Guns in America

[KeithE]

[Ed Pettibone]

Ed: And Keith how would this dated report affect line 4 In your first chart above.

http://www.wnd.com/2006/11/39031/

[KeithE]

[Haruo]

I suggested to Mrs. H that Walmart's decision was probably unconstitutional and certainly unfair, since it restricts the ability of people in towns where Walmart has competed all the other sources of assault weapons out of business. Or words to that effect. She suggested I was full of it.

[Sandy]

I'd question the veracity of anything put out by WND. They are a conservative propaganda internet tabloid, interested only in pandering to extremists. Their figure of 12 deaths per day by illegals is fantasyland crap. On the other hand, take their spin off of it, and their admission that there really isn't any way to prove their assertion because, as they admit, no records are actually kept which designate shooters as "illegal", and you have an interesting dilemma for the extremist right wing rootin' tootin' gun toters. There's a real problem with gun legislation and gun rights if that many illegals can get their hands on weapons in this country so easily.

[Dave Roberts]

[Tim Bonney]

What I wish we could have would be universal gun registration. But I have no idea how you'd go about that given that so many guns area already owned that aren't registered.

[Sandy]

[Tim Bonney]

[John Sneed]

Disarming good guys is not going make bad guys go away.

Whenever something bad happens you never hear the liberals saying "Let's go do bad things to bad guys." They are always "Let's do bad things to good guys." Since they are helpless against crazies, in their impotence and need to do something, they figure making good guys helpless is as good as they can do. That is why they always fail. They are punishing the wrong people.

[John Sneed]

Sandy, gun registration is always, I say again ... always, the prelude to gun confiscation. The only reason the government would want gun owners to register their firearms would be so that they can come take them away someday. Nothing else.

[Tim Bonney]

[Ed Pettibone]

ED: And any one who wants to buy a gun in any city in this country can do so, For less tha $100.00 and less than 24 hours.

Also see this page. By Marianne W. Zawitz
BJS Statistician
How often are guns used in violent crimes?
According to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), almost 43.6 million criminal victimizations occurred in 1993, including 4.4 million violent crimes of rape and sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault. Of the victims of these violent crimes, 1.3 million (29%) stated that they facedn offender with a firearm.* In 1993, the FBI's Crime in the United States
estimated that almost 2 million violent crimes of murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were reported to the police by citizens. About 582,000 of these reported murders, robberies, and aggravated assaults were committed with firearms.

Murderwas the crime that most frequently involved firearms; 70% of the 24,526 murders in 1993 were committed with
firearms. How do we know about the guns used by criminals?
No national collection of data contains detailed information about all of the guns used in crimes. Snapshots of
information about the guns used by criminals are available from official police records concerning the
guns recovered in crimes and reports gathered from victims surveys that interview criminals surveys that interview victims
of crime. From these sources, we know how often guns are involved in crime, how guns are used in crime, what general
categories of firearms are most often used in crime, and, to a limited extent, the specific types of guns most frequently used by criminals. Bureau of Justice Statistics Selected Findings Although most crime is not committed with guns, most gun crime is committed with handguns.

see all 7 pages At http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/GUIC.PDF

And Tim Car registration , not even licensing drivers stops crazies from driving - visit New Jersey. however I do favor Both registration and Driver licensing.

[Tim Bonney]

[Ed Pettibone]

[John Sneed]

The problem is that only law abiding citizens obey the law. Criminals are criminals because they don't care what the law is. So when you pass laws restricting or forbidding gun ownership, the only people you are attacking are law abiding citizens. And as I said in my first post on this thread, disarming the good guys only assists the bad guys. Once again, all the things you are discussing are only applicable to good guys.

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

[ET]

[ET]

As an example of some of the contextual problems in this debate, I refer you to Keith's "data" about the decrease in Australian "gun" deaths after their confiscation of guns in 1996. In these discussions, ALWAYS note the context of these "arguments". RARELY will the folks making the "gun" violence argument put any decrease in "gun" violence in the context of the overall rate of violent crime, as any serious analysis of violent crime should.

Note the trend in homicides in Australia from Keith's graph. He makes the claim, that after Australia's gun confiscation, "gun" violence was reduced. But what of general trends in violent crime?

From the :

For 6 years before Australia's gun confiscation the homicide numbers were trending down (just like the U.S.'s starting in 1993, which has decreased over 50%). The trend continued at a downward rate without any significant impact due to the lack of "gun" violence. People still ended up dead, just not from "gun" violence. But, I'm sure, the families of those that get killed find some consolation that Australia doesn't have a lot of "gun" violence.

I also note that another chart in the link above shows that homicides actually stayed pretty level for 6 years AFTER the gun confiscation (1996-2002), but then started to trend down in 2003. Really no change in manslaughter deaths in the time period.

[Tim Bonney]

Bottom line is that I've come to the conclusion that the US isn't going to do anything about the high number of gun deaths because we care more about owning a gun than having a society with far less violence. That saddens me. But at the rate we are going we'll be like Mexico one of these days. We aren't far behind now.

[KeithE]

[Dave Roberts]

[Sandy]

[Ed Pettibone]