Canada's gun ownership rates are higher than the U.S. Apparently that isn't the issue. Something about our culture is. Also, "making it harder to manufacture, sell, and distribute semi-auto assault rifles" sounds good, but in reality there is little to no actual practical difference between a "semi-auto assault rifle" and any other target or hunting rifle. States like California and Massachusetts define "assault rifles" as being rifles with collapsible stocks, ejectable magazines, certain barrel lengths, and pistol grips... none of those things actually make the firearm any more or less dangerous... it's just easy to point to "assault weapons" as being the problem based on the fact that they look more "tacti-cool". Here are two pictures of Ruger 10/22s -- common "plinking" rifles which are ideal for shooting soda cans and paper targets in your back yard. Both images are of the same exact gun; same capacity, same fire rate, same muzzle velocity, etc. The only difference is that one has the olive drab "tacti-cool" package with a pistol grip and extendable stock. Of course, people will see the second gun and say "OMG! That is a death machine. Why does anyone need to own that gun?".
Just to provide one piece of evidence, in Israel they armed teachers in the 70s and they haven't had a school shooting since.
If these innocent people did not have guns, they might be dead: Georgia father and son duo fight off home invaders - 11/16/2012 https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/ccm-departments/true-stories/georgia-father-and-son-duo-fight-off-home-invaders/ Texas CPL Holder Stops Daylight Attack Near School - 11/16/2012 https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/ccm-departments/true-stories/texas-cpl-holder-stops-daylight-attack-near-school/ California Mom Uses Shotgun to Save 2-Year-Old Daughter - 11/16/2012 https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/ccm-departments/true-stories/california-mom-uses-shotgun-to-save-2-year-old-daughter/ WW II Veteran Wards Off Three Home Invaders - 11/16/2012 https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/ccm-departments/true-stories/ww-ii-veteran-wards-off-three-home-invaders/ Paralyzed Ohio Man Shoots Home Invader - 10/4/2012 https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/ccm-departments/true-stories/paralyzed-ohio-man-shoots-home-invader/ Michigan Senior Citizen Shoots Young Home Invader - 10/4/2012 https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/ccm-departments/true-stories/michigan-senior-citizen-shoots-young-home-invader/ Georgia Good Samaritan Stops Career Criminal's Attack - 10/4/2012 https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/ccm-departments/true-stories/georgia-good-samaritan-stops-career-criminals-attack/ Vermont Man Shoots Two of Three Home Invaders - 8/17/2012 https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/ccm-departments/true-stories/vermont-man-shoots-two-of-three-home-invaders/ Mom Defends Daughter Successfully - 8/14/2012 https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/ccm-departments/true-stories/mom-defends-daughter-successfully/ Congressman and Grandson Fight Off Armed Intruder - 8/14/2012 https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/ccm-departments/true-stories/congressman-and-grandson-fight-off-armed-intruder/ St. Pete Man Defends Girlfriend Against Armed Robber - 8/14/2012 https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/ccm-departments/true-stories/st-pete-man-defends-girlfriend-against-armed-robber/ Home Invader Shot, Killed in Antioch - 7/13/2012 https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/ccm-departments/true-stories/home-invader-shot-killed-in-antioch/ Washington Man Shoots, Kills Home Invader - 7/6/2012 https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/ccm-departments/true-stories/washington-man-shoots-kills-home-invader/ California Senior Citizen Shoots and Routs Home Invaders - 7/6/2012 https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/ccm-departments/true-stories/california-senior-citizen-shoots-and-routs-home-invaders/ .....................
I hate this debate. I hate all of it. Guns aren't the solution. They're not the problem either. But they're definitely not the solution. Anecdotes are not data.
3 gun control ideas. 1. Biometric readers manufactured on all firearms going forward. These allow the registered owners only to operate the firearm. - manufacturers are made to offer substantial discounts to owners who trade in their old firearm for a new model 2. All new firearms not meant for law enforcement or military are fitted with a universal receiver which can be deactivated by a transmitter 400 yards away. Law enforcement and military are given the transmitter which they can use at a crime scene to deactivate the weapons. 3. Ammunition rationing. Firearm owners can only buy X rounds per year. Or firearm owners are unable to purchase certain types of munitions without federal clearance. Body armor and "tactical gear" will not be sold to civilians without law enforcement or military credentials.
What about the Black Market? It's so much easier to get a gun illegally than legally, especially if you're a nut case.
#3 sounds like an absolutely terrible idea. The safest gun owners are the ones who practice most frequently.
^also, you realize that guns are pretty simple mechanical devices, right? I could literally visit any machine shop and build one from scratch, and I'm not an expert in either firearms or machining. Any "biometric scanner" or transmitter will easily be removed, or in some other way rendered useless. That kind of technology would be even less effective than DRM on movies and music.
What does that mean? How do you define crazy person and what do you propose we do with the mentally ill people in our society? How do you determine if someone is violent? There may be hundreds of thousands of people who demonstrate the behaviors that Lanza did, but only one becomes violent and I don't think anybody understands why. What I can say is that if a person is demonstrating anti-social behavior, nobody in that household should be permitted to own a firearm. So it does come to back to guns. There is no way around it. Again, protect the innocent citizens first - public safety should come before Nancy Lanza's right to collect weapons and spend time on her hobby of shooting targets at a gun range.
News flash...it is worlds easier to obtain a firearm ILLEGALLY than it is legally. How exactly will your proposed gun control address that very issue? As for your statistics, you could not be more wrong. It is well documented that violent crime DECREASES with increased gun ownership. You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/18/gun-ownership-up-crime-down/ It's simple logic. If you were going to commit a violent crime, would you rather do so in a state like Texas where you know that a good majority of law abiding citizens legally carry firearms, or a state like New Jersey where essentially your only chance of meeting resistance is the off chance that an off duty police officer is present and carrying a firearm? Concealed carry legislation is a crime deterrent in it of itself without anyone even having to unholster a weapon. You cite the 16% reduction of NYC homicides but fail to address the other 6 violent crime categories of "rape, robbery, assault, burglary, grand larceny, and auto theft". How many instances of these crimes involved a firearm? I'm willing to bet a large majority of them did.
Your facts are wrong. You need to look at homicide rates by guns by state, not city because it is the state laws that govern. The gun homicide rates are lower in states with strict gun laws such as NY, NJ,and CT than they are in lenient states such as Texas, Florida, Louisiana etc. Look it up by state.
Twelve facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States By Ezra Klein When we first collected much of this data, it was after the Aurora, Colo. shootings, and the air was thick with calls to avoid “politicizing” the tragedy. That is code, essentially, for “don’t talk about reforming our gun control laws.” Let’s be clear: That is a form of politicization. When political actors construct a political argument that threatens political consequences if other political actors pursue a certain political outcome, that is, almost by definition, a politicization of the issue. It’s just a form of politicization favoring those who prefer the status quo to stricter gun control laws. Since then, there have been more horrible, high-profile shootings. Jovan Belcher, a linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs, took his girlfriend’s life and then his own. In Oregon, Jacob Tyler Roberts entered a mall holding a semi-automatic rifle and yelling “I am the shooter.” And, in Connecticut, at least 27 are dead — including 18 children — after a man opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School. If roads were collapsing all across the United States, killing dozens of drivers, we would surely see that as a moment to talk about what we could do to keep roads from collapsing. If terrorists were detonating bombs in port after port, you can be sure Congress would be working to upgrade the nation’s security measures. If a plague was ripping through communities, public-health officials would be working feverishly to contain it. Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. “Too soon,” howl supporters of loose gun laws. But as others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t “too soon.” It’s much too late. What follows here isn’t a policy agenda. It’s simply a set of facts — many of which complicate a search for easy answers — that should inform the discussion that we desperately need to have. 1. Shooting sprees are not rare in the United States. Mother Jones has tracked and mapped every shooting spree in the last three decades. “Since 1982, there have been at least 61 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii,” they found. And in most cases, the killers had obtained their weapons legally: 2. Eleven of the 20 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States. Time has the full list here. In second place is Finland, with two entries. 3. Lots of guns don’t necessarily mean lots of shootings, as you can see in Israel and Switzerland.* As David Lamp writes at Cato, “In Israel and Switzerland, for example, a license to possess guns is available on demand to every law-abiding adult, and guns are easily obtainable in both nations. Both countries also allow widespread carrying of concealed firearms, and yet, admits Dr. Arthur Kellerman, one of the foremost medical advocates of gun control, Switzerland and Israel ‘have rates of homicide that are low despite rates of home firearm ownership that are at least as high as those in the United States.’” *Correction: The info is out-of-date, if not completely wrong. Israel and Switzerland have tightened their gun laws substantially, and now pursue an entirely different approach than the United States. More details here. I apologize for the error. 4. Of the 11 deadliest shootings in the US, five have happened from 2007 onward. That doesn’t include Friday’s shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. The AP put the early reported death toll at 27, which would make it the second-deadliest mass shooting in US history. 5. America is an unusually violent country. But we’re not as violent as we used to be. Kieran Healy, a sociologist at Duke University, made this graph of “deaths due to assault” in the United States and other developed countries. We are a clear outlier. As Healy writes, “The most striking features of the data are (1) how much more violent the U.S. is than other OECD countries (except possibly Estonia and Mexico, not shown here), and (2) the degree of change—and recently, decline—there has been in the U.S. time series considered by itself.” 6. The South is the most violent region in the United States. In a subsequent post, Healy drilled further into the numbers and looked at deaths due to assault in different regions of the country. Just as the United States is a clear outlier in the international context, the South is a clear outlier in the national context:
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: The bottom line, Egan writes, is that “long-term trends suggest that we are in fact currently experiencing a waning culture of guns and violence in the United States. “ 8. More guns tend to mean more homicide. The Harvard Injury Control Research Center assessed the literature on guns and homicide and found that there’s substantial evidence that indicates more guns means more murders. This holds true whether you’re looking at different countries or different states. Citations here. 9. States with stricter gun control laws have fewer deaths from gun-related violence. Last year, economist Richard Florida dove deep into the correlations between gun deaths and other kinds of social indicators. Some of what he found was, perhaps, unexpected: Higher populations, more stress, more immigrants, and more mental illness were not correlated with more deaths from gun violence. But one thing he found was, perhaps, perfectly predictable: States with tighter gun control laws appear to have fewer gun-related deaths. The disclaimer here is that correlation is not causation. But correlations can be suggestive: “The map overlays the map of firearm deaths above with gun control restrictions by state,” explains Florida. “It highlights states which have one of three gun control restrictions in place – assault weapons’ bans, trigger locks, or safe storage requirements. Firearm deaths are significantly lower in states with stricter gun control legislation. Though the sample sizes are small, we find substantial negative correlations between firearm deaths and states that ban assault weapons (-.45), require trigger locks (-.42), and mandate safe storage requirements for guns (-.48).” 10. Gun control, in general, has not been politically popular. Since 1990, Gallup has been asking Americans whether they think gun control laws should be stricter. The answer, increasingly, is that they don’t. “The percentage in favor of making the laws governing the sale of firearms ‘more strict’ fell from 78% in 1990 to 62% in 1995, and 51% in 2007,” reports Gallup. “In the most recent reading, Gallup in 2010 found 44% in favor of stricter laws. In fact, in 2009 and again last year, the slight majority said gun laws should either remain the same or be made less strict.” 11. But particular policies to control guns often are. An August CNN/ORC poll asked respondents whether they favor or oppose a number of specific policies to restrict gun ownership. And when you drill down to that level, many policies, including banning the manufacture and possession of semi-automatic rifles, are popular. 12. Shootings don’t tend to substantially affect views on gun control. That, at least, is what the Pew Research Center found: © 1996-2012 The Washington Post
Really? What about kitchen knives, baseball bats, crow bars, chain saws, screwdrivers, and on and on and on and on? Should nobody in that household be permitted to own any of those items either? All are deadly weapons. Virtually any object can be a deadly weapon, in the wrong hands of course. This post proves how out of touch you are with the real issue here, and I'll give you a hint - it's not the guns.
One could argue that this is caused by a regional influence, rather than legislative. There is a very strong correlation between region and violence rates in this country (source: http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2012/07/21/assault-deaths-within-the-united-states/). NY is located within the Northeast, which is the least violent region. You could counter-argue that the regional differences in violence are caused by the different gun laws, however there are some huge flaws to that theory. For instance, New Hampshire is one of least violent states in the country (actually the least violent according to that data and this source here http://os.cqpress.com/rankings/CrimeStateRankings_2009.pdf), despite also having some of the most relaxed gun laws. Citizens in NH can purchase handguns and rifles without even having a permit. California also has higher than average violence despite some of the strictest laws. I tend to believe that correlations between gun regulation and violence rates are more of a side-effect caused by cultural/regional differences, rather than the cause/effect relationship that you make it out to be.
jftr, if you're going to post stats and figures please make sure they reflect the stats according to LEGAL guns... I've seen too many arguments that say guns kill people and they need to be controlled then the stats reflect armed crimes with ILLEGAL Weapons. I'm all for guns and for gun control...Yes you can have both. You should be able to have a gun legally in your home but there is NO need for a fukin M16...lol
