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If fewer people own guns, would that not disprove the whole idea of "we have more guns and crime is down, therefore guns reduce crime"? Surely the marginal return of having more than one gun for self-defense has to be pretty bad? If so, the apparent "increase" in gun ownership is not an actual increase in proliferation, which means that it is not what is causing crime to drop, factors such as the one Seaward mentioned above notwithstanding.

The truth of it is that the data on gun ownership in the USA is so flakey that it is pretty difficult to form any sensible conclusions about their effect on crime.

That is why there are so many comparisons to other countries which have proven low or high gun ownership.

Either side of the argument picks the country that seemingly supports their position.

For instance:

The UK has low gun ownership and low gun crime.
Switzerland has high gun ownership and low gun crime.
The UK has low gun ownership and high violent crime.
South Africa has high gun ownership and high violent crime.
The UK has had a rise in violent crime since reducing its guns.
The UK has had a drop in violent crime since reducing its guns.

Obviously there are problems with the definition of "violent" crime which varies between countries, so these comparisons also tend to be difficult to rely on. That is why people tend to return to the murder rate, which is pretty consistently recorded in all developed countries.

 Ouze wrote:
On the plus side, we got a new slogan out of it.

I just made 10 sock puppet accounts so I could exalt this 10 more times.

All of the sock puppet names have "butt" in them, of course...

 Seaward wrote:
A small part of the seeming mystery, though, is the rise of female gun owners. They're making up an increasing percentage of the purchasing demographic, and females new to gun ownership will frequently not increase the "households owning guns" statistic.

Probably they are buying them to defend themselves against their gun toting partners

 sebster wrote:
The point being that you don't want to still be fighting this issue when gun ownership drops to a quarter of households or less. While the gun lobby is in the ascendancy right now, the long view of demographics aren't great so I think it would be wise to get this debate settled in your favour now.

It was settled quite some time ago, I believe that it was codified as the Second Amendment


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 sebster wrote:
Of course there's still guns there - you have open borders across state lines. Any kind of single state gun ban is stupid.

Which is why it is a Federal crime to transport firearms across State lines without the proper authority.

 sebster wrote:
Nah, you showed that the overall trend in declining murder rates continued regardless of gun ownership. Which is to be expected.

I showed an overall trend of homicide decreasing, as firearm ownership increased during the same time period

 sebster wrote:
The images was MP5 and M4, though as I understand it lots of things can be dressed up as M4 while being quite different actions. Was told it was full auto though, that's what I was really after.

There are M4 equivilent rifles made by other manufacturers, but most of them will use the direct impingement system. There are some that use a piston instead as a factory standard (M416) or as an aftermarket kit. The M4 was nice to shoot, sorry you didn't get the chance.

 sebster wrote:
I agree with you there. But the issue with having 100 million gun owners is that 99 million can be responsible people who treat their guns with respect, and that still leaves a million people to get angry and kill a family member or friend, allow their gun to be stolen, leave it somewhere where their kid can take it, or use it in the spur of moment to commit suicide, and sure enough you've bumped up the murder rate by several thousand in a year.

Now note that I'm not saying that means you need to take the guns off the 100 million people, just that it shouldn't be too hard to figure out how gun proliferation leads to more deaths per year.

Come on Sebster, the million people figure is pure fantasy and borderline fear mongering. As shown above numerous times before the notion that a gun owner might get "angry and kill a family member or friend" is very small, so small that gunowners are less likely to kill someone else than a non gun owner. And don't conflate suicide with murder either.
http://www.nssf.org/PDF/research/IIR_InjuryStatistics2013.pdf

Firearm-related fatalities in the U.S.
have been decreasing consistently
since record-keeping began in 1903
and dramatically in the last 20 years.
• During the last decade, the number of
unintentional firearm-related fatalities
involving children 14 years of age and
under has decreased by 28 percent and
by 74 percent over the last 20 years.
• Unintentional firearm-related fatalities
are substantially lower than the
number of unintentional fatalities
caused by other forms of injury.
• Firearms are involved in less than
1.5 percent of unintentional fatalities
among children 14 years of age and
under, and are among the least likely
causes of unintentional fatality.
• In the past 10 years, firearm-related
fatalities in the home have dropped by
33 percent, and by 50 percent in the
last 20 years.
• Firearms are involved in fewer
than 1 percent (0.5 percent) of all
unintentional fatalities in the United
States.
• Hunting is one of the safest activities
in America.
• As firearms safety education programs
have increased, the number of
unintentional firearm-related fatalities
have decreased.
• Over the last decade the rate of
unintentional firearm-related fatalities
has declined by 33 percent (from 0.3
in 1999 to 0.2* in 2009)

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm

All suicides
Number of deaths: 38,364
Deaths per 100,000 population: 12.4
Cause of death rank: 10

Firearm suicides
Number of deaths: 19,392
Deaths per 100,000 population: 6.3

Suffocation suicides
Number of deaths: 9,493
Deaths per 100,000 population: 3.1

Poisoning suicides
Number of deaths: 6,599
Deaths per 100,000 population: 2.1

 sebster wrote:
Okay, sorry if I've missed your point. Perhaps you could clarify your position.

Rather than have me repost the entire conversation, or abridge it so subtleties are missed I would be obliged if you would re-read the conversation and tell me know what parts you believe should be clarified

 sebster wrote:
Absolutely. I'm not saying banning guns would mean no guns, not at all. Just pointing out the argument that guns flow from the South is the opposite of what is happening now.

Any chance of figures/source to substantiate your claim

 sebster wrote:
Sure, I'm not arguing against the second amendment. I'm saying that as a practical reality, you don't ever have to worry about not having guns right now in case you need to fight your government later. When the time comes, getting some guns will be the easy part.

Practically speaking it isn't easier if the government has a registry of who has what firearms, or has placed ridiculous limits on what firearms people may possess (as seen in NY, NJ, IL, CN, and CA)

 sebster wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
The minority of people want stricter gun control. Looks like stripping people of their lawful rights isn't on the cards

An even smaller minority want reduced restrictions on guns, and yet you've had recent expansions to CCW in several states. So it isn't as simple as just scoring an overall majority.

The demographic you might want to look at is the number of households with one or more guns in them - the trend is a long term decline.



The point being that you don't want to still be fighting this issue when gun ownership drops to a quarter of households or less. While the gun lobby is in the ascendancy right now, the long view of demographics aren't great so I think it would be wise to get this debate settled in your favour now.

Three to four round burst people. Its three to fur round burst.

From the target someone held the trigger and was exhaling. With to much of the finger on the trigger pulling it right.

We are not in Afghanistan or Iraq for you to burn a belt up like that

Practically speaking it isn't easier if the government has a registry of who has what firearms, or has placed ridiculous limits on what firearms people may possess (as seen in NY, NJ, IL, CN, and CA)

Government can't stop all the corner stores handing out drugs illegally (Didn't we have a thread of late that they have a hard time enforcing even basic gun controls?). If people were so inclined, even if all guns were banned, people aren't going to struggle to get their hands on them.

EDIT: And the funny thing about government control is that the farther you try to make it reach, the more cracks start appearing in the wall.