You guys and your guns...

[JimC]

Having said all that, I'd love right now to be back out on the farm with my old Ruger .22, sending bunnies to rabbit heaven...

[pErvinalia]

I want a shotgun. I'm so freakin' bored here on my farm. Instead of flouncing about all day doing fuck all, I could be blasting the shit out of inanimate objects. And when it's snake season again, I could go to town on them!

[JimC]

I want a shotgun. I'm so freakin' bored here on my farm. Instead of flouncing about all day doing fuck all, I could be blasting the shit out of inanimate objects. And when it's snake season again, I could go to town on them!

Pump actions are great fun, I used to love blasting things as fast as possible...

I iz secret gun freak!

[pErvinalia]

yeah, i'd want the pump action thing, so I could use it to scare people off if any of the feral locals showed up at my doorstep.

[Blind groper]

Gawdzilla

In the United States, no matter how you look at it, there is a close relationship between how many people are murdered and how many people own hand guns.

You have pretty much assured me that you do not go along with Seth's madness. Good to see, since we do not need more people sharing that insanity. Would you agree with me that the problem is hand guns? Based on the fact that three quarters of gun ownership in America is sporting rifles, but two thirds of all firearms murders are with hand guns? 8,000 tragic deaths each year, at an all time low?

[Blind groper]

Here is a reference from the American National Institute of Health. It is always a problem finding references that are unbiased, especially American references, since so many people have strong personal biases for or against free use of firearms. The NIH should be one of the few free of such bias.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447364/
And I quote :


" In region- and state-level analyses, a robust association between rates of household firearm ownership and homicide was found. Regionally, the association exists for victims aged 5 to 14 years and those 35 years and older. At the state level, the association exists for every age group over age 5, even after controlling for poverty, urbanization, unemployment, alcohol consumption, and nonlethal violent crime.

Conclusions. Although our study cannot determine causation, we found that in areas where household firearm ownership rates were higher, a disproportionately large number of people died from homicide."

Simply, the more guns, the more murders. QED.

[Svartalf]

Wrong Grouper.
The relationship between homicides and gun owners is how many of the former are performed with firearms.

Countries where gun ownership is restricted are not necessarily less violent, violence just uses other tools.

[Blind groper]

Svartalf

Certainly non gun societies are not necessarily less violent.
But gun owning societies kill more people as a result of that violence.

[JimC]

Svartalf

Certainly non gun societies are not necessarily less violent.
But gun owning societies kill more people as a result of that violence.

In some ways, the question is whether societies with high rates of gun ownership and a large number of hand guns and assault rifles already in circulation would show a reduction in homicide rates if tighter gun laws were introduced and enforced...

It may simply be too late...

[Blind groper]

Jim

I understand your point, and there is truth in it.

Certainly, a ban on hand guns would not cause an immediate miraculous reduction in homicides, for the simple reason that the wrong people who own such guns would not give them up. However, over time, the shortage of hand guns would lead to even the nasty buggers having fewer such guns, and the homicide rate would then drop.

[JimC]

Jim

I understand your point, and there is truth in it.

Certainly, a ban on hand guns would not cause an immediate miraculous reduction in homicides, for the simple reason that the wrong people who own such guns would not give them up. However, over time, the shortage of hand guns would lead to even the nasty buggers having fewer such guns, and the homicide rate would then drop.

My main take is somewhat selfish - I simply don't want our societies to relax their gun restrictions...

It is up to the folk in the US to chart her own destiny with regard to guns, whatever my opinion might be...

[Svartalf]

Svartalf

Certainly non gun societies are not necessarily less violent.
But gun owning societies kill more people as a result of that violence.

In some ways, the question is whether societies with high rates of gun ownership and a large number of hand guns and assault rifles already in circulation would show a reduction in homicide rates if tighter gun laws were introduced and enforced...

It may simply be too late...

Problem is that you want to make an experiment whose fruit will only be visible in a generation or two.

In the US, assuming you could repeal the second amendment without provoking enough violence to precipitate a breakdown of the state, I suspect that the well entrenched gang culture, and similar traditions of intercommunity violence would persist unabated, and you would then have to outlaw baseball and other sports with violence convenient equipment, as well as severely restrict knives.

[pErvinalia]

Wrong Grouper.
The relationship between homicides and gun owners is how many of the former are performed with firearms.

Countries where gun ownership is restricted are not necessarily less violent, violence just uses other tools.

Yeah, like tanks and stuff.

[Svartalf]

Knives and baseball bats.

[pErvinalia]

Why not tanks? Why not nukes? After all, nukes don't kill people, people kill people...