Summations Only

1) You're taking a generalized crime statistic and arguing based on one specific type of crime.
2) A home invasion is scary, but again, I'd rather lose my TV than my life. I place a greater value on human lives than on basically anything else - therefore, I'd immediately accept a higher "crime" rate if the murder rate was cut by 75%. We are arguing based on data, not on anecdote. You can't win an argument about gun violence and crime simply by saying "But HOME INVASION! SCARY!" any more than I can win that same argument by saying "But think of the children!" The simple fact is that every source shows that gun bans are closely correlated with a massive decrease in gun violence and murder. I find that statistic to be highly compelling.
3) Your statistics seem to be different from those posted by others. Why should I trust your source over others?Oh...and it's not "my island." I live in California. Not according to other sources...but even if it were, would you rather have triple the violent crime, or quadruple the murder rate? Because that's the choice you're making even given your statistics.I'll repeat that: choose between triple the violent crime, or quadruple the murder rate. And I cannot comprehend yours. A home is a place, nothing more. Whether I meet a violent criminal in my home or at work or on the street or at the bank means very little to me - either way I might be staring down the barrel of a gun.I'd much rather the violent criminal simply not have a gun. Violent criminals with guns are, after all, more likely to kill me than a violent criminal without a gun.

It's like you don't even read or something.1) CT is a small state. A person can acquire firearms very easily by crossing state lines. State laws mean little with unrestricted movement between states.2) You're STILL confusing "reduction" with "prevention."Gun control laws are not and never have been imagined to eliminate gun violence, only to reduce it. A single anecdote, crash, can not ever demonstrate a trend, and therefore can never show an increase or a reduction.That's why we debate using data. Not anecdote. And it's why you've been wrong in this entire thread.

I said that state laws mean little when crossing state lines is trivial.Most school shootings involve legally purchased firearms. Reducing the legal availability of firearms will reduce gun violence. This is borne out by actual data, as opposed to anecdote. No, he's not. He's saying that fewer guns correlates to fewer incidences of gun-related violence. Mass shootings are a subset of that. Which means you're simply using the fallacious reasoning that anecdotes constitute more heavily weighted evidence than multi-year trends of statistics.It's really as simple as that, crash. Statistics are more useful in decision-making than anecdotes, which are virtually useless. "Recent events" do nothing except contribute a few extra data points...and give us an emotionally charged reason to have the discussion in the first place.The statistics show us incontrovertible evidence that banning personal ownership of firearms closely correlates with a more-than-significant drop in gun related crime and murder.Once again: choose between tripling the violent crime rate or quadrupling the murder rate. I'm being generous here and accepting your statistics - surely you can at least answer the question.

All nothing more than red herrings. Either you're simply missing the point, or you're deliberately avoiding the fact that talking about state laws is meaningless because state lines can be crossed with trivial ease. I am not and never have been talking about mass shootings. I have been talking about gun related violence, of which mass shootings are merely a subset. I've said this before.I've said this multiple times: perhaps you should consider debating stances that your opponents have actually stated, instead of the straw men you make up in your head.

And the murder rate in the US is actually four times that of the UK.So even if you're three times more likely to be robbed or assaulted...you're four times more likely to live.Why is it that you continue to ignore the murder rate statistic, crash? All this ad hominem about how Panda is "irrationally ignoring evidence out of nationalistic fervor," and you're ignoring the more important statistic.Unless you'd rather be murdered than robbed.Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.

Evidence?It's already been shown, repeatedly, that gun bans are strongly correlated with a dramatically lower murder rate when comparing nations. You'll need to provide strong evidence to support the claim that this correlation should be disregarded. I'm afraid your bare assertion is insufficient. And of course that's a lie. Nothing but hyperbole. Home invasion is still a crime, and Brits can still defend their homes...they just can't do it with a firearm. You can still use a taser, or a stun gun, or a baseball bat, or pepper spray, etc. You can still call the police. If caught, the invader still goes to jail. It's not "open season" for criminals in Britain. Evidence for this survival statistic? Again, your own bare assertion is unconvincing. It might help your argument if you'd stop this nonsensical translation of all "crime" to "home invasion." You make it sound like British criminals are exclusively invading people's homes, and that they're doing so without consequence, and you and I and everyone else all know that that's absolutely not true.You do also realize, crash, that gun ownership does not and has never worked as a deterrent to prevent home invasion, right? A criminal has no way of knowing whether a given home contains a gun owner or not; most home invaders try to commit their crimes while the victims are away, so as to avoid the police or any form of confrontation. For the remainder...the possibility of a homeowner with a gun being present simply escalates the threat.

It is orders of magnitude easier to produce drugs than it is to manufacture firearms and ammunition. Many drugs just grow out of the ground, no effort needed. For others, a "lab" can be constructed in an average kitchen with minimal cost and using ingredients easily available.Firearms and ammunition require far more specialized materials. Yes, there would be an immediate "black market." It already exists. But reducing the legal availability makes it more difficult to acquire guns and ammo...and without a method of production as simple as planting a pot clone in some soil or making a meth lab or swilling up some bath tub hooch, a simple ban will actually be able to create the attrition that substance prohibition has never been capable of. Nobody here has even once suggested that we should pattern a firearms ban on the "war on drugs." Not once. Except you.Bans don;t need to take that form. We don;t need those kinds of searches, and we don't need "zero tolerance" or mandatory sentencing.Once again: you should probably stop arguing against straw men that exist only in your own mind. Doing so does not help your argument. At all.ABE You do know that most of the guns in Mexico come from the US, right?Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.

...and you don't think that news sources that would turn up on a Google search would specifically select for "outrages" like that, while cases where the burglar received an appropriate sentence and the homeowner was never even charged would never even make the news for you to find in a search?The words "confirmation bias" spring to mind. Apparently you believe that a criminal forfeits his life the moment he commits a crime. Or that criminals stop being human beings. Tell me, crash, why do we not execute thieves?

Harder to get is not the same as harder to have in your possession.Gun bans don't magically poof away guns. They just make them harder to get, so their numbers decrease over time.Not immediately.Tis has been stated multiple times in this thread.

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.

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.

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.

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

And are those originals in firing condition?Or are they replicas?

You claimed that firearms are extremely durable, and used Revolutionary firearms as an example to prove your point.But your example was flawed. You do not know how durable Revolutionary firearms were. You brought it up. You used the example.