A 1994 survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Americans use guns to frighten away intruders who are breaking into their homes about 498,000 times per year.[20]
A 1982 survey of male felons in 11 state prisons dispersed across the U.S. found:[21]
• 34% had been “scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim”
• 40% had decided not to commit a crime because they “knew or believed that the victim was carrying a gun”
• 69% personally knew other criminals who had been “scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim”[22]
Prime, maybe I should have restated it. True, there have been instances where guns saved lives. But you can’t come to a clear cut conclusion that tight gun control increases crime. Supporters like to point to Chicago’s strict gun control laws and high crime rate as “proof” that gun control isn’t working. But at the same time they choose to ignore areas that have both strict gun control and low crime. For the record I don’t support gun control. But I feel there is a need to look at the other side of an issue before jumping to conclusions.
yes you can, because increasing gun controls makes more acts into crimes.
it is proof. They pass laws and the crime gets worse. Sure there are confounding variables. Those are the things that people need to consider when they craft laws intended to do a certain thing. All we are doing is making the observation that the stated purpose literally is not being achieved through the measures enacted.
it would be nice if you put this “evidence” in a praxeological framework. I’m sure theres cultural reasons why japan has the things they have, including hundreds of years of precedent when it comes to prohibition of weaponry to commoners.
well can we look at how there is already 100% prohibition of murder?
The reason places such as Chicago and Washington D.C. provide solid evidence is because we have statistics from both before and after legislation was passed on the same sample population. It is not accurate to use information from entirely different cultures, such as Japan, unless you can point to specific legislation at a specific point in time that altered the rate of gun violence.
Very true; comparing a culture as completely, night-and-day different as ours and Japan’s is ridiculous. I watched Bowling For Columbine several years ago and Michael Moore made a comparison between us and Canada about how similar we are yet we have so much more violent crime. Of course, then I’m sure he blamed capitalism or something.
In 1982, the Kennesaw City Council unanimously passed a law requiring heads of households to own at least one firearm with ammunition.
The ordinance states the gun law is needed to “protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants.”
Then-councilman J.O. Stephenson said after the ordinance was passed, everyone “went crazy.”
“People all over the country said there would be shootings in the street and violence in homes,” he said. “Of course, that wasn’t the case.”
In fact, according to Stephenson, it caused the crime rate in the city to plunge.
Kennesaw Historical Society president Robert Jones said following the law’s passage, the crime rate dropped 89 percent in the city, compared to the modest 10 percent drop statewide.
“It did drop after it was passed,” he said. “After it initially dropped, it has stayed at the same low level for the past 16 years.”
Not much on these places and their crime rates in regards to gun ownership, but it paints a good picture, you don’t know who does and who doesn’t own a gun, and is a criminal going to take the higher risk? What if you know 100% of homes/individuals are registered gun owners, whether or not you know they have it on them at the time, are you going to take that risk?
<<I can’t buy the argument that guns save lives. If so, explain Japan. They have among the lowest gun ownership rate in the world (6 guns per 1000 people), yet a very low murder and violent crime rate. in the most recent year, according to UNODC, Japan recorded just 442 murders - a rate of .3 murders per 100,000 people.>>
Read Japanese news on asian websites.
Japanese police regularly officially record murders as suicide, when they do not think they can easily convict anyone. This is done to make a very high conviction rate and solved case rate. Actually, many countries do this.
E.g. <<His penis was severed and underneath the bed in the next room. The door to his appartment was open. Some things were taken. He argued with his girlfriend his neighbors said. The knife with which he was stabbed with in the chest was underneath a dresser in the other room, cleaned off. His corpse was in the living room. The police wrote he committed suicide. Resulting in outrage in the media.>>
One more famous example is low rate of mortality at birth in cuba. They don’t count babies until one year has passed.
The most famous example, this time from the 19th century: a law was passed on how to behave in town. It reduced venerial disease among British sailors, because that also went down to 0 that year. Or that was what it looked like. A navy regulation also was put into effect at the same time to remove all sailors found to have venerial disease from the payroll, so they were no longer counted. The law did nothing to reduce incidence of venerial disease.
Were the CT shooteter’s guns stolen? Oops, there goes the leftists’ argument. Better crack down harder on the illegal guns–that’s working out great in Mexico I hear.
“the guns were stolen, so how is leglislation going to keep guns out of the hands of people that steal guns?”
I think at that point, they’ll just resort to advocating a complete ban on private ownership of guns. I mean, I hear that CT has strict gun laws, but the gun control crowd probably sees the fact that the guy’s mother still had all those weapons in the first place as the problem.
To further damage the liberal case, I read today that the shooter first tried to purchase his own rifle but was denied because of a mandatory wait. So he just decides to take someone else’s gun. These silly rules and regulations are meaningless.
If it ever gets to the point where they actually try to confiscate already purchased guns, I do believe we will have full blown secesssion and/or civil war. When Clinton banned ARs in the 90s he did not confiscate anything already purchased. If they ever cross that line all hell breaks loose.
I just read The Onion piece on this, and unfortunately it doesn’t seem satire. How about one describing how “If we could just keep people from obtaining handheld devices that propel metal pellets at high speeds, we could put an end to all violence. Someone who previously was going to hurt people would have no choice but to give up, since without these handheld devices, it would be impossible. All we need to do is make them illegal and we will once and for all put an end to violence.”
There is a reason why you don’t hear of armed gunmen murdering dozens of people at a gun range. If more guns = more crime, then gun ranges should be the #1 place in America for murders to occur.
“In 2004, there were 3,308 unintentional drownings in the United States, an average of nine people per day. 19% of drowning deaths involving children occur in public pools with certified lifeguards present.”
Crap, somebody has to do something about it! Ban public pools NOW!