively small threat of psychos than in a totalitarian state needed to get rid of the threat of psychos.
Countries with much tighter gun regulations than the US don't outlaw guns. They also don't prevent 100% gun violence. They just have less of it. A LOT less.
So "Regulation of guns would absolutely help nothing" is just plain false. It would help some, as the numbers clearly state. It would not prevent everything, but that's not the same as it would "help nothing".
Can we conclude now that plural of anecdote is not data, or do you have any actual data that shows banning lawful citizens from possessing means of self defense actually prevents violent crime?
As you point out, Switzerland has an overall rate of violence that is quite low, for example slightly lower than that of Germany (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...).
However, surprise, surprise, it has a "firearm-related" violence level that is 3x that of Germany, and more than 8x the gun-related homicides. Could that have anything to do with the fact that the Swiss have their Army rifles at home?
How again does Switzerland demonstrate that higher gun ownership does not correlate with higher gun mortalities?
And you say "the plural of anecdote is not data", when just before you used a single incident to "demonstrate" that tighter gun control doesn't work. Huh?
Or is this the old straw-man of "if we cannot eliminate gun violence completely, we shouldn't do anything?" Reduction is a good target.
And no, we do not need double-blind controlled experiments to (a) change regulations that affect lives and (b) actually have those regulations have a measurable positive impact.
Aviation regulations are often changed because of single incidents, when careful analysis of the factors that led to the incident leads experts in the field to the conclusion that making the change could prevent that accident.
Take the awful accident that happened in Tenerife (largest civil aviation disaster ever): one of the contributing factors was that one of the pilots heard "take-off" from ATC and thought he was cleared for take-off, when he had been told to stand by for take-off clearance.
Nowadays, the words "take-off" have been eliminated from pilot/ATC communications except for the phrase "you are cleared for take-off".
They didn't wait to have a statistically valid sample of horrendous air-crashes to make this change, a single incident and its subsequent analysis was sufficient. It is this sort of careful analysis and action that has made air-travel as ridiculously safe as it is (in fact so safe that statistical analysis is nigh impossible these days...that's a good thing).
What you are saying is that if the firearms are available, some of them will be used for violence. If not, the same (actually, slightly higher) level of violence will be achieved by other means. And you think this proves your point that guns lead to violence. I see.
>>> And you say "the plural of anecdote is not data", when just before you used a single incident to "demonstrate" that tighter gun control doesn't work. Huh?
I did it to demonstrate that on each anecdote another anecdote can be found. I hoped, after my explanation, and specifically stating "plural of anecdote is not data", it would be clear that I do not consider it to be data. I was wrong. Sorry I wasn't clear - I meant that bringing anecdotes does not constitute data.
>>> Aviation regulations are often changed because of single incidents, when careful analysis of the factors that led to the incident leads experts in the field to the conclusion that making the change could prevent that accident.
It would be smarter to think what could prevent the next accident, but who I am to give advice to experts? After all, those are probably the same experts that make men dressed in uniforms grab my balls and feel my ass each time I fly, for the benefit of my security of course. Nobody can argue with this level of expertise.
Meanwhile, back to our topic - you completely ignored the fact that places with complete gun bans still have very violent and very gun-related crime aplenty. Right here in the US. "Murder capital" of the US is the same place that had gun laws so strict SCOTUS had to rule they are unconstitutional.
No, I am saying that greater availability of firearms is correlated with greater number of deaths caused by guns. Lower availability of firearms is correlated with lower number of deaths by guns. Not the same thing.
"If not, the same (actually, slightly higher) level of violence will be achieved by other means."
No. A country that is otherwise much more peaceful and has less crime (Switzerland) has many more gun-related deaths and also has more guns available than another (Germany, UK).
"It would be smarter to think what could prevent the next accident, but who I am to give advice to experts? After all, those are probably the same experts that make men dressed in uniforms grab my balls and feel my ass each time I fly, for the benefit of my security of course. Nobody can argue with this level of expertise."
Nope, not at all the same experts. You are talking about the TSA, I am talking about the FAA, NTSB and related. I am certain they would appreciate your thoughtful input.
"Last year, economist Richard Florida dove deep into the correlations between gun deaths and other kinds of social indicators. Some of what he found was, perhaps, unexpected: Higher populations, more stress, more immigrants, and more mental illness were not correlated with more deaths from gun violence. But one thing he found was, perhaps, perfectly predictable: States with tighter gun control laws appear to have fewer gun-related deaths. The disclaimer here is that correlation is not causation. "
So the other things that are claimed as "the root cause" here aren't even correlated...yet somehow the one thing that does correlate closely...
"Gun death" is a very suspect term. If you equate some fool shooting himself while trying to repeat what Bruce Willis did on TV, actual violent homicide crime and potential rape victim shooting the attacker, and add there policemen shooting suspects (which they can do at smallest provocation) - you get quite a wrong picture. I wonder also how places like Chicago - where they had mafia-initiated gun bans - fared in this paper. I also find it very suspect that poverty level, etc. did not have correlation - do they want to tell me Chicago ghetto and some rich millionaire neighborhood in non-gun-control state have same level of crimes with use of guns? Very hard to believe without seeing the actual authenticated data.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin
"Fart, poop, I farted." - Dr. Who
And if you already don't live in america, why so much attitude?
I would like to ask you approximately how old do you think the Earth is?
TFTY. :-)
And yes, a knife in the situation is less dangerous. But the person is still mentally ill, a danger to themselves and those around them.
It's medical treatment that's needed, in the worst cases combined with confinement.
Gun regulation is not medical treatment. Gun regulation is a separate issue, admittedly related, just as knives and baseball bats are related.
I am a pilot. It is said the FARs (Federal Aviation Regulations) are written in blood. We still have fatal accidents from time to time, but they have been reduced by an almost incredible amount, especially considering how much air travel has increased.
Yeah, you could argue that the fundamental problem is that people want to travel and that the laws of physics are not favorable for the safety of air travel (gravity and all that). However, throwing your hands up in the air and saying we can't do anything without addressing the fundamentals is fundamentally and provably wrong.
Not that mental illness isn't also a problem.
I'm so glad that someone said this. So many otherwise reasonable people get seriously worried that someone with a badge is going to come to their home and pry their guns from their hands (which may or may not be cold and dead at the time)
The reality of gun control is far less dramatic, and make for far less compelling soundbites. "You can close the gun show loophole which allows people to sell handguns without background checks over my cold, dead, body" doesn't have the same ring.
No, it makes it much worse. We want the violent lunatics to have guns, because guns are not particularly fast or efficient at killing people. A lone gunman can kill at most a few hundred people before he is stopped.
You know those nightclub fires that kill hundreds of people in ten minutes? We want our nutjobs to have guns so they will not be forced to recreate a nightclub fire on a stadium scale, followed by decades of copycats.
Another thing here is that gun regulation alone is not sufficient. In the Netherlands guns are heavily regulated, but we still had the incident in Alphen a/d Rijn [1] last year. The shooter was a member of a shooting association and was known to have mental problems. That's just not a good combination.
If guns could be regulated in such a way that they never end up in the hands of violent lunatics that would probably be okay, but I just don't see how you could do that without banning them altogether.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphen_aan_den_Rijn_shopping_ma...
Thousands of exciting movies and TV shows about guns as a tool for "justice".
We don't need to talk hypotheticals here. There are many countries with tighter gun laws. Any "but regulation will make it worse" argument can be vetted based on real world observations.
To predict unknown unknowns, you have to do RAND Corporation-style operations research and hypothetical projections. This has been done, and it turns out that mass killing is easy. Really easy. As in, the 9-11 attackers were a bunch of pikers.
That's why after 9-11 security for prominent targets shifted to a strange combination of bollards and guard patrols. Metal detectors and gun screening do not affect safety much. Intercepting truck size weapons does.
I'm flabbergasted that my comment was voted down and justified by "what matters is the past, not your ridiculous hypotheticals". It reads like the Microsoft buffer overflow manual circa 1998.
But that's not my point. My point is that the best source for wise decisions is hands-on experience. Many countries have a better handle on the gun situation than the U.S. What's wrong with learning from their experience?
Breivik built a bomb, which killed 8. Awful. Because he was dissatisfied with the result, he went on a shooting spree that killed 69.
I think I see your point...