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Gun Control Laws

The fact that we have 89 guns per 100 people is wild, so I did some calculations. I found data on number of guns per capita and number of gun homicides per capita. I couldnt find reliable data on all countries, and of the countries in the Top 10 in GDP in the world, I couldnt find reliable data on China, UK, and Russia. Source was Wikipedia.

Of the 72 countries I had reliable data for, the US was 23rd highest in homicides per capita. Based purely on homicides per capita, the only country in the Top 10 in GDP with a worse homicide rate than the US was Brazil (obviously a ton of this is drug warfare). Not exactly a shining record for the US.

I also built a spreadsheet that compared the number of homicides per 100k people to the number of guns per 100k people. The US was 58th of 72 on the list. Japan and France were the only two countries in the top 10 worldwide GDP with less gun deaths per gun.

So on a per gun basis, the US is pretty low on the list (59th overall, 5th of 7 of top 10 GDP I have data on) but because we have so many guns we are high on the overall gun homicide list (23th overall, 2nd of 7 of the top 10 GDP I have data on).

Another thing to consider is the fact that our gun homicide rate is probably lower because we have such good health care (basically, people who would die in some countries don't in US because of superior ER care).
 
TownieDeac said:
I won't negrep you because you're trying to make an argument. Unfortunately, it's a tired, facile argument. And if you follow it to its logical conclusion, it would make us a nation of trained gunmen. Perhaps that's your notion of a free society, but it isn't mine.
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Switzerland is a nation of trained gunmen. They have very low gun violence rates. If you wanted to kill a lot of people, would you rather go to a school or to an NRA meeting?
 
DreamOnDemOn said:
Switzerland is a nation of trained gunmen. They have very low gun violence rates. If you wanted to kill a lot of people, would you rather go to a school or to an NRA meeting?
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Switzerland is a great example, I agree... we should strive to be like them. So you want to reduce the number of guns per capita in half right?
 
Fuck Your Couch said:
Switzerland is a great example, I agree... we should strive to be like them. So you want to reduce the number of guns per capita in half right?
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As long as people with no history of violence or mental incompetence are allowed to defend themselves with firearms, I don't care what the number is. The laws before Switzerland joined the Shengen treaty were pretty reasonable, and they are not all that bad even now.
 
DreamOnDemOn said:
Switzerland is a nation of trained gunmen. They have very low gun violence rates. If you wanted to kill a lot of people, would you rather go to a school or to an NRA meeting?
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What do you actually know about Switzerland and its gun laws? Just curious because in the limited amount of googling I have done it seems like there are a whole lot of RW websites skewing facts and making superficial comparisons and then a lot of actual data out there that shows the idea of Switzerland as some kind of gun toting paradise without gun violence is not accurate.
 
P4nthers11 said:
What do you actually know about Switzerland and its gun laws? Just curious because in the limited amount of googling I have done it seems like there are a whole lot of RW websites skewing facts and making superficial comparisons and then a lot of actual data out there that shows the idea of Switzerland as some kind of gun toting paradise without gun violence is not accurate.
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I have visited friends and relatives in Switzerland, but do not claim to be an expert on gun violence in Switzerland. I do know that it is an amazingly homogenous population compared to what we have here and I don't think they suffer from the massive amount of gangbanging that drives up the gun violence here. This wiki site is pretty accurate as far as I know:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland
 
bullets said:
The fact that we have 89 guns per 100 people is wild, so I did some calculations. I found data on number of guns per capita and number of gun homicides per capita. I couldnt find reliable data on all countries, and of the countries in the Top 10 in GDP in the world, I couldnt find reliable data on China, UK, and Russia. Source was Wikipedia.

Of the 72 countries I had reliable data for, the US was 23rd highest in homicides per capita. Based purely on homicides per capita, the only country in the Top 10 in GDP with a worse homicide rate than the US was Brazil (obviously a ton of this is drug warfare). Not exactly a shining record for the US.

I also built a spreadsheet that compared the number of homicides per 100k people to the number of guns per 100k people. The US was 58th of 72 on the list. Japan and France were the only two countries in the top 10 worldwide GDP with less gun deaths per gun.

So on a per gun basis, the US is pretty low on the list (59th overall, 5th of 7 of top 10 GDP I have data on) but because we have so many guns we are high on the overall gun homicide list (23th overall, 2nd of 7 of the top 10 GDP I have data on).

Another thing to consider is the fact that our gun homicide rate is probably lower because we have such good health care (basically, people who would die in some countries don't in US because of superior ER care).
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Thanks for the work. I don't know where everybody gets the idea that the number of guns is the reason for a high homicide rate. I happened to see that the gun ownership rate in Nigeria is something like 1/80th that of the U.S. but the homicide rate is three times as high. I really don't think that the availability of firearms is the main reason why people kill one another.
 
bullets said:
The fact that we have 89 guns per 100 people is wild, so I did some calculations. I found data on number of guns per capita and number of gun homicides per capita. I couldnt find reliable data on all countries, and of the countries in the Top 10 in GDP in the world, I couldnt find reliable data on China, UK, and Russia. Source was Wikipedia.

Of the 72 countries I had reliable data for, the US was 23rd highest in homicides per capita. Based purely on homicides per capita, the only country in the Top 10 in GDP with a worse homicide rate than the US was Brazil (obviously a ton of this is drug warfare). Not exactly a shining record for the US.

I also built a spreadsheet that compared the number of homicides per 100k people to the number of guns per 100k people. The US was 58th of 72 on the list. Japan and France were the only two countries in the top 10 worldwide GDP with less gun deaths per gun.

So on a per gun basis, the US is pretty low on the list (59th overall, 5th of 7 of top 10 GDP I have data on) but because we have so many guns we are high on the overall gun homicide list (23th overall, 2nd of 7 of the top 10 GDP I have data on).

Another thing to consider is the fact that our gun homicide rate is probably lower because we have such good health care (basically, people who would die in some countries don't in US because of superior ER care).
Click to expand...

DreamOnDemOn said:
Thanks for the work. I don't know where everybody gets the idea that the number of guns is the reason for a high homicide rate. I happened to see that the gun ownership rate in Nigeria is something like 1/80th that of the U.S. but the homicide rate is three times as high. I really don't think that the availability of firearms is the main reason why people kill one another.
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WOW. You read that and that's the conclusion you came up with????

That data suggests that America is not any more violent than other countries with a similar economic profile, and the main reason for our terrible gun crime is the sheer number of guns.
 
These are simply correlations (therefore I am not going to theorize on causation), but I saw it as a directional correlation between number of guns and number of gun deaths per capita. So my interpretation is more in line with fuckyourcouch's.

Switzerland ranks about the same as the US on gun suicides at 5.61 v 5.75 per 100k people. I don't have data on overall suicide rates.
 
I've still yet to see anybody on this thread produce a gun rights argument that doesn't follow one of two fallacies: reductio ad absurdum and straw man.

Leftcoast had a great post on the Pit thread, which I would like to see Arlington and others respond to. I'll see if I can find it, because it's not worth discussing with DreamOn.
 
Here it is:
The argument has never been about automatic weapons. Support for automatic weapons is a construct of leftist, anti-gun propaganda. While it is true that automatic weapons can be legally obtained, there are significant barriers to getting them including (but not limited to) price and government registration/paperwork. Additionally, the last major crime that I can think of that involved automatic weapons was the LA bank robbery. None of these recent shootings have used automatic weapons. To frame the pro-gun argument around automatic weapons is disingenuous.

The reason there are such strong feelings about hand guns is because of the personal protection component they provide. I have, as a result of being in the National Guard, spent some time in unsavory parts of South Carolina. The ability to have a hand gun in my vehicle provided me peace of mind I would not have otherwise had. In the car, a long gun would do me no good.

I consider where I live a reasonably safe area, but one thing today shows is that there is no such thing as a safe area anymore. I don't have a big house, nor the ability to quickly and easy escape (master bedroom on the third floor). In the unlikely, but unfortunate event that someone comes through my door in the middle of the night I have two choices - arm myself or be a victim. In my case, a long gun doesn't work because I like to keep my pistol out of sight, and relatively secure while maintaining easy access in a worst case scenario.

People have been trotting out homicide by firearm rates to show how high the US is compared to the rest of the world, but what nobody is talking about is the high number of illegal handguns in places they've been banned (UK, for example) and the high rate of violent crime. It's a well known fact that when the UK took up handguns from it's citizens violent crime went up. Criminals no longer feared going into people's homes when they were there because they felt reasonable confident they would not meet any resistance.

As a proud and responsible gun owner, I am adamantly opposed to a handgun ban. I support finding ways to reduce gun violence, but refuse to be painted as a vigilante or boogeyman by people that don't own and don't know how to use guns responsibly just because I do enjoy using them and exercising my right to carry concealed. I believe, to my core, that the 2nd Amendment is a sacred right (but not an unlimited one). To take it away sets a very dangerous precedent for further erosion of liberty.

A major part of the resistance to gun control is the attitude of those that want stricter regulation. Look no further than the Tunnels if you need an example.
 
bullets said:
These are simply correlations (therefore I am not going to theorize on causation), but I saw it as a directional correlation between number of guns and number of gun deaths per capita. So my interpretation is more in line with fuckyourcouch's.

Switzerland ranks about the same as the US on gun suicides at 5.61 v 5.75 per 100k people. I don't have data on overall suicide rates.
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Are you measuring homicide rates or gun-death rates? Look at this:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list
 
buckets, i think you should change back to your regular handle in light of the discussion.
 
There is no political support for a handgun ban in this country. The supreme court would never allow it anyway. Its a strawman argument.

I propose a national gun registration database and a requirement that all gun owners carry insurance. Further, the registered owner of a gun should be financially responsible for all crimes committed with their guns unless gun is reported stolen. To own a gun owners must submit to regular licensing and skills tests. Finally if any resident of a home with a registered gun is diagnosed with any mental illness, the gun owner must notify local law enforcement.

I thought about proposing a requirement that guns in a residence with a mentally ill person must be secured but discarded that idea as it is probably unworkable and unconstitutional. The rest of my proposal is constitutional in my opinion.

Discuss that proposal instead of your straw men.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2
 
Man, bullets. I don't think there is any corelation between the number of guns in a country and the rate of gun homicides in that country. Canada has more than 1/3 as many guns per 100,000 people but gun death rate only about 1/6 as high. If guns were killing people, you would think there would be about twice as many gun deaths in Canada.

Maybe it is not how many guns you have but what you do with the guns once you get them.
 
DreamOnDemOn said:
Man, bullets. I don't think there is any corelation between the number of guns in a country and the rate of gun homicides in that country. Canada has more than 1/3 as many guns per 100,000 people but gun death rate only about 1/6 as high. If guns were killing people, you would think there would be about twice as many gun deaths in Canada.

Maybe it is not how many guns you have but what you do with the guns once you get them.
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So Canada has 1/3 as many guns and a much lower gun death rate and you are using them as an example because....
 
BeachBumDeac said:
Again, nobody (except for Shoo) is suggesting making guns completely illegal. This is a stupid strawman that you guys keep knocking down.
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I didn't mean it as a strawman. I don't like guns. But I just don't see what we can do to stop them. They're too widespread. Even if we went with the most restrictive law possible we couldn't stop them at all
 
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