Summations Only

I expect that his (extremely obvious) position is that illegal things are harder to get but not harder to keep if one already has them, and that it takes time for guns to pass out of the hands of those who already have them.--Percy

That's funny. Gallup is saying that gun ownership is back up to its highest point since 1993, and is nearing its peak from 1960.From here.

So as always you can't answer the question.People speeding down the highway put you at risk. So you should be able to execute them to? Drunk drivers put you at risk. Going to execute them?

Where do they pass to, though? That's what I don't follow. If I sell my gun, that doesn't change the amount of guns in society.I mean, I thought we covered this like 200 messages ago. Nobody had any response so I thought we were in agreement. Even if you make guns impossible to get you still have just as many guns as there were before you did. If you want to actually reduce gun ownership, you have to be taking guns, but gun control proponents are adamant that they don't want to do that.

Voluntary surrender. Expenditure of all ammunition. Breakage. You name it. ...Right.What percentage of Revolutionary War firearms are still around and in firing condition today?Because just saying "many are still around" is just another meaningless anecdote. Not useful data. You can't predict the rate of attrition from it, which means you can't actually tell one way or the other from your simple statement whether guns increase or decrease.

Which would imply that there are less guns now than before 1993. Which would be consistent with an overall decline in the ownership of guns.Look, I'm not making these figures up, they're from Gallup as reported by the Washington Post. Your figures are also from Gallup because we're using the same numbers, but for some reason you think I'm lying? I don't follow that.

The highway is patrolled by highway cops. No cops patrol the inside of my home.Again, you're the one not answering the question - why should a criminal's choice to commit a crime be allowed to place me at risk? Be specific.

That all seems pretty rare; less rare than the rate of people smuggling in guns, manufacturing them by hand in secret, etc? I mean it could be but you're not giving me any reason to believe that it is. It wasn't in Australia, for instance, where gun ownership continued to decline at the same rate it already was. It wasn't in the US, under the Federal Assault Weapons ban, which had no effect at all on gun ownership (or shootings.)Again these are things I'm not prepared to simply accept on your say-so. I'm prepared to look at the evidence but you need to actually present some.

Asking for a percentage would really require that we know exactly how many guns were forged during that time period. However, it took me less than ten seconds to find a list of 68 working guns on one site from the Revolutionary War and Civil War. Revolutionary War, Civil War Antique Guns and FirearmsI am sure that I can find more, but a percentage, that is a ridiculous request without more knowledge.Also, if you are in the market for a Kentucky Long Rifle, this site has about 70 of them. Antique Kentuckey RiflesEdited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : Added second linkEdited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : No reason given.

That's rather the point. Crashfrog has no idea how well firearms survive from the Revolutionary War. He can't, because the data required to calculate such a thing does not exist. Therefore he cannot claim that the existence of some Revolutionary guns demonstrates the "durability" of firearms.He's making claims based on anecdote, not data. He doesn't know, he cannot know, but he's pretending he does.Hell, Revolutionary firearms were far less complicated than modern guns. I don't think the comparison would be valid even if he did have the data.

Well I have no idea about burglary stats, never having looked for them before, but I see that in the USA in 2009, there were an estimated 2,199,125 burglaries according to the FBI
Burglary - Crime in the United States 2009In the UK last year there were 453,000
Crime statistics for England & Wales: what's happening to each offence? | News | theguardian.com [I have excluded attempted burglary from the UK numbers as they also seem to be excluded from the US numbers]The UK population is about 63m, the US population is about 310m. So if we pro-rata by population, based on UK numbers the US burglary rate should be453,000*310/63=2.2mor roughly what it actually is.Maybe we should look at households as they are what are burgled, not people.US household units in 2011 132m
UK households in 2011 26mSo 453,000*132/26= 2.3mor roughly what it actually is.So where do your numbers come from?

You really should learn to not speak with so much hyperbole.
A lot of Americans do not own rifles manufactures just after the Revolutionary war. Some do. Most pieces from that period are in Museums. Actual good quality originals are extremely rare. Anything you see out of a museum is most likely a replica.Anything that old probably cannot be safely fired. Unless it was meticulously cared for there is going to be deterioration of the steel and wood. Before shooting anything that old I would have a very competent gunsmith, that is familiar with their construction, closely examine it.

I never claimed to. That's a ridiculous thing that you asked for, not me.

Yes, you are correct he cannot calculate a percentage. However, I think that finding 138 guns for sale in working condition by checking only two sites does kind of imply that guns are made to be pretty durable. It is by no means conclusive evidence but it could show us that at least 138 guns could be sitting around from our current manufacture in 238 years, and that is only based on two websites.Edited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : No reason given.

What?Here are your words. YOU brought up Revolutionary firearms. Not me.