gun control

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]

How do you answer the statistics that in areas that have strict hand gun laws, such as Great Britian and Australia the violent crime rate has skyrocketed?Where as in places like Switzerland than forces civilians to have assault rifles do not have high murder or violent crime rates?http://www.cato.org/dailys/05-13-00.htmlThomas Sowell: Biography and Latest Articles

I cleary stated in a previous post that murder rates were not on the rise in Australia, violent crime was.As taken from your link...http://www.oesr.qld.gov.au/views/statistics/stats_fs.htm?..."Australian rates of assault have shown significant increases from 1993 to 1999"Now they do go on to say that the trend was for a marked reduction in the use of firearms in all crimes, HOWEVER they also say the trend starts BEFORE the firearm reform and that AFTER the firearm reform the trend AFTER reforms doesn't show much improvement, seemingly indicating that gun reform didn't really have anything to do with it.Here is another story about crime in England and Australia that is from a later date, 2001 it would appear from the link.Object not found!"Twenty-six percent of English citizens -- roughly one-quarter of the population -- have been victimized by violent crime. Australia led the list with more than 30 percent of its population victimized."Here is an article from 2000 as wellPage not found - WND"Since Australia's gun ban, armed robberies increase 45%""Though lawmakers responsible for passing the ban promised a safer country, the nation's crime statistics tell a different story:Countrywide, homicides are up 3.2 percent;Assaults are up 8.6 percent;Amazingly, armed robberies have climbed nearly 45 percent;In the Australian state of Victoria, gun homicides have climbed 300 percent;In the 25 years before the gun bans, crime in Australia had been dropping steadily;There has been a reported "dramatic increase" in home burglaries and assaults on the elderly. "That would seem to be a big increase in crime, maybe not skyrocketing, but a marked difference none the less. If you would care to explain why this is, or get me more stats for Austalia overall that would be great.

wj:FYI anything in quotes in not mine, its quoted from the source listed above the quote, since I am fairly sure many don't goto the link.The entire last portion of my previous post was from this link. If that is a bad source I apologize, like I previously stated I could not find much on Australia other than headlines of Violent Crimes on the rise.However, the link you provided also showed some interesting trends. The gun laws went into effect in 1996/1997, murder rates were dropping as indicated by your link, "The overall trend for violent crimes for both the use of weapons and the use of firearms have shown significant reductions. Further research is needed to determine whether these coincide with the introduction of tighter gun control legislation in 1996. Significant decreases occurred in 1993, 1994 and 1995 prior to the law changes but reductions since 1996 have slowed." So what do the guns laws have to do with it? That was what I was trying to get to.There is something else I am wondering about, what are the crime rates for big population centers as compared to big population centers in the US? That would be a much more telling comparison I would assume.Now even if Australia has in fact had marked decreases in violent crimes along with murder(which I never said were on the rise, in fact said was very low) that does not explain the situation in Great Britian which I also asked about in message 22.I am very willing to be swayed, but just for information purposes: I do not own any handguns, rifles, slingshots or pea-shooters. I am pro gun ownership, AND for very strict gun safety laws(smart locks and the such) but I can see no reason to make it illegal for law abiding citizens to own a handgun or non-assault hunting rifle/shotgun when criminals are not bound to the same laws.Red