Summations Only

That's absurdly untrue. You can (and many do) manufacture a firearm and ammunition in a basement, with simple hand tools; while some drugs grow out of the grown with minimal processing, most drugs require advanced chemical processing before they're ready for distribution. Many drug labs rival professional pharmaceutical factories in scale and sophistication. They don't and never have; that's why firearms technology was invented in the 1600's and crack wasn't invented until 1980. Just as reducing the legal availability of drugs made it more difficult to acquire drugs. But was society improved as a result? Did people use less drugs, or did they try harder to get drugs? In fact, everybody suggesting tighter gun controls has suggested using exactly that, using policies and enforcement mechanisms exactly like those for drugs. We already have them. I haven't heard you or anyone else advocate that we should end zero-tolerance policies for guns; if you oppose them, this is the first I'm hearing of it. And I guess I'd like you to clarify your new anti-zero-tolerance position. For instance, how many guns should someone be able to carry into a school? I do know that, but the guns in Mexico are in Mexico. That's what it means to be in Mexico.

Who cares about those? The point was that it was easy to find examples of what you said wasn't happening. Geez, I'm sure it's the case that not 100% of your courts are insane, just as not 100% of Americans are rootin'-tootin' pistoleros. I believe that criminals should bear the physical risks of their crime, not their victims. Your notion that there's a societal interest in protecting the lives of burglars as they menace the occupants of the homes they invade is absolutely insane. Why should a burglar be allowed to put my life at risk as a result of his crime? It's absurd. Insane.

Yes, insanely. But yes I absolutely agree that this is true.And because this is true - and try to pay attention, this is the important part - home invasion burglars know that, in the UK, they're safer when they invade a home with the occupants present than they are in other countries.That's why, in your country, the rate of home invasion burglaries where the occupants are present is four times higher.

I don't recognize this text from my post, but you attribute it to me. Can you show me where I made this remark? No, in fact Australia's gun ban had almost no effect on the rate of gun deaths:Like other countries, Australia succeeded in preserving a low rate of firearms ownership and homicide, but the bans did nothing. Gun deaths in Australia were already on the decline, and they didn't decline any faster as a result of their guns ban. Of course it should be immediate, if your position is that illegal things are harder to get.

Why should their criminality be allowed to put me at risk?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...otings-in-the-united-states

quote:

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7. Gun ownership in the United States is declining overall.
For all the attention given to America’s culture of guns, ownership of firearms is at or near all-time lows, writes political scientist Patrick Egan. The decline is most evident on the General Social Survey, though it also shows up on polling from Gallup, as you can see on this graph:

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Edited by Admin, : Reduce image width. My Christmas wish: Crash starts using the [thumb] dBCode.

Because what, they evaporate? Even if you made guns literally impossible to make, you'd still have just as many guns as you would year after year, minus the ones that, I don't know, fell down between the couch cushions or something.Guns are a durable good. Emphasis on the durable, a lot of Americans own rifles manufactured just after the Revolutionary War. They can still be fired even to this day.

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.

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.

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

You seem to be engaged in a massive exercise in point-missing. You do understand that we're comparing the rate at which homes are burglarized while the occupants are present?I mean, I've been adamantly clear about that throughout, but you insist on lumping burglaries while the occupants are away with burglaries where the occupants are present, even though the occupants of a home are in no danger at all when the burglary happens while they're gone, while the occupants are in incredible danger when the burglary happens while they're present.Like I've said, this is part of the insane "new normal" of the UK; nobody thinks it matters if burglars invade your home with you inside. It's just a theft! They'll soon be on their way, nothing to worry about, here, let me help you carry off my TV and would you like the remote to go with it, as well?Absolutely insane. Go back and look. I've presented sources for my stats, already. You can't just ignore what I've presented and then use your ignorance as a basis to say that I didn't.

What what? I never claimed that I knew what percentage of Revolutionary arms survive to this day. Where on Earth would I have claimed I knew something unknowable?

But it wasn't. Conditions in Australia improved at exactly the same rate they were already improving. Homicides increased in the years that followed the gun ban. Crime rates in Australia continue to be almost twice as high as they are in the US.I mean, sure, Australia ended mass shooting incidents (so far.) But those are rare anyway. It's like being concerned about the rate of people struck by meteors - being so concerned about it, in fact, that the diversion of resources allows an additional 10,000 people to die from drunk driving. Good job on the meteors, I guess, but how on Earth was that worth it?