One of the tactics used by those who advocate banning privately owned firearms is that Great Britain enjoys a lower level of homicide than that found in the United States. The idea is that we could have lower murder rates, if only guns were banned.
Part of their argument is true. The US has a homicide rate about 2.5 times that of the UK.
Kevin of The Smallest Minority discusses out some painful truths about this assertion. He points out that the US homicide rate used to be much greater, but has fallen even though more states have passed laws allowing private citizens to carry concealed firearms. At the same time, the rates of all violent crimes, and all crimes in general, have been climbing in the UK even though they have been passing ever more laws restricting legal self defense.
Seems simple enough. They restrict weapons in the UK, and crime goes up. We allow more people to carry firearms here in the US, and crime goes down. Even if there are other reasons which affected this outcome (and there are), the very idea that banning guns will lead to less crime has been completely discredited. Right?
I wish!
Or properly put: “The debate would be over if the other side were rational.”
When guns are banned, there is a corresponding increase in homocides using things that are not guns – knifes, baseball bats, automobiles, wood chippers, axes, poisons, strangling and hanging and simply beating people and babies to death. The number of whole house fires has increased.
Assault weapons that should be banned must not be limited to guns but must include knives, forks, all electrical and carpentry tools, sports equipment, agricultural and gardening equipment and tools. Pencils and pens are very deadly if thrust through the eye, ear, nose or mouth or anywhere else. So also hat pins, hair clips. Matches, lighters, gasoline, alcohol, cleaning fluids and sacremental wine.
Traditionally when assault knives and forks are banned, people are allowed chop sticks as long as they are blunted. Assault chop sticks should be banned. A lot of people are killed with blunt chop sticks although in many cases these were illegally converted into assault chop sticks.
Sol’s arguement is just plain silly. In fact, assault weapons not needed by legitimate hunters and gun owners. 90 percent of guns used by Mexican drug gangs came from the US. Now I don’t own a gun am not a hunter. However, my son, a former Marine, owns guns and does target work monthly. I served twice in our military and had been issued rifles, carbines, and a .45…I have no hassle with people owning guns if they are checked first deserve to own a gun. But the recent spate of shootings is just plain out of hand. And it will continue. Pro-gun folks now argue that if college students were armed then campus would-be killers could be stopped. Sorry. Have been around enough campuses to not want 19 year old hormonally driven beer drinking boys allowed to carry guns on campus.
“Sol’s arguement is just plain silly.”
No, he is just being sarcastic. Even though they have an almost complete ban on firearms, the rising number of violent assaults with objects other than guns led to ever more calls to ban common knives. Note that these are common kitchen knives, not so called “assault knives”.
“90 percent of guns used by Mexican drug gangs came from the US.”
That claim has been thoroughly debunked. Even the ATF says that it is false. The only people who still repeat the canard are either partisan hacks who don’t care if they lie, or those who have no clue.
“Have been around enough campuses to not want 19 year old hormonally driven beer drinking boys allowed to carry guns on campus.”
Another outright lie. All of the states which issue CCW licenses that I am aware of have a minimum age limit of 21. If people can vote, serve in the military, get a job as a law enforcement officer, etc. then they certainly can be considered responsible enough to carry a concealed firearm.
So far as your experiences with wild and uncontrolled college aged men are concerned, Fred, I think the less said the better.
James
Fred Lapidies,
Pro-gun folks now argue that if college students were armed then campus would-be killers could be stopped.
Well, since armed students have stopped at least two campus rampage in the last four years I would say that the pro-self defense people have the empirical evidence they need.
I have no hassle with people owning guns if they are checked first deserve to own a gun.
And we have that with license to carry. We would have it for everybody if the people you blindly support had not lied over the last 40 years when they pretended that registration and checking were intended just to keep guns out the hands of the irresponsible.
Sorry. Have been around enough campuses to not want 19 year old hormonally driven beer drinking boys allowed to carry guns on campus.
Even if they’ve been “checked first”? Your dishonesty is the fundamental problem with your contention that you just want “reasonable” restrictions on the right to self-defense. Here you blanket an entire age group as irresponsible even though many of them are quite capable of safely carrying a gun for the defense of themselves and others.
Hell, you don’t even bother the address the reality that all these shooting have happened on campuses with very strict no gun policies.
It also shows the fundamental elitism and distrust of your fellow citizens that you believe that the default assumption should be that the ordinary law-abiding person has to prove to YOUR satisfaction that they are responsible enough to protect themselves and others. Gun-control is a euphemism. Its really people control. Your elitist disdain for ordinary people makes it axiomatic that they are to stupid to own and use guns responsibly.
People who want to ban guns simply fear guns. The Media makes it seem like we are living the wild west and a shooter is waiting around the corner. If only no one had those guns we would all be safe. Right. I would ask people in the gun ‘free’ society they feel? Ask a Mexican how safe they feel where it is near impossible to own a legal gun.
Guns don’t kill people. People do. There is plenty of evidence.
If we want safe colleges, we should only allow people are mentally stable to be students, teachers and employees. At minimum they should pass the same test that is required for a concealed carry permit.
This rule may have unexpected benefits. Colleges will become less liberal and tuition costs will decrease.
Sol Vason: Assault weapons that should be banned must not be limited to guns but must include knives, forks, all electrical and carpentry tools, sports equipment, agricultural and gardening equipment and tools. Pencils and pens are very deadly if thrust through the eye, ear, nose or mouth or anywhere else. So also hat pins, hair clips. Matches, lighters, gasoline, alcohol, cleaning fluids and sacremental wine.
Sorry, even that doesn’t go nearly far enough:
25 Methods for Killing With Your Bare Hands
Shannon,why feed a troll? When I said he was pulling your leg a week ago, it was my way of saying he couldn’t be serious.
I first visted Britain in 1968-two months hitch-hiking and have visited many times since.The sad thing is the complete cultural collapse. What was one of the safest and most civil places has become a behavioral sink;it certainly feels far less safe than NY in the seventies. I do remember auditing a courtroom in 1984 and what sruck me was that suspended sentences were being handed out left and right. I thought if this was the way they did business, they would have no society left. What kind of country punishes its citizens for defending themselves?
“90 percent of guns used by Mexican drug gangs came from the US.”
90% is the guns thought traceable to the US that were actually traced to the US.
17% is the number from the US out of the total number of guns seized – 83% came from somewhere other than the US.
And logically this is so, as the same trucks hauling drugs from the south of Mexico can haul guns also. No need to go to the US.
“assault weapons not needed by legitimate hunters and gun owners.”
Assault rifles are long guns firing reduced power cartridges (in comparison to the typical infantry rifle cartidge in world war two)using detachable magazines and capable of semi and fully automatic fire.
Assault weapon is a mushy political term into which is lumped a variety of firearms of disparate characteristics, including some which are not and never have been assault rifles.
I seem to remember reading that the murder rate in London around the mid-1300’s was three to four times higher (measured in murders per 100,000 people) compared to the rate in Detroit in the 1990’s.
Obviously, London at that time must have had the streets hip deep in Saturday Night Specials, assault weapons, and EBRs (Evil Black Rifles).
/end sarcasm