A couple of observations: 1. Just like causation does not equal correlation, high levels of gun ownership does not correspond to high levels of gun violence. Comparing Canada's gun violence to the gun violence in the US is too simple of an argument. Why not consider things like population density, poverty, or the prevalence of drugs along with those factors? Gun violence is part of a larger issue of violence in general and it is everywhere, regardless of the legality of ownership. Guns are much harder to buy in Honduras or Mexico, but the violence there is rampant. 2. A gun is a thing. Things can and often do wind up in the hands of people who are legally not supposed to have them. My grandmother can buy a gun for every street pharmacist in the county legally if she were so inclined. I have a gun locked in my garage right now that is registered to God knows who, because my dad won it in a bet and gave it to me. There are certainly guns belonging to my grandfathers that are not in the proper hands according to the state. How should I go about registering a musket with no serial number that has been handed down for 6 generations? Should I register the accompanying cavalry sword? It's difficult to follow some of the existing laws because they vary from state to state and county to county. Changing the gun laws in the states is a nice sentiment, but I am unconvinced that adding a waiting period, or a background check, or a mental health history will actually prevent someone from acquiring a gun. The argument of making guns harder to own is so difficult because they are so prevalent in the US, relatively cheap, easy to conceal and require no effort for ownership. You can make NEW guns harder to buy, but I think from a political standpoint that would be impossible because most of the gun dealers I know are small business owners and because it's one of the few parts of the Constitution that is interpreted quite literally. Also, it would be difficult to address used gun shops, pawn shops, gun shows or any of the other places you can buy older weapons. Finally, gun violence is reported to be on the decline. While you could make arguments to the contrary, you can look at the violence levels of about 1992 in places like New York, Washington DC, Atlanta, Miami and LA and they would be on par for Ciudad Juarez right now had those trends continued. It's kind of impossible to definitively say why gun violence went down over the last 20 years, because there are just too many variables, but that fact makes it more difficult to change the gun laws when the problem itself is already on the decline. Gun owners are very politically sensitive: look at the spikes in gun purchases when democratic presidents are elected. Addressing gun ownership is a politically dangerous move, why would someone piss off a very vocal, powerful and large group of Americans to poorly address a problem that is already on the decline?
So, why carry a gun instead of a knife? I don't think many people's homes have rooms with dimensions greater than 30 feet, so if there's an attacker in your home, and he has a knife and you have a gun, you're pretty much fucked. You should really be sleeping with a baseball bat by your bed. My point though wasn't about the mechanics of an attack, but that a gun may be easier to use psychologically. It's like porn and the internet. Before the internet, guys who wanted porn were getting porn, porn was a pretty big business. So, it's not like one could argue that the internet is going to cause porn consumption. ...And then the internet shows up, all the barriers to getting porn are removed, and a whole lot more porn is consumed. The internet doesn't create the urge to get porn, but putting it just a mouse click away means a lot more porn will get watched. Guns don't create the urge to do harm, but it stands to reason that putting harm just a trigger pull away might cause more people to act on that urge.
Just a quick interjection, because I keep getting reps saying "We have ten times your population!" This statistic is a PER CAPITA number. Size of population is somewhat irrelevant.
Will you please do us all a favor and go to the FBI website and look at the UCR reports? In spite of laws like 'stand your ground', in spite of the explosion in gun sales and CCW permits; violence and murders have decreased. Your statement perpetuates the fallacy that the mainstream media likes to put forth: "If we don't curb gun sales or change the laws, we will end up back in the wild west!" There simply isn't anything to back your assertions. *This may trouble you to consider: Maybe instead of saying despite the gun sales and despite the "stand your ground" laws, I should be saying because of? There is no causality one way or the other, but I will use your phrase here: "it stands to reason" that a criminal is less likely to visit violence upon people if they know there is a good chance that they are armed.
I have no idea what the answer to this question is, but it popped into my head when I read ^ that. Are the countries where the majority of citizens are armed the safest countries to live in, based on violent crime rates? Does anyone know?
You make an interesting point here. I think we can do a little experiment, that will take quite some time to unfold. You clearly proclaim that in the U.S. violent crime is higher than Canada. I do not disagree. You clearly assert that this is due either wholly or in large part to the high level of firearms possession. I disagree and believe that it has more to do with social issues but neither of us can prove the other wrong. Here is what I propose: I believe Canada will go into a recession, similar to what the U.S. experienced in 2008 & 2009 in the next few years. Which will cause median incomes to drop, standards of living to drop, Government budgets to shrink and foreclosures to go up. Despite Canada's lack of firearms, I believe your rates of violent crime will rise. If a Canadian recession does happen, this may be a good chance to either prove or disprove theories on violent crime, at the very least it may provide a little insight into violence.
The award for not answering the question goes to ODEN today! To address your points: - I agree with you that Canada is on the verge of a correction. Certainly we are in a housing bubble. I'd like nothing more than to sell my house right now, because I think the bottom is going to fall out of the market. Now, will that trigger civil unrest and a rise in violent crime? I can't say. Personally, from the travelling I've done, the people I've met, and the posting on this board I would argue that Canada is - for a variety of reasons - inherently less violent than America. - I've never disputed that the gun violence in the United States is due to a whole host of factors, ranging from racial tensions to socioeconomic conditions to education to anything else. I have to agree with BL1Y (wonders will never cease!), though, in my opinion that the easy access to firearms does not help the situation. - I don't think our market will crash the way America's did, because we have more restriction on our banks. Also, our economy is heavily oil-based, particularly in the west. So long as someone in the world needs oil, we're good. And if the Middle East gets more unstable, we benefit because you don't have to worry about jihad or violent uprisings in Ft. McMurray or Kerl Lake. Again, I'm curious. If the likelihood of a person being armed decreases their risk of exposure to violent crime, do you have any data that proves that? That shows countries having a large, armed civilian population that also have low violent crime?
You won't find that kind of information (or the reciprocal), at least not through a legitimate, non-biased source. I doubt it would even be possible to gather effectively because of so many outlying variables. The closest thing I found was this: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.datamasher.org/mash-ups/crime-vs-gun-ownership#table-tab" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.datamasher.org/mash-ups/crim ... #table-tab</a> Again, I'm not sure of the validity of the source, but the data is all over the place.
That's a horrible table. I have no idea what the numbers in the "Result" column are supposed to mean; in fact they're completely meaningless. Taking that arbitrary calculation aside, the statistics the table uses implies that there may be positive correlation between gun ownership and violent crime, based on a cursory glance: Of the 24 states that have higher than median gun ownership, 15 had a higher violent crime rate than the median. Conversely only 9 of the 24 states with lower than median gun ownership had the higher crime rate. But like IWantSomeJuice said, there are so many variables that affect crime rates that it's hard to just pull out gun ownership's sole effect on them.
<a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_ ... by_country</a> <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Sweden" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Sweden</a> One could reasonably make a case for Sweden.
Not sure what case you are suggesting can be made here. Sweden has a high rate of crime, and a high rate of gun ownership - both facts many people find surprising. However, they have always had the latter, but the former only for the last few decades - it is largely an effect of mass immigration, so guns don't seem to be much of a factor. Guns in Sweden are generally not small firearms for self-defence purposes, but hunting rifles or military rifles for the voluntary Swedish Home Guard. The military rifles are kept in civilian homes, but ammunition is kept locked away in centralized storages. There is no culture for using weapons for self-defence. Indeed, Sweden's laws makes any such use of firearms so risky you are better off allowing yourself to be burgled, and/or assaulted. So while Sweden might seem to have high rates of gun ownership on paper, the Swedes - like the rest of Scandinavians - are for all practical purposes unarmed and defenceless.
Norway and Finland could be thrown into the discussion as well. Not sure how long Norway will continue to allow guns after the Breivik shooting incident. I know the UN and EU are looking to completely ban possession of firearms.
Why has nobody ever committed a massacre at an NRA convention? Why has just about every shooting spree taken place in gun-free zones? Exactly. Because the blasted, jelly-boned swines who seek to make a name for themselves by taking innocent human life only target the defenceless. Had there been just one other person with a firearm present on that island, there is at least a chance a few more of my countrymen would have survived that God-forsaken day. I realize that point doesn't end the debate on gun-control. Massacres, while horrendous, account for a relatively small percentage of gun deaths. But it isn't nothing.
This is an excellent point. Quite a few of the statistics I've seen show that the majority of gun-related deaths are, in fact, due to suicide. Personally, I think it's another reason not to have a gun in the home. YOU may be a trained, licensed, responsible gun owner. Can you imagine coming home and finding your wife or your son has killed themselves with your gun? Or you might be mentally sound enough to pass all the screening tests (if they even have any), but still suicidal. Sure you can jump off buildings or take pills or slit your wrists; I think the odds of surviving most of those attempts are greater than when you attempt to kill yourself by putting a gun in your mouth and pulling the trigger. I dunno. I don't think there's any way to convince someone who likes guns that there are legitimate reasons for not liking them.