How many people need to die before people in the US realize that having easily obtained firearms is not a good idea?
back
3 comments
Guns also save lives. And nations without guns are not violence-free at all. Its a spurious connection, made by lazy thinkers.
No other developed nation has a firearms death rate (let alone crime rate) in the top 10 of all countries where reliable data is available! [1]
Even Switzerland, who have half the guns per capita of the US (the highest in the world), have less than a third of deaths. [2]
At minimum, this suggests, at some point, the marginal availability of guns in a society does far more harm than any possible benefit overall.
This does not even cover the social and economic impact of gun-related mass murders or the disproportionate effects in highly unequal societies...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-re...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_co...
Nowhere will ever be violence-free.
If guns are not the cause of violence and banning them isn't for the better, why is England a less violent place than America? The gun murder rate in England is 0.1 murders per 100,000 people, in America it's 3.2.
The problem America has is not exclusively caused by guns, it's a problem with culture too, but it seems strange to argue that connecting the high presence of guns to the high number of gun murders is "a spurious connection, made by lazy thinkers".
If guns are not the cause of violence and banning them isn't for the better, why is England a less violent place than America? The gun murder rate in England is 0.1 murders per 100,000 people, in America it's 3.2.
Oh god, stop comparing a huge ass country with states with lot of differing laws to a small european country!
What happens when you include stabbings and beatings?
A popular misconception is that England has just as much violent crime as America but it's redistributed across other weapons, the reality is that every country counts violent crime differently. If someone were to break into my apartment in England while I was out that is a counted as a violent crime, whereas in America it wouldn't be counted. The only fair way to compare countries is to compare specific crimes (eg: Murder, Robbery) comparing "Violent Crime" doesn't work.
For 2011/2012 there were 549 homicides in England[1], for the same period there was ~14,000 in the US[2]. The population of the UK is 62 million, the population of the US is 313 million. There are 6x more people in the US but 28x more homicides, most of which are firearm related. If you remove the firearm homicides from the America figures they become almost the same as the UK figures (in per 100,000 people).
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jul/14/crime-st... [2] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/11/us-usa-crime-stats...
Wait - your numbers come out to something far less than 28X. 28x the homicides divided by 5x the people = 5.6x the rate?
28x is based on the raw figures (500 vs. 14,000) not adjusted for the differences in population.
Yeah, cause it looks worse that way. How to lie with statistics!
How many lives do guns save? Do you actually know they save more then they cost?
Requiring nations without guns to be 'violence free', dismissing the intermediate 'significantly less violent', is an argument by a lazy or dishonest thinker that can only see black and white.
There are stats that suggest this: http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp#crime
Sure not violence free... but not as many mass shootings.. :)
Do you have statistics to back that claim up? Are mass stabbings included in your argument as well?
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
How many people need to die before people everywhere realize that giving too much power to governments is not a good idea?
It's also interesting in this context that the allied forces disarmed people in Germany with the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler then armed the people in Germany again. You didn't even need a license for shotguns, rifles or ammunition.
Gun control doesn't necessarily have anything to do with dictatorship. Preventing a Coup d'état with a militia is just a pipe dream.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Germany#History...
Read on.
"Holders of annual hunting permits, government workers, and NSDAP (i.e., Nazi Party) members were no longer subject to gun ownership restrictions... Jews were forbidden from the manufacturing or dealing of firearms and ammunition...Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, promulgated Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons. This regulation effectively deprived Jews of the right to possess firearms or other weapons."
"Preventing a Coup d'état with a militia is just a pipe dream."
Yes, that would be why the United States is still part of the British Empire, right?
The U.S. is at historically low point in violence, concurrently there is a historically high percentage of gun ownership in the U.S.
First of all, correlation is often not causation: you can't draw a causal link between the decline in violence and gun ownership. If you compare with other developed countries, it will be very clear that the U.S. has a lot more violence in general and violence using guns specifically.
Secondly, violence using guns requires the presence of guns, so it may be possible to establish a causal link between gun ownership and gun violence. Then, looking at statistics from developed countries, it becomes clear that the U.S. greater gun violence is directly related to greater gun ownership.
Delayed response on my part. There is less gun crime in the U.S. than 20 years ago despite there being more guns. That was my point, I should have come out and said it.