gun control

oops... sorry bud.------------------
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Simple hypothesis: the greater availability of firearms in a community increases the rate of firearms homicides.

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While I would agree with the above (bloody obvious covers it
for me) I don't think tighter gun control will have much impact.In the UK gun crime is on the increase (and quite rapidly
so), and yet the controls in the UK are much stricter than
Australia (I think). The only waepons that can be legally owned
in the UK are smooth-bore firearms such as shot-guns, but most
gun crime is committed with unlicensed, side arms and sub-machine pistols.Availability is clearly increasing, but not because of a relaxation
of gun controls ... quite the reverse, the UK tightened its gun
laws a few years ago in response to a shooting incident in a school
(which was perpetrated using unlicensed weapons anyhow).I don't think there is any simple answer to the question, it's the
underlying social problems and criminal 'gangs' that need to
be addressed I feel.That said, I am sure that if a hot-tempered individual had
a .38 in their bedside drawer they might grab it in a temper
and would be more likely to inflict a mortal wound with that than,
say, a punch or a thrown plate. Even in that situation, the
act of going for the gun, releasing the safety, etc. gives
a certain amount of cooling period for a lot of people ...
and by all accounts (I have friends in both the military and
armed response units) it's not that easy to pull the trigger
when you come right down to it.

Schraf,What do you expect from a cowboy culture? Are you going to try and ban spears in Africa next?Guns are made solely for killing. Homicide is a crime, ownership is not and shouldn't be. So let's say you and the rest of the anti-gun simpletons succeed in banning firearms and the following situation occurs:A knife wielding meth head breaks into my house in the middle of the night. I get up out of bed to investigate a noise downstairs. The knife wielding meth head and I engage in hand to hand combat. I put up a struggle but he is able to over power me pretty quick. I get gutted and left to rot. The burglar goes upstairs and stabs my five year old to death in his sleep. He proceeds to my wife's bedroom where he rapes her at knife point for 5 hours and finally slits her throat.Just another knife statistic I suppose.Why don't you move to the UK and stop trying to destroy core American values.I'm willing to bet you are anti-gun and pro-choice.*edited for spelling*[This message has been edited by jdean33442, 02-27-2003]

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Perhaps I need to expand a little on my message #3 in which I cited the comparative homicide statistics for US and Australia so as to point out the bloody obvious.
Americans and Australians have close cultural affinities. They have comparable social and economic systems. They show similar rates of homicide using weapons such as knives, blunt instruments, by hand etc. However the glaring anomoly is that the rate of homicide by firearms in the US is 10 times that in Australia.

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The US population is 90+ million greater than Australia's. Similar if you exclude math from the equation I guess. What is the homicide by boomerang or poisoned tip blow dart statistics there?

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Not so co-incidentally, gun controls are much tighter in Australia than the US. Ownership of military type weapons is banned. Owners and users of handguns and firearms are required to go through a licensing process. There is a cooling off period for any purchase of a firearm. Firearm owners are required to store their firearms in approved containers.

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I woulnd't want firearms readily available to a population of ex-convicts either.

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Firearms are the preferred weapon by military forces for arming their ground troops? Could this be because they offer the greatest effectiveness with the least risk to the user? Surely this make them also the most effective means of committing homicide.

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Of course they are the weapon of choice. Guns are produced solely for killing. Not a hard concept. Not an evil one either.

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I don't know if it is too late for America but it should at least recognise methods whcih operate elsewhere which have prevented those countries from following the American trend.

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Too late? The firearm gave birth to American society as we know it. Americans should not forsake their heritage but instead embrace the right to bear arms.Here is another bloody obvious tip: Don't pull facts out of your ass if you're going to write an arrogant post.

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I woulnd't want firearms readily available to a population of ex-convicts either.

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So the US shoul ban firearms in the state of Georgia, since it started as a penal colony too. Makes perfect sense.......

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So the US shoul ban firearms in the state of Georgia, since it started as a penal colony too. Makes perfect sense

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The Georgian accent is enough excuse to ban firearms there.

Somehow jdean's last comment from his message #19 seemed so fitting, and filled with pathos.

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The US population is 90+ million greater than Australia's. Similar if you exclude math from the equation I guess.

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Australia's population is about 20,000,000, US population is 290,000,000. Mathematics isn't your strong point, is it jdean. Of course the relevent fact is that I was referring to homicide RATES, not total numbers. Rates such as 3 firearm homicides per 1,000,000 population for Australia and 41 per 1,000,000 population for the US.

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What is the homicide by boomerang or poisoned tip blow dart statistics there?

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Not surprisingly they don't warrant separate catagories. However if one should occur I'm sure it would get national headlines due to its novelty. Similarly I don't believe the FBI keeps separate statistics for bow and arrow or cutlass homicides either.

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I woulnd't want firearms readily available to a population of ex-convicts either.

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Yes, Australia is a nation of immigrants founded by the British, retaining a small population of indiginous inhabitants, with a significant multicultural component. Vastly different to the US. IIRC, the impetus to establish a penal colony in Australia was that convicts could no longer be sent to the Americal colonies after their rebellion.Would the characterisation of Americans as being build by slaves and slaveowners be a suitable one?Nevertheless jdean seems to ignore the concept of restricting firearm ownership to responsible persons and ensuring that they are secured.

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Of course they are the weapon of choice. Guns are produced solely for killing. Not a hard concept. Not an evil one either.

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Obviously not evil if one take's one's moral stance from the genocide incidents in the old testament.

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Too late? The firearm gave birth to American society as we know it. Americans should not forsake their heritage but instead embrace the right to bear arms.

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It seems a pity that American society cannot grow out of its toys. Heritage is something to be acknowleded, not blindly followed. And I think there is some debate in the US on the "right" to bear arms.

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Here is another bloody obvious tip: Don't pull facts out of your ass if you're going to write an arrogant post.

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Couldn't have said it better myself, although I would use "arse".

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I honestly don't think that guns are the cause of the violence, obviously a tool of the violent, but not the cause.

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I don't think that either.I do think that our love afair with guns is an integral part of our violent society.Guns are the very symbol of power with their potential for violence. That's why people like them.

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We do not solve the problem of violent behaviour by removing guns.

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However, we make it a lot harder to actually DO a lot of violence if so very many guns are not around.It's a lot easier to do violence to yourself or to others with a gun.

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I have a feeling that drugs/alchohol play the largest part in violent crime today.

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Also depression. More people take their own lives with guns than are murdered with them.Also domestic violence. There are plenty of perfectly sober husbands/boyfriends who murder their wives/girlfiends.

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So far I have not found the stats to support it, (i think stats are a flawed form of evidence anyway).

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Considering statistical analysis is what all of science is based upon, you would have to discount all of science if you discount all stats. The stats just have to be good ones.

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In order to solve the problem of violent crime, we have to look at the causes. People were murdering each other long before the gun became the weapon of choice.

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...and it was much more difficult to do so without lots of guns around.

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If we can study the motives in violent crime, and find what drives people to committ these offences, we can make the social/economic changes necessary to drastically drop the violent crime rate.

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In the mean time, everyone should have easy access to guns, so the death rate remains high and the answer to people's anger and frustration can always be to get a gun?If you have a depressed child in your house, do you keep a loaded gun in the house, or do you get the gun out of the house until the depression is cured?

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Gun control will only hinder honest people from owning weapons, I do not see how it will stop criminals from getting their hands on guns.

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If we stop producing cheap handguns and armor-piercing sniper rifles, and eliminate the loophole of not requiring background checks when a priovate seller sells a gun, things would get much better.Right now anybody can go a few miles down the road here to a big trade center, which is a lot like a giant flea market, and buy any kind of gun or kife they want, no questions asked, because the sellers are not dealers, but private citizens.

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Maybe we should work on minimizing poverty as well as drug and alchohol addiction.

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Then there is always mans great flaw GREED and jelousy.

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I will never register any weapons, I will not comply to any laws to do with the control of firearms.

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Then you are part of the problem of gun death.

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Gun control does not solve anything, the problems run much deeper than the fact that people own guns.

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I don't want to stop people from owning legitimate sport firearms.I ask again;If you had a person in your house who was obviously violent or depressed, would you keep a loaded gun in a place where they could get it easily?Yes or no?[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 02-28-2003]

I am curious if there are any statistics on the murders commited with registered and licsened guns as opposed to illegally bought guns. I would be willing to bet that many more crimes are committed with guns that are illegally obtained rather than with those that are registered.Which brings up an interesting question, would banning all guns really affect handgun murders? In NYC it is near impossible to get a handgun or rifle permit yet criminals can get them quite easily, it has been this way for as long as I can remember and only once the police presence was increased did crime fall to all time lows.So is the problem hand guns? Or people? And at what point do we allow the rights of the sane, capible, responsible citizens get trampled by the need to protect those irresponsible enough to hurt themselves or others, while criminals who are not concerned with obtaining handguns leagally will still be free to use them to commit crimes, unimpeeded by the thought that perhaps the innocent victim might have a gun to protect themselves.And Schraf you seem to think that the problem is from people getting guns from a legitimate source... The Department of Justice says otherwise:http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/guns.htmAnd as to those that were taken from a family member or relative, the problem is not the gun, its the relative or family member who is a moron and SHOULD be held 100% accountable for being such a tard.In addition firearms were used in only 8% of all violent crimes.The FBI estimates that of the 15517 murders in the US commited in 2000 that 66% were done with a firearm, or 10k or so.Here is a quote from : http://teapot.usask.ca/...rch/Observations/chapters/2/4.html that is interesting"While the firearm and non-firearm robbery rates in both Canada and the United States declined during the 1980's, in Great Britain the firearm/non-firearm robbery rates grew by over 100% and increased steadily after extremely restrictive firearm control laws had substantially decreased the legal ownership of firearms [59]. While the number of legal firearm owners in Great Britain has been declining due to a hostile gun control bureaucracy, crimes involving firearms increased 196% between 1981-1992 [60].Great Britain's harsh firearm regulations have been ineffective at controlling increasing levels of gun-related crime. As in Canada, the persons who abide by the laws and regulations concerning the acquisition and ownership of firearms are the least likely to commit any crimes with them."Here is another article worth reading:
http://www.essays.cc/free_essays/d5/arn249.shtmlunfortunatly I can't find much about australia other than the fact that while the murder rate is much lower than the US, the violent crime rate is much higher than the US. In fact Great Britain and Australia top the charts.Article Here: Object not found![This message has been edited by RedVento, 02-28-2003]

"Why don't you move to the UK and stop trying to destroy core American values"Yeah!Those core values being that we have a right to shoot people for taking our parking spots!We have a right to want to engage in shoot-outs in the street!We have a right to be able to brandish firearms when we argue with out neighbors!And, most importantly, we have the right of the weak and ineffectual to inflict their will upon others!THAT is the American way!

WJ already hit on this, but I cannot resist:"The US population is 90+ million greater than Australia's. Similar if you exclude math from the equation I guess. What is the homicide by boomerang or poisoned tip blow dart statistics there?"Conservatives seem to have a VERY hard time either understanding math or using it in anhonest way.I have heard right wingers form Rush to George Will conflate rates with absolute numbers (Will being a Harvard grad, well....).A typical misuse of numbers is something like this:Conservative: There is a clear connection between prayer in school and the amount of crime committed in this country - Look! Back before the Supreme Court banned it in 1962, there were only X-number of murders in the country. Today, there are largerX-number! Clearly, this higher amount of murder is because our chidrin can't pray in school!Rational person: Well, for one thing, the Court did not ban prayer in school in 1962. It banned administration-led prayer, because it amoiunts to coercion. As of 1962, many individual states had already banned such activities, starting with Minnesota in 1910. Does Minnesota demontrate the largest crime rate in the country? No.
But back to the math.
Yes, there are more murders today than in 1961. But there are lots more people, too. Indeed - when we look at the murder RATE, we see that it is about the same.Conservative: No, wait, I mean. Libral! Can't you see - the guy is a Liberal! Don't listen to him! The Court made it illega;l to bew a Christian in public gubment schools! Its the truth! Rush said so!
And it is also true that there are more murders today, so it is also true about the connection between prayer and violence! Even Cal Thomas agrees with this! You cannot deny it!Rational person:
Okaayyyy...
Lets look at this again:
You said there were X-number of murders pre-1962.
Today there are largerX-number.
You say that this is the result of prayer being removed form the schools.
But the entire population grew by Y-amount since then, so the largerX-number of murders today is proportional to the X-number of murders seen pre-1962.
You see?
Let me put it another way -
If there are 100 people, and 10 of them have red hair, then 10% of them have red hair.If we have 100,000 people, and 10% of them have red hair, then how many have red hair?Conservative:
Huh?Rational person:
What is 10% of 100,000?*tick tock.... tick tock...Oh my - well it is 10,000.Conservative:
So there are more red heads. Just like I said.Rational person:
More total, yes, but they occur at the same RATE.
It is still 10%, but we have a larger population, so there is a
larger number...
But still the same rate....Conservative:
Oh, I see....Two weeks laterSame conservative:
There is adirect connection between the banning of prayer in 1962 and the amount of murder in this country......

Would population density make a like-for-like comparison
of murder rates invalid/skewed?I've always wondered this ... if the population density is
high, then there is more opportunity for large numbers
of people to interact, and presents greater opportunity
for any kind of interaction (including murder).Meaning that 1 in 1000 in a low population density is
(in some respects) more significant than the same rate
in a high population density.I'm not suggesting that there is a significant difference
in pop. density between Australia and the US, you understand,
but just wondered if anyone had thoughts on the effect of
pop. density on bald rate data.

Interesting - I had not considered pop. density before.Intuitively, I would think that, yes, a greater pop. density would have an effect.I believe that in the US, the pop. of cities is growing while the pop. of rural areas is decreasing or remaining steady.
But your point is well taken - we are more 'shocked' when someone is murdered in Podunk, Nebraska then we are when somoone is killed in NYC.I would think, however, that London would have a similar pop. density as NYC.

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Australia's population is about 20,000,000, US population is 290,000,000. Mathematics isn't your strong point, is it jdean. Of course the relevent fact is that I was referring to homicide RATES, not total numbers. Rates such as 3 firearm homicides per 1,000,000 population for Australia and 41 per 1,000,000 population for the US.

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It was late and I obviously wasn't paying attention to detail. I am with fault and without apology, however, the math holds true. Hence the plus sign. Where did you get this information? I will have to assume a passing kangeroo handed you a flyer with these statistics until otherwise proven wrong.

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Would the characterisation of Americans as being build by slaves and slaveowners be a suitable one?

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Absolutely.

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It seems a pity that American society cannot grow out of its toys. Heritage is something to be acknowleded, not blindly followed. And I think there is some debate in the US on the "right" to bear arms.

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No the realy pity is Americans allowing non-citizens, such as yourself, dictate our laws. Perhaps the US should change it's name to New Europe and adopt all of your silly socialist values.

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Those core values being that we have a right to shoot people for taking our parking spots!

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We have a right to want to engage in shoot-outs in the street!

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We have a right to be able to brandish firearms when we argue with out neighbors!

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And, most importantly, we have the right of the weak and ineffectual to inflict their will upon others!

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THAT is the American way!

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A right to bear arms and the decision to use those arms in an illegal manner is unrelated. I would hope an educated person such as yourself would be able to differentiate between right and choice.[This message has been edited by jdean33442, 03-03-2003]