@jimnms - so what? Sexual assault has increased? What's your point? Why would restricting access to weapons stop sexual assault? How often are they committed with guns?

If all the stats you have lifted from one site actually related to guns, you'd be advancing the discussion. Sadly, they don't.

You might expect the rate of mass shootings to decline once semi-automatics became more restricted. Maybe for suicides with guns and homicides with guns. This is what has happened. No one expected rape to go away.

I think you're just being silly, you silly.

Maybe you should read that again. I'll summarize it for you in case you didn't understand or even bother to read all of it. After Australia's gun ban:

* The violent crime rate has increased 55 percent.
* Sexual assault has increased 51%.
* The homicide rate increased peaking in 2002 until it began to decline at the same rate it was declining pre gun ban.

And those are not my own words, those are the statistics provided by the Australian Institute of Criminology.

The people behind the study may be biased, however it doesn't matter who published it as long as their sources check out, which the article I linked does cite the Australian Institute of Criminology. Your link is just as biased cherry picking out only gun related crime, ignoring the overall crime rate. Obviously if you ban guns then shootings will decrease, but if you look at the whole picture something will take its place. Here is the summary notes from the Australian Institute of Criminology on violent crime:

* Assaults continue to represent the majority of recorded violent crimes. The overall trend since 1996 has been upward, with an increase of 55 percent between 1996 and 2007.
* The trend in sexual assault has also followed a general increase. The highest numbers of victims of sexual assault and of assault were recorded in 2007.
* There were 282 victims of homicide in 2007: a 12 percent decrease from 2006 and the lowest number recorded in the past 12 years.
* Continuing the trend since 2004, robbery offences increased again in 2007, to 17,988.
* The number of recorded kidnappings fluctuates from year to year. From 1996 to 2004, kidnappings registered a general increase, but the number of victims of kidnapping has remained relatively steady following a decline in 2005.

Here is the summary of statistics on homicide by weapon type: "There has been a pronounced change in the type of weapons used in homicide since monitoring began. Firearm use has declined by more than half since 1989-90 as a proportion of homicide methods, and there has been an upward trend in the use of knives and sharp instruments, which in 2006-07 accounted for nearly half of all homicide victims."

There you go, straight from the source. Post NFA, violent crime is higher. While homicide initially went up, it fell back to a steady decline which was already in decline before the NFA.

Why does siftbot hate you so much @ant? And eia is inappropriate. If there was even a chance of a fence like this killing you, farmers everywhere would be serving out their negligent homicide sentences. By the way you should see how fast a cat can move when they make contact with one of these.

I don't see how it's a poor comparison at all. Anti-gun people seem to think that banning guns will significantly reduce violent crime. This isn't really the case, as the statistics show. If your logic was valid, then Florida would have a higher violent crime and murder rate than DC simply because it's much easier for criminals to get guns. However, the factors that lead to violent crime and murder extend far beyond the availability of guns, so trying to ban all guns is kind of missing the point. It's like putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.

As for your drug analogy, I'm not really sure what you were trying to say. I think your attempt at sarcasm overshadowed the clarity of your message. That said, it's a good thing you brought up narcotics because they also kill significantly more people than guns. They are also banned, yet drug-related deaths and crime continue unabated. It's amusing that the same people who decry the War on Drugs are so quick to demand a ban on guns when the former shows how ineffective bans actually are. If a junkie can get his hands on drugs, a homicidal sociopath can get his hands on guns, legally or otherwise.

@Yogi Way to miss the point. I wasn't comparing cars and guns, I was comparing laws regulating cars and guns. That's all I'm going to say to you. You've already told me in another discussion that you're going to refuse any evidence that doesn't agree with your narrow minded beliefs, so having a discussion with you is pointless.

@RedSky

1) I'm not implying that the US is more violent. I already pointed out that the US has lower violent crime rates than the US and UK despite the higher murder rate.


2) I'd say people in rural areas are most likely own guns for hunting and also self defense as there are no police patrols out in the country.

I also wouldn't blame the availability of guns to criminals on gun enthusiasts. Criminals generally don't legally buy their guns. One way to cut down on illegall gun sales is to charge the sellers as accomplices to the crimes committed with the weapons they sell illegally.


3) Maybe punishment was not the right word I should have chosen. My point is that to cut down on driving fatalities, the laws enacted didn't put any inconveniences on responsible drivers.

Your back of the envelope calculation isn't quite so clear cut. Sam Harris discusses this in his article.

It is also worth noting that relatively gun-free countries are not as peaceful as many think. Here are some recent crime data comparing the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and Sweden. Although the U.S. has a higher rate of homicide, the problem of assaults in these other countries is much worse...

So, while the U.S. has many more murders, the U.K., Australia, and Sweden have much higher levels of assault. One might think that having a few more murders per 100,000 persons each year is still much worse than having many hundreds more assaults. Perhaps it is. (One could also argue, as several readers have, that differences in proportion are all we should care about.) But there should be no doubt that the term “assault” often conceals some extraordinary instances of physical and psychological suffering.

It's possible that the reason the US has lower assault, robbery and rape is that armed citizens are able to defend themselves from such crimes.

I'm seeing a lot of people saying the US should look to the UK and Australia on how to handle gun control. Both UK and Australia already had low murder and violent crime rates at the time of their "bans." After Australia's National Firearms Act and forced gun buyback, homicide fell by 9%, but assault went up 40% and rape went up 20%. In the years before the NFA, homicides had been on a steady decline, and a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found the NFA's impact on homicide was "relatively small."

After the UK's "gun ban" in 1997, gun crime actually increased [1] [2]. Gun crimes in 1997-1998 were 2,648. The Office for National Statistics shows that 5,507 firearm offenses were reported 2011-2012.


4) Yes cars do provide a benefit to society. Their regulation and restrictions are reasonable, and I already said I'm not opposed to any reasonable gun laws. But cars are the leading cause of accidental death each year. There are lots of things that can be done to make cars and drivers safer. Cars could be limited to 70 MPH. The national speed limit on highways is 70 MPH, why do you need a car capable of going faster? Cars can be fitted with a GPS and a "black box" that records your driving activities. Each year when you renew your inspection, the black box data is downloaded and analyzed. If it's discovered you've broken any traffic laws, you will be fined, and if it's determined you aren't a safe driver, your license is revoked. Prohibit personal sales of vehicles between individuals, because you can't know if the person your selling to is a safe driver or if their license is valid (see below about the "gun show exemption"). Sounds crazy, but those aren't nearly as bad as some of the things being proposed for new gun laws.

I doubt any of those would be acceptable to the majority of drivers, but it would make driving safer and save lives.

As for your suggestions "not yet tried."

- We already have rigorous background checks for purchasing firearms. They're done by the FBI's NICS, I don't know how it can be more rigorous.
- There is no "gun show exemption" or "loophole," that is more media buzzword BS. Private sale and transfer of anything (not just firearms) can not regulated by congress. It's another constitutional issue dealing with the regulation of commerce. It is still illegal for a person to sell a firearm to someone that they have reason to believe may not be legally able to own one. This is another issue that I'm not opposed to fixing though. It could be as simple as requiring the transaction to be witnessed by a licensed gun dealer and perform a background check.
- Assault weapons are already restricted. Real assault weapons that is, not what the media and lawmakers keep calling assault weapons. Once again I ask, why such fuss over the weapon type least used in crime? These "assault weapons" are expensive to acquire, and most criminals go for cheap, small caliber, concealable pistols and revolvers. [source] For more on what an assault weapon is and their use in crime, just head on over to this Wikipedia page.
- Restricting ammunition would be something that would effect responsible gun owners and likely have little effect on crime. Responsible gun owners are the ones that buy more ammo, go to gun ranges and practice.


5) You mean the steadily high murder rate that has been steadily declining for over two decades, by 50% since 1992? [source]

@jimnms

I'll address by paragraphs:

(1)

The reason I suggested that you are implying that the US is more violent by nature is because statistically it is far more murderous than a country of its socio-economic development should be. Have a look at Nationmaster tables of GDP/capita and compare than to murders/capita in terms of where the US sits.

If we take the view that you are suggesting that we should simply reduce violence globally then that is a laudable goal but it would suggest that the US is abysmally failing at this currently. I happen to believe this reason is gun availability. I see no reason to believe this abysmal failure comes from gross police incompetence or any other plausible factor, rather the gun ownership and availability that sticks out like a sore thumb when you compared to other countries such as those in the G8.

(2)

I think that we would be both agree that there are more gun enthusiasts in rural areas. Many of those would also own collections of guns for recreation rather than merely what self protection would require. The article below cites a study from 2007 by Harvard that says 20% own 65% of the nation's guns.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/19/tragedy-stresses-multiple-gun-ownership-trend-in-us/1781285/

There is no reason to suspect that these people are any more violent than your non gun-owning folk. The issue is not so much ownership levels, but the availability that feeds a would-be criminal's capacity to carry out a crime.

While actual ownership levels might be lower, guns can no doubt be purchased for cheaper and within a closer proximity in densely populated cities. This availability feeds the likelihood of them being employed as a tool to facilitate a crime.

This is also incidentally a key misunderstanding of the whole gun debate. No one is (or should be at least) implying that recreational gun owners are the problem. It is the necessity for guns to be freely available to gun enthusiasts among others for them to enjoy this hobby that causes the problems.

(3)

Building on my above point above, gun control shouldn't be seen as a punishment. There is no vidictiveness to it, merely a matter of weighing up the results of two courses of action. On the one hand there is diminished enjoyment of legal and responsible gun owners. On the other hand there is the high murder rate I discussed earlier, which really can't be explained away any other way than gun availability.

Let's do a back of the envelope calculation. Australia and the US are culturally relatively similar Anglo-Saxon societies. Let's assume for the sake of argument that my suggestion is true. Referencing wiki here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

The homicide rate in Australia is 1.0/10K/year and 4.8/10K/year. Let's say that gun availability explains 2/3rds of the difference. So we're talking about a 2.5/10K/year increase. Taking this against the US's 310M population this represents 7,500 more deaths.

Now to me, the issue is clear cut. The lives lost outweight gun enthusiast enjoyment.

And it's not just to me. There is a very clear reason that the vast majority of developed countries have made gun ownership incredibly difficult. I can guarantee, at some point they have done this back of the envelope calculation for their own country.

(4)

You raise the comparison to cars. See my workings above. With cars, they obviously provide a fundamentally invaluable benefit to society. The choice every society has made is to instead heavily regulate them. The reason there is no outcry to impose heavy restrictions on them is because there already are.

- Being required to pass license tests.
- Strict driving rules to follow.
- Speeding cameras everywhere.
- Random police checks for alcohol.

Can you think of any further regulations plausibly worth trying with cars that could reduce the accident death rate? I struggle to think of anything else effective that hasn't already been implemented.

With guns there are dozens of options not yet tried.

- Rigorous background checks.
- No gun show exemption.
- Assault weapon restrictions.
- Restrictions of ammo such as cost tariffs.

The list goes on. Imagine if we lacked the regulations we do on cars and there was a NCA (National Car Association) that was equating requiring to pass a driving test to tyranny.

(5)

I don't think there's much irrationality here. The US is clearly more murderous than other G8/OECD countries. To me, Occam's Razor explains why.

As for the comment on focussing on tragedies than the large issue, see my previous comment. You're missing the point that it's not just the gun sprees that are the problem, it's the steadily high murder rate. Mass shooting are just blips in this.

(6)

I will have a read through this.

I love how Jon points out that we are a nation of overreactors while at the same time he too is overreacting (along with the rest of the media). Guns are used in less than 10% of violent crime, yet that's all the media is concerned about. Jon and the media are both overreacting about so called assault rifles as well. Only 3% of crimes are committed with any type of rifle, and "assault rifles" are only a small sub-category of rifles. Why is the media only focusing on less than 10% of violent crimes (those that only involve guns), and why put so much of that focus on the least used type of gun to commit violence? Mass shootings barely make up 0.1% of all murders, yet it gets constant media coverage for weeks after it happens. If we do something to cut down on ALL violence, gun violence will also drop.

Jon also gets a lot of his "facts" wrong. The CDC has an average (1999-2010) gun homicide rate of 12,807 per year and an average accidental gun death of 758 per year, that doesn't add up to 30,000. There is no epidemic of gun violence either. Violence, including gun violence has been on a steady decline every year.

He was almost about to make a good point about gun control with the comparison to drunk driving. Drunk driving deaths were reduced through common sense laws, stricter sentences for drunk driving offenders and educating the public, not by banning alcohol or cars, or imposing ridiculous limits on cars like reducing the size of fuel tanks so drunk drivers would have to stop and refuel more often. When has banning anything ever solved a problem? We tried that with alcohol already, it didn't work. Drugs are illegal, and hows that war on drugs going? I don't use drugs, but I'm all for legalizing and regulating them. It's our generation's prohibition and it needs to end because all it's doing is causing more crime than it's preventing.

The argument that muskets were all that was available when the constitution was written is ridiculous. When the constitution was written they also didn't have radio, TV or the internet, so should we limit free speech and freedom of the press to only newspapers and soap boxes?

I'm willing to have a common sense discussion on how to reduce not just gun violence but all violence, but I'm waiting for the "anti-gun" side to show up with some common sense instead of fear and ignorance.

Guns are already highly regulated, but I'm not opposed to any new regulation as long as it will keep guns from criminals, include harsher punishment for criminal use of guns, and doesn't put any added burden on responsible gun owners. The current legislation being cooked up (what little has been revealed so far) is completely insane.

And by the way (since Jon brought up Mr. Belding), in 1997 at the Pearl, MS high school, it was the school's assistant principle with a gun that stopped the shooter. This was reported only in local papers. Only one national media network covered it, NBC, they mentioned it only twice, and then it was forgotten. Under the law the assistant principal was considered a criminal for having a gun in a gun free zone, yet if he didn't have his gun in his car that day to stop the shooter, the shooter would have been able to carry out his plan to drive to the junior high and kill more students while police were responding to the high school.

The quoted guy was referencing this:

2011 Homicide Circumstances.

Blunt objects (hammers and clubs) were used to kill people more often than rifles.

The UK has a higher overall violent crime rate, but a violent crime in the UK is far less likely to kill you. I'd be surprised if the prevalence of guns in the US has nothing to do with things.

Switzerland is a very special case when it comes to gun ownership and gun crime. Switzerland has no standing army. Instead it has a people's militia. Almost every man between the ages of 20 and 30 in the country is conscripted into the militia and receives military weapon training. They have to keep the guns at home as part of the militia.

This means they have a huge percentage of the population who are properly trained to handle a gun. However, they have a lower gun ownership percentage than the US. So, in the US you have a lot more people who own guns, but a lower percentage of these people have the proper training for the weapons. Is it any wonder that they kill more people in the US with the guns?

Also, think about this. Loads of people in switzerland are conscripted into the militia, learn how to handle a gun properly, then get too old to be in the militia and leave, hand back the weapon and go home. A large percentage of these people don't go out and buy a replacement gun for their home.

This tells me there's something else going on here. It isn't the guns keeping them safe, it seems it's deeper than that.

Differences in gun culture go way, way deeper than the figures suggest. In fact, the figures seem to show that there's very little correlation between the rate of gun ownership in a country and the number of homicides with a gun in the country.

Which means it's a cultural thing. So, just saying more guns or less guns will keep us safe means nothing. It's country specific, culture specific.

Homicide Rates -

Switzerland 0.7
United States 4.8
United Kingdom 1.2

I see absolutely no correlation between gun ownership and homicide rate, although I've frequently heard reference to such a notion.

Just like @bareboards2, I didn't give an opinion or say anything about gun laws. I am just stating facts.

The woman (in the article I linked) used a gun for self protection. The gun was used to shoot her attacker in her own home.

Those are facts.

If you think that there is something to conclude from those two facts, go ahead and make your own conclusions.

In case you didn't notice, all I did was copy and paste @bareboards2's post and change a few words to reflect the article I linked. I don't see you lecturing @bareboards2 about anecdotal evidence. The difference is that @bareboards2's story fits with your opinion and mine doesn't.

You certainly are an expert in anecdotal evidence as you gave me a prime example when you said: "Problem is, when you count ALL the cherries, the reality is that domestic weapons have caused more needless deaths than they have saved." Actually I wouldn't even call that anecdotal evidence, it's more like anally extracted evidence because it's neither evidence nor factual.

Here are some real facts, no opinions:

70 million Americans own guns (NRA 2010)

45% of American households have a firearm in them (Gallup 2011)

Homicides by firearm in 2010 = 11,078 (CDC)

Average homicide by firearm 1999-2010 = 12,807 (CDC)

The 2008 US Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) reported 5.3 million violent crimes (simple/aggravated assaults, robberies, sexual assaults, rapes, and murders), with 430,000 (8%) committed by an offender armed with a gun. Just looking at murder alone, 67% of the murders were committed with a firearm (this number doesn't separate how many of these homicides are gang related or committed with illegally obtained guns). The NCVS also reported that guns were used for self defense 116,000 times.

There are no records kept for when a gun is used in self defense. The NCVS report only counts reported self defense cases during the survey. Other studies have been done to attempt to get a more accurate estimate on the use of guns for self defense. These studies show estimates ranging from 500,000 (CDC) to 2.5 million (1995 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology) times per year. A couple of other studies both estimate around 1 million times per year (2000 Journal of Quantitative Criminology).

You claim "domestic weapons have caused more needless deaths than they have saved," but look at the numbers. Even the lowest estimated use of guns for self defense per year, 116,000, is still greater than the number of murders committed with a gun per year. That is at least 116,000 assaults, robberies, rapes and murders prevented by civilians with a guns.

This video contains disingenuous information. Those statistics are completely false.

@chingalera It's working a lot better than the current USA situation. Here's a few legitimate facts relating to the content in that video.

1. You can still buy guns (pistols, rifles, shotguns), just not the ridiculously unjustified mass human slaying variants.
2. It's better controlled with systems setup to decrease the chance of consistently unstable minds getting hold of guns of any type.
3. Gun homicides were increasing leading up to the gun control (1996), from that peak to now, it's about a 59% drop.
4. 1996-2006 about 65% drop in gun suicides.
5. Robberies involving guns dropped significantly.
6. There was no increase in home invasions.
7. In the 10 years leading up to the gun control there were 11 mass shootings.. since gun control went into affect, there have been 0.

Homicide weapon statistics (image): Guns vs Knives from 1989/90 to 2006/7
Quick answer: 50% drop for guns, 30% rise for knives
http://aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide/weapon.html

"A 2011 letter published in the British Medical Journal by Simon Chapman, a professor of public health from the University of Sydney, observed that the U.S. had 14.4 times the population of Australia but 141 times as as many deaths from firearms in 2008 as Australia and 238 times the rate of firearms-related homicide."
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/2012/12/20/gun-control-searching-down-under-for-change-to-believe-in/
If the current ratio's are even remotely similar to this quote, then Americans can't say jack about the Australian statistics.

@charliem Good links mate.

Upvote for the 'Lies' tag.

What a load of bias rubbish. Very selective quoting. The ban on fox hunting was nothing to do with human rights, but rather animal cruelty. Foxes can still be hunted, with a gun of all things. You're just not allowed to let your dogs maul them to death because that's cruel. So what they're apparently campaigning against is a load of rubbish, hunting with guns is still legal.

Oh, and so is pistol shooting - you just have to keep your gun at a gun club. The only thing that's illegal is keeping your gun at home.

As for Tony Martin, he's a nutjob. Tony Martin had his gun license revoked in 1994 because he shot at someone who was stealing his apples. Ok, so the guy was on his land and stealing fruit, but it's OK to shoot them? No. No it's not.

There are a lot of inconsistencies in his story of the incident. He claimed to have shot from the stairs having been woken by the break in. He didn't, he was shown to have shot from a downstairs doorway. He was lying in wait for them and ambushed them. He shot the kid that broke in in the back as he was trying to escape.

I'm pretty sure in America the feeling is just that the kid had it coming, he shouldn't have been there. I don't buy into that at all.

Homicide with a gun in the UK: 0.07 per 100,000

Homicide with a gun in the US: 2.97 per 100,000

US rate is more than forty times that of the UK. Which country has broken gun laws? The simple facts are that I'm safer in the UK without a gun than I am in the states with a gun.

Figures found here.

You need to fix your goalposts son. To start off, the burden of proof is on those that seek to prohibit something. You could never show, for instance, that anything "won't help" anything else. That's asking for proof of a negative. It belies your profound misunderstanding of statistics. We had a nationwide assault weapons ban. It's efficacy was unimpressive. It certainly did not provide any conclusive evidence that the ban was effective which is where the burden should lie for restrictions on liberty.

There are also these things called "priors." For example: "An extremely small proportion of homicides are conducted using assault weapons. Thus, the maximal impact of their ban would similarly be small." If you want to ban anything it should be handguns, but I don't view that as consistent with the second amendment at all. You would (or at least should) need a constitutional amendment to pull that off.

Finally, I view homicide in general as a relatively small problem in comparison to other matters of public health and safety. That is if I look at numbers, as opposed to guessing at probabilities while I'm crying a river over news broadcasts designed to make me feel unsafe.

Sometimes being educated means considering other points of view. I'm a liberal and I don't own (or wish to own, or even really enjoy) guns. You have a fucking gun in your avatar.