Summations Only

So then, we can be sure that adding guns doesn't necessarily cause an increase in violent crime nor gun injuries or deaths, as evidenced by Kennesaw. I'm having trouble finding anything reliable, but there's stuff like this:

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Prior to enactment of the law, Kennesaw had a population of just 5,242 but a crime rate significantly higher (4,332 per 100,000) than the national average (3,899 per 100,000). The latest statistics available — for the year 2005 — show the rate at 2,027 per 100,000. Meanwhile, the population has skyrocketed to 28,189.
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Yeah, I know when the data doesn't make guns look bad then we have to deny it, but when the data does make guns look bad, then it is unquestionably the whole truth. Not all violent crimes are committed with a gun. And with an increase in gun prevalence, it is more dangerous for the criminals to be committing violent crimes. Unless the claim is that only one thing can happen, then you only need to find one instance of something else happening to prove the claim wrong.

The weight and velocity. Bullets can be made out of different materials and have different shapes, so a larger caliber doesn't necessarily mean a higher weight, but otherwise yes. For sure, I thought we were just talking about regular ol' bullets. Yes, this has been one of my complaints all along: that the people who are writing gun control legislation don't know enough about guns to write effective laws. They're so dumb that they enacted a law that is based on the aesthetics of the gun. That's just retarded. They are too incompetent for this. I don't care if a State regulates ammunition, but I'd never be for a Federal regulation like that.Still though, caliber just isn't the right metric. Take the .17 HMR, it's on the left compared to a .22 Long: It has a smaller caliber than the 22 but it is way more deadly because it has twice the velocity.For me personally, I wouldn't like a caliber limit that was less than .40. If someone is charging you then you want stopping power.I think for what you want, you'd be better off limiting the grains and velocity of the bullet instead of the caliber.Edited by Cat Sci, : No reason given.Edited by Cat Sci, : No reason given.

No. First, you don't have evidence for Kennesaw for the period before and after 1982. Second, a sample of one is statistically meaningless. Just as the responses of individuals in a drug trial vary, so will the effect of adding guns to a community. Statistically in the aggregate, adding guns to a community causes more gun injury and death and an increase in gun crimes, but individual communities will likely vary around the mean in a bell shaped curve. You need data from the period before and after 1982 when the law was enacted, and you need to know if gun prevalence actually increased. The data provided for 2005 is 33 years after the fact. The rapid 5X population increase is also a significant factor that probably cannot be corrected for. Did the demographics of the people moving in match the demographics of Kennesaw in 1982. Not likely. The rapid population increase probably represents relatively affluent white flight that, looking in Wikipedia, seems to have really taken off in the 1990's.Also, this Snopes webpage calls your the facts from your WND source ("The Largest Christian Website In The World") into question: What Kenne-Saw. Some excerpts:

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While Kennesaw, Georgia, passed a law making gun ownership compulsory in 1982, the law was never enforced and didn't cause crime rates to plummet.
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In other words, Kennesaw residents were required to own guns ... save for those Kennesaw residents who couldn't afford guns, couldn't use guns, couldn't legally own guns, or simply didn't want to have guns.
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An important point of distinction was that Kennesaw's law was largely symbolic and was never intended to be enforced.
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Added Lt. Graydon, "It was not meant to be an enforceable law. The police department has never searched homes to make sure you had a gun. It was meant more or less as a political statement to support citizens' second amendment rights to own firearms."
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Mayor Stephenson conceded he had no idea how many residents newly became gun owners because of the law.

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One other thing to note in the Snopes piece is where it calls attention to how the passage of time had Kennesaw town officials exaggerating their claims of how much the law had reduced crime (which was never its intention anyway). According to Mayor Stephenson speaking in 1987 there had been 55 household burglaries in 1981 the year before the law. But this is much larger than the figures claimed just five years before in 1982, and they don't even make sense. Kennesaw had a population of only 5000 in 1980, which is around 1700 households. That means more than 3% of households experienced burglaries in 1981, kind of hard to believe for what was then a very sleepy suburb. The Kennesaw story is likely just another urban myth.But more importantly, the experience of a single town has no broad implications. Let's say you corrected the inaccuracies and discovered reliable data from the 1980's showing the crime in Kennesaw dropped dramatically after the gun law was enacted. That would be extremely interesting and something worth understanding (if possible after the passage of so much time), but it would statistically meaningless. When the data is statistically meaningful then it is worth understanding and acting on. This is another myth. There is no evidence that an armed populace reduces crime, and much evidence that it increases gun injury and death. You need much more than "one instance" of anything in order to make statistically valid arguments. The simplest statistic, an average, isn't invalidated by finding "one instance" of data that doesn't match the average, and the same is true of statistics in general.--Percy

How about regulating ammunition lethality?--Percy

I would debate that a .17 is way more deadly than a .22. On larger animals the high speed makes it less deadly than a .22. A slow moving .22 would penetrate more and leave more energy deposited inside of the body, rather than the .17 which would expend most of its energy on initial impact leaving less energy deposited in the target. That it is why it is effective on smaller animals and why very small animals, like rabbits almost explode. It is not an effective hunting round for that reason, unless you consider varmint shooting, hunting.That is one of the reasons in a wooded area or when hunting larger game a slow heavier bullet is more effective than a faster, smaller. I have two rifles for deer hunting one is a .30-30 which I use when I am in the woods and a 7mm-08 for when I am in my stand and have an open shot. In the woods I need a slower heavier round that will not be deflected or lose energy if it hits anything on the way to the deer. I have seen situations where the 7mm-08 round exploded when it hit a twig just in front of the deer. Luckily there was enough energy left in a couple of the shards to take out the arteries near the heart.
The plus of the 7mm-08 is that at distances over 100 yards it is more accurate. Also at longer distances the .30-30 just does not retain much energy.A lot of your info on calibers is correct, but this was pretty egregiously incorrect. Cuz we all know thats gonna happen. You really should stop living in the movie world.
If I hear the NRA mantra about stopping power one more time, I might lose it.

Well I was talking about people and you're talking about big game...Would you rather be shot with a 22 or a 17 HMR?I'd take the 22. After I knocked over the gang member that had just jumped my cousin, he pointed at me and said: "You're next".I'm not going to assume that he didn't mean it.

How? Some sort of lethality index or something?

17 hmr, because when it hits my clothes it is going to disintegrate. The 22 will penetrate clothing and then expand as it enters the body, leaving a much larger energy deposit.Deer and people are roughly same size.You are wrong about lethality of .17 hmr and humans.

The first thing the Army taught me when shooting was aim for center mass.Regardless of caliber if you miss your target you will not kill it.Pistols are the most ineffective guns to use to kill folks.
That's why there are long guns.
Its all about the physics. More ft/lbs =more lethal.Add more weight and more velocity and you get even more ft/lbs.I think the high capacity assault guns are bad to have available to the general public.They allow the perp to have large volumes of ammunition they can carry, very high capacity to keep from having to reload and the destructiveness of a rifle round that will inflict devastating wounds on humans. Easy to fire and maintain high cyclic fire.Which is why the Military has adopted them.

Sure.--Percy

Well, if you are intoxicated and carrying a gun, most states can charge you with Unlawful Carry of a Weapon. Your concealed permit is nullified if you are intoxicated. I've seen even off-duty cops charged with this crime. There are places where the gun becomes a greater liability. One place that comes to mind is in a correctional setting, as counter-intuitive as they may seem at first. In a correctional setting you are surrounded by people who want that weapon and they could easily ambush you and overpower you for it. Then it creates a hostage situation. But even though you are surrounded by indicted or sentenced criminals, unlike with the general public there is no reasonable expectation that they should ever be armed since they are searched every single time they go outside of their unit.Certain public areas are so public (meaning large crowds) that the possibility of a stray bullet striking an innocent bystander is so great that the gun may be a liability as much as it is a defense. You are responsible for where that round goes, even if you lawfully discharged it. Your intent doesn't trump the result (manslaughter). Even police are expected to instantaneously determine whether to fire at someone if there background is not clear. I don't disagree with any of that. It is a lot of responsibility and there are a ton of people who don't belong either behind the wheel of a car or entrusted with a weapon. But my argument is that the solution isn't to prevent everyone from either driving or carrying a weapon just because a minority of people are complete retards. There are standards one must pass to show competency. And I am in favor of making them fairly strict, but within reason. Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given.

This time it was 3 killed and 14 injured in Hesston, Kansas. The weapon was an "assault type long gun."The suspect is known to local law enforcement and was recently charged with assault. Maybe there could be a point system for keeping your guns, just as there is for keeping your driver's license.--Percy

In this case of this psycho, it's an automatic lifetime ban. But what might some examples of infractions or crimes that potentially could make points go down? A single felony revokes you for life, which for violent felonies I agree with, but not for all felonies.

The details could be argued endlessly. Reaching agreement on how to regulate the presence of guns in a household is conditional upon certain things. Here are some examples just for a discussion starting point:

• You're a manic depressive on lithium, you own guns, no problem. You go off your meds and there's an incident. The police remove the guns from the house.
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• You're the father of a normal family, you own several guns, no problem. You and your wife have a fight, the police are called. The police remove the guns from the house.
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• You own several guns, no problem. You have a party where a fight breaks out and the police are called. The police remove the guns from the house.
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• You own several guns, no problem. You assault someone at work. The police remove the guns from the house.

Is the "one incident" threshold too low? Should it be two incidents? Three? Since some types of incidents are more serious than others, how should that factor in? Lots of things to discuss.But the important thing is reaching agreement with the gun people that some people shouldn't have guns. Some people shouldn't ever have guns, and some people go through periods when they shouldn't have guns.Once that is agreed upon then it is axiomatic that there must be due process in place by which people can acquire guns and by which guns can be taken away. This means background checks for *every* gun acquisition, including gun shows, personal sales, and even gifted or bequeathed guns. Naturally this would require universal gun registration.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Fix garbled second sentence.Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

I agree with all of them, except this one. Unless the weapon was used or brandished in the commission of a crime, and that you were one of the assailants involved, then I don't see how you are at fault if other people got in to a fight at your house.One of the other issues that may arise is privacy concerns. To search anything in a home would require a search warrant which also means that in order to obtain the warrant, you have to specify the places to be searched. A gun could potentially be anywhere. Based on the severity of the offense, as I said before, any felony conviction would prohibit you from owning a firearm for life. So perhaps in instances of maybe 2 or 3 misdemeanors that demonstrate a pattern of instability may be reason enough to revoke the right. In any case, these are productive and reasonable. I am in favor of this. You have to register a vehicle, so why not a firearm? It actually makes law enforcement's job a lot easier and effective.