The whole point and purpose of “Gun Control (Laws)” are to identify criminals and take guns away from them, like spree-shooters, or retards like Urgod, who shouldn’t be anywhere near a gun in the first place.
There are ways around all laws and regulations that is called loopholes where if you have the purchasing power requires very little work or effort. Right now if you have the mechanical ability and money you can buy the parts for an AK-47 essentially assembling it in your garage. You can even buy ammunition creator kits for the bullets.
If you have a 3D printer you don’t even need to order the parts but instead make the components yourself. You can even make silencers or compressors out of you garage.
All you need is firearms blue prints specifications easily attained on the internet.
Ideally you want “good guys” to have guns and “bad guys” to not. Therefore the issue is how to remove guns from the hands of spree-shooters. To say “we don’t need gun control” is to imply that spree-shooters can get guns (assault rifles) as easily as anybody else.
Why’re Americans more homicidal than Europeans?
Is it because Americans have more guns?
Again, as I said earlier, Switzerland has loads of guns, yet a lower homicide rate than many-most other European Countries, so at the very least guns alone can’t be blamed for the disparity, if they can be blamed at all, and as I’ve been participating in this discussion and looking at statistics, increasingly I don’t think they can.
Look at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Homicide
So African Americans, for whatever reasons, genetic, environmental, I don’t want to get into that here, it’s unnecessary, are 8 times more likely to murder people than White Americans.
At the very least this is part of the reason why America has a higher homicide rate than your average European Country, who doesn’t have a large African (American) Population.
Do White Americans commit homicide about as often as White Europeans?
If so, it follows the sole reason Americans commit more homicides than Europeans, is because of African Americans, and to a lesser extent Hispanic Americans, who also commit more homicides than White Americans, but less than African Americans.
Asian Americans tend to commit homicide a little less frequently than Whites, but since they’re a small demographic compared with African, Hispanic and White Americans, their lower homicide rate is insufficient to offset the higher African and Hispanic American homicide rates in determining the American homicide rate as a whole.
I’m interested by these US stats that show basically zero correlation between gun ownership and gun murders by state.
Whilst I think such a comparison leaves huge amounts of further relevant detail to be explored, and in fact misses the point, the idea of zero correlation at such a macro level potentially still applying to the micro level on further investigation amuses me. This is because it would otherwise annihilate both sides of the argument:
Are you anti-gun? Well there’s no correlation between gun ownership and gun murders so all your fears were unfounded in practice after all. Deal with that!
But also, are you pro-gun? Well it turns out that all the rhetoric about needing a gun to protect yourself was equally unfounded in practice after all too. Suck it!
Of course, if this were true, despite the welcome respite that we would get from the most polarised commentators incessantly spouting what would have turned out to be fabricated drivel, nothing would change - because with no correlation it’s no longer an issue. So the US would keep their guns, but a least they’d have to eat some humble pie.
But what do these stats really mean?
They mean with however many guns lying around, as long as there are at least some, the vast majority of people still don’t want to use them against each other and don’t, and the ones who do will pick them up and cause much more devastation than if they weren’t around.
About this subject of criminals getting their hands on guns regardless of laws, that’s not the full story. You see, with guns few and far between, black markets do indeed still sell them but at vastly inflated prices. This is only enhanced by there being no legal avenue through which to acquire a gun, and who resorts to criminal behaviour if they’re rich enough to buy guns that cost obscene amounts? Also, when guns are everywhere, their use or even possession isn’t seen in the same way as if they are all banned. It’s like smoking when there’s been a ban on it. You might be against it while there’s no ban, but the degree to which you notice it sky-rockets once it’s banned. Additionally, even criminals don’t need guns, which are far more expensive than knives, when everyone is aware that nobody else has them. There is knowing that you know something, knowing that someone else knows something, but then there is also knowing that someone knows what you know, and even knowing that everyone knows what everyone else knows. The difference between these types of knowing is far more than you might think. Nobody seems to be appreciating the full consequences of banning guns, least of all the pro-gun people. We in countries that have banned them know for sure, by our own experience, how these things pan out. It really IS ok to just let them go. You don’t get enslaved, none of your fears come true - we are living evidence of this.
Yes, there are countries where this happens more so than in others.
In fact, ironically, the countries where banning guns matters least, having guns matters least too. The less you need them, the more you are ok to have them. In the US, you feel you need guns, and correspondingly you don’t deserve them.
A potential scenario that also interests me is based on the above: there might be a sweet spot that causes the most trouble with guns, and as long as you go to one extreme or the other, you’ll be ok. Like people have said, if people know everyone has guns, they’re less likely to use them because they have no advantage. And also, obviously, if nobody has guns, there’s no need to bring one because the advantage is not worth the cost to acquire it.
But what I think it comes down to is this:
Gangs are going to use guns. This will influence figures.
Regular people are only going to use guns on themselves or on others in extreme moments of emotion. The more we do to help prevent these states before they start the better. And when there are less deadly weapons available, the most severe thing at hand won’t be as dangerous and the consequences of the inevitable, occasional crime of passion will be alleviated.
Similarly to the above, mentally ill or unstable people are going to break and go on sprees regardless - but would you rather they did this with a knife or an automatic weapon?
I could buy a pistol for $500.00 with ammunition on the black market if I wanted to. Vastly inflated prices? 
Not only have we presented evidence helping to prove banning guns in the USA probably wouldn’t make Americans safer, but you haven’t presented any evidence banning guns would help make any other country safer, you’re just asserting it would, in fact, I posted a graph a little earlier that suggested the contrary, that there’s a correlation between countries with fewer guns and higher homicide rates.
Firstly, Americans want guns for more reasons than to defend themselves against criminals, secondly, if America wanting guns, in part to protect themselves, when the evidence seems to suggest they wouldn’t help them to protect themselves, means Americans don’t deserve guns, then it follows that Britons, wanting to ban guns, because they think banning guns will make them safer, when the facts suggest it wouldn’t, means they don’t deserve to live in a gun free country.
Banning guns would be the first step to making society safer (from spree-shooters).
And I will repeat: any answer is greater than no answer. This is what the Conservative-Right doesn’t understand. You have to do something, even if it’s ineffective. To sit and do nothing, means your political power will be withdrawn to the opposition.
But no evidence has been presented here to suggest that banning or significantly restricting guns would reduce the overall homicide rate, the evidence presented has suggested otherwise, that it wouldn’t matter, and rationally speaking, that’s all that really matters, that the overall homicide rate is reduced, what does it matter how people are killing people, what matters is they’re killing people more or less, the way they do it is irrelevant, unless of course you’re thinking emotionally.
This sounds emotional to me.
Any answer is better than no answer?
So we don’t know what the cause of x disease is, therefore it’s better to pick a random cause out of a hat, like french-fries, and spend billions of dollars trying to ban french-fries, instead of suspending judgment for now, and researching things more thoroughly to determine what the real culprits are, so something can actually be done about it to help avert these tragedies, instead of just emoting, scapegoating and wishful thinking?
I mean our culture is so simplistic, so dumbed down, the only answer the left can come up with seems to be a dumb one: ban guns, and the right aren’t trying to come up with an answer.
Both parties are equally wrong.
What we need is some outside of the box thinking, like looking into other causes: drugs, autism, divorce, bullying, poverty, race, whatever the case may be, but our culture is so narrow, so polarized, unfortunately that is impossible right now.
This is the best the human race can come up with at this time folks, sad I know.
Give everybody guns to kill each other with or ban all guns disarming the entire population, can we just get the whole civil war started with either way? Yawns It doesn’t really matter to me, make your pick and choose one.
False black and white dichotomy. Typical nonsense.
ILP is apparently the sewer of all sewers.
Are you fucking joking me???
The way mass-murder is committed is “irrelevant”???
You say that now, give it time…
No I’m dead, fucking, serious, if 10 people are murdered, it doesn’t matter if they died by knife, or gunshot, or grenade, or being ran over with a car, all’s that matters is, they died.
What does it matter???
If 100 people are murdered in x state every year, what does it matter if they were murdered one at a time, or 10 at a time, or all at once?
What does it matter if they were murdered with x weapons, or y weapons, or z weapons?
Only if it can be demonstrated that banning x weapons will reduce the murder rate from 100 to 99 or less, does it matter, but if after banning x weapons people are just murdering an equal number of people in different ways, or the same ways because they’re getting a hold of x weapons illegally, than it does, not, matter, unless you are emotionally attached to this idea that banning x weapons will, somehow, do something, in spite of the data suggesting otherwise.
Yup, but the argument that someone can successfully fend-off the gov is moot since many have tried and no one has succeeded since the 1700s during the Revolutionary War when the people fought-off the Brits who had to cross an ocean by sail wielding only muskets and a few cannons. Now their gov is in their backyard and infinitely more weaponized. Whether or not people have ARs is irrelevant to the outcome and a “well-regulated militia” can’t exist for the implied purpose of guarding a free state.
The clause should be reworded for people to have the right to bear arms for personal and property protection from criminals and thugs rather than the state because, as it stands, there is no possibility of complying with the clause and no mention of personal protection as a right.
The pen is mightier than the sword and people suffer for lack of knowledge. The first thing that must be guarded is the freedom of speech, which is the only thing that can guarantee truth.
Yes, so it would seem, but I think there is something more fundamental at play in that the ones who choose to own guns also choose to not shoot people.
It sounds good, but if it were true, then we could arm our prisoners and expect the equalization of power to secure peace. The difference between prisoners and other people is their held philosophies, tendencies, mindsets. So, peace comes to armed people not by the addition of arms, but from a philosophy of not using those arms to kill people which, somehow, coincidences with people who choose to arm themselves.
People who feel strongly about protection of the right to bear arms also feel strongly about not using those arms. And people who do not feel strongly about protecting the right to bear arms also do not feel strongly about not shooting people. Why that is so, I can only speculate. I suspect it has something to do with dogmatism vs open-mindedness and moral-relativism vs absolutism.
Absolutists are dogmatic in their beliefs and are not open-minded in discussion. They are not morally relative. They do not hold beliefs on reason and evidence, but assert their beliefs to be absolute; therefore they have no cognitive mechanism to undermine their own beliefs. Arguing with those sorts is futile, but they can be trusted not to shoot you for the same bullheaded reason.
Moral relativists are opposite. They’re open-minded and therefore have a mechanism to change their mind. “Thou shalt not kill” is not absolute to them. If at some moment they deem you to be evil, then the ends of your extermination justifies the act of murder. Probably, because they know that about themselves, they seek to ban the means of killing.
That’s my theory to explain why guns coincide with less use of guns.