Cut Crime - cut access to cheap guns

I really don't think that it's the awnser. If I'm going to kill someone then I'm going to kill them wether or not I do it with a gun. Sure it's handier, but dead is dead.
 
Oroborus said:
I really don't think that it's the awnser. If I'm going to kill someone then I'm going to kill them wether or not I do it with a gun.
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Not quite. That study's been done over and over again. If you want to kill someone, your chances of successfully pulling it off are much better if you use a gun than if you use other methods. Which makes sense, if you think about it. With a gun, you can drop me from across the street before I even know you're there. With a knife or a baseball bat, you more or less need to get into my face, which gives me a chance to either fight back or simply to run like a scalded cat.

As the NRA puts it -- "guns don't kill people, people kill people." But the real thing to point out is that "Guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people. People without guns try with substantially less success to kill people."
 
Quick question - who is considered the best semi-auto handgun and rifle salesman of all time? Answer: Bill Clinton !

The end result of Clinton's legislation banning hi-cap (>10) magazines plus further restrictions on semi-auto military style rifles was not less guns - but instead more guns being sold. Actually, a lot more. Sorry, I don't have any statistics - but talk to gun shop owners about the 'explosion' in gun sales thanks to Clinton. Remember the proposed "arsenal legislation" that would have limited the amount of ammuntion that a person could posess. Primers were impossible to come by for a quite awhile. My perception is that gun control legislation seemed to end up have the opposite effect from the legislations original intent (i.e., more guns instead of the intended less guns). Even worse - depending on your perspective - the Democrats were successfully tarred as 'gun grabbers' by the Republicans which quickly drove many former Democratic voters into the waiting arms of the Republicans. Ask Gore what he thinks about gun control now?

I'll repeat my too cute phrase again: Gun Control = Republican Control. It appears that the current Democratic leadership has gotten the message and is surprisingly disciplined. Has anyone noticed Hillary, Nancy, Schumer, Diane Feinstein, etc. out mouthing off about gun control recently - especially after the spate of school shootings?

As for Glocks priced at $450. That's about the going rate (on-line) for a new Glock - minus shipping and FFL transfer fees.
 
Funny, back in 1994 I got the distinct impression that 19 large, very expensive rifles and shotguns were the epitome of evil and carnage in America and that every child in America would be dead if they weren't banned yesterday (to listen to gun-prohibition people, bullets only strike children).
 
Zep said:
I was not attempting to be convincing, really. Merely outlining an attitude variance I believe I have observed. But I may be having my senses fooled!

I think the difference lies in when you talk about removing gun access in some way. In Canada (and the same attitudes have prevailed in Australia, btw), removal of access to handguns (for e.g.) was considered by peoples' representatives to be for the common good and was acceptable for the most part to the whole community - so it happened. In the USA, such a proposal is usually considered a denial of basic citizens' rights, and is resisted most fiercely - fiercely enough to have not happened much at all in some places.
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I see your point.
 
Seems to me that raising the price of firearms and/or ammunition will result in two things:
an even larger black market for firearms and ammunition
and
only people with the means to buy higher priced guns legally will have guns.

Now, if you believe that the poor shouldn't have guns and the wealthy should, I won't argue though I do find the idea a little bit uncomfortable.
 
DaChew said:
Seems to me that raising the price of firearms and/or ammunition will result in two things:
an even larger black market for firearms and ammunition
and
only people with the means to buy higher priced guns legally will have guns.

Now, if you believe that the poor shouldn't have guns and the wealthy should, I won't argue though I do find the idea a little bit uncomfortable.
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There is no 100% solution. I believe that not all, but a significant number of crimes are possible because guns are so easy to get and because it doesn't take any mental giant to get them. These people aren't geniuses or they'd have real jobs. Yes, it would mean that wealthy people have more access to guns than poor people. (For the record, they also have more access to burgler alarms, armed guards, security fences etc. too.) In general, though, wealthy people tend to be less likely to knock over a liquor store.

Does this mean poor people are more likely to be victims? Yes, much like it already is. But I believe that with fewer available guns, there would be fewer people who have the means to victimize them. Also, I have seen numerous studies (no, I don't want to Google them right now) that show that a handgun owner is more likely to harm a member of their family, use the gun in a crime, or lose the gun to criminals than they are to use the gun for protection.

Now for the anecdotal part. I know at least three friends/family members who have had their guns stolen. Two of them had nothing but the guns stolen. I don't know any who have used their gun for self-defense or property protection. From my experience, having a gun is the best thing you can do to make your house attractive to criminals and for supplying the black market. (Again, this is anecdotal. It is not evidence.)
 
Polaris said:
Funny, back in 1994 I got the distinct impression that 19 large, very expensive rifles and shotguns were the epitome of evil and carnage in America and that every child in America would be dead if they weren't banned yesterday (to listen to gun-prohibition people, bullets only strike children).
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I've been a news junkie for many years, and I have no idea what incident you are referring to. I'm assuming it was some sort of "assault gun" legislation. It is true that some extremist groups try to sensationalize issues. It is also true that less extreme gun-control advocates don't listen to that sort of thing. You obviously remember it much better than I. I vaguely remember that some of the NRA extremists tried to demonize the anti-gun people and ignore the part of defending why such guns were necessary to society.

Let's face it. Extremists make the news. People like you and I don't. We're boring.
 
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HeyLeroy said:
Didn't Chris Rock say something like, if you want to cut the number of murders, charge $5,000 for a bullet? You'd really have to hate someone to shoot 'em then.
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I reload. Cheap. Even custom hunting bullets reloaded at home are cheap.

Primers, purchased by the thousands during the Clinton administration when there was the political threat of limited supplies and foolish signature chemicals, can last one the rest of his life.

Same with powders.

Cases can be reused several times.

Bullets can even be cast by melting down lead. It's done all the time.

Chris Rock doesn't know what he's opining about. Never did.
 
drkitten said:
....If you want to kill someone, your chances of successfully pulling it off are much better if you use a gun than if you use other methods.....
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That's so ridiculous it's hilarious. If that were true, than murder would have been rare before the invention of firearms.

In fact, murder (then getting away with it) is more successful without a gun. Firearms are loud. Gunshots alert people.

Which makes sense, if you think about it. With a gun, you can drop me from across the street before I even know you're there. With a knife or a baseball bat, you more or less need to get into my face, which gives me a chance to either fight back or simply to run like a scalded cat.
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You ignore factor #1: deception. The element of surprise. The lie.

Lies are much, much more dangerous than firearms, and much, much more prevalent.
 
Tricky said:
Originally Posted by Huntster
So which would be easier?: confiscating 300 million guns, or putting 3 million scumbags in prison?
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Oh, confiscating the guns, easily. Guns don't have lawyers.
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Guns didn't have lawyers in Vietnam during the U.S. occupation there, there was an active campaign to find and seize them, and it was unsuccessful.
 
Huntster said:
That's so ridiculous it's hilarious. If that were true, than murder would have been rare before the invention of firearms.
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I believe if you check the per-capita murder rates (the judical records for London, for example, go way back), you'll find that murder was substantially less common prior to the invention of firearms. But, of course, the societies were so different that this particular statistical factoid isn't very relevant to anything. As a simple conflation, for example, our medical technology is much better today, so you don't die of wound sepsis.


In fact, murder (then getting away with it) is more successful without a gun.
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Nice attempt to shift the goalposts there. It's still murder even if you get caught.

Check the survival rate for victims of firearms assault vs. other weapons. Then try to tell me that firearms aren't more deadly than knives or baseball bats.

Similar data comes from other crimes than assault. For example, a 1987 study of 43 large American cities found a strong relationship between the type of weapon used in a robbery and the likelihood of a fatal outcome. One gun robbery victim in 250 died. One Knife victim in 750 died. One "other weapon" victim in about 2000 died, and one victim in 5000 of an unarmed robbery died.

Block (1977) studied assaults in Chicago and came to the same conclusion : three times as many assaults with a gun resulted in death as assaults with a knife.

Zimmer's 1968 study of Chicago violence may be the most damning in this regard. He compared the outcomes of gun vs. knife violence, and further drew a distinction between attacks with a serious attempt to kill vs. attempts without. (For example, knifing someone in a vital area like the chest or the throat is more serious than slashing someone on the lower leg.) He found the likelihood of death from any gun wound was much less (two and a half times less) than the likelihood of death from a serious attempt to kill with a knife.

A metaanalysis in 1993 found, in fact, that no study had ever reported that guns were less than twice as lethal as knives in any circumstances.
 
Huntster said:
That's so ridiculous it's hilarious. If that were true, than murder would have been rare before the invention of firearms.
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I believe that any sort of research will show you that murders were more rare before the invention of firearms.

Huntster said:
In fact, murder (then getting away with it) is more successful without a gun. Firearms are loud. Gunshots alert people.
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That is among the most incorrect things I've ever heard. The key to getting away with murder is to make sure the person is dead. This is much easier and faster with a gun. And people do get away with it every day. I can look in my local paper any day and find a story like this one.

A man was shot dead in the parking lot of a southwest Houston apartment complex this morning while he was possibly trying to leave for work, Houston police said.
...
Witnesses told police that they saw Castillo near his car, heard two gunshots, then saw Castillo stumble back toward his apartment. However, no one saw the gunman or gunmen, and police say they have no suspects.
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Tricky said:
Originally Posted by Huntster
Guns didn't have lawyers in Vietnam during the U.S. occupation there, there was an active campaign to find and seize them, and it was unsuccessful.
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How did they do with "arresting the scumbags"?
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They didn't bother much with it. They preferred to shoot them.
 
drkitten said:
Zimmer's 1968 study of Chicago violence may be the most damning in this regard. He compared the outcomes of gun vs. knife violence, and further drew a distinction between attacks with a serious attempt to kill vs. attempts without. (For example, knifing someone in a vital area like the chest or the throat is more serious than slashing someone on the lower leg.) He found the likelihood of death from any gun wound was much less (two and a half times less) than the likelihood of death from a serious attempt to kill with a knife.
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Sorry, an embarassing error in the above. Zimmer found that the likelihood of death from a gun wound was much more (2-1/2 times greater) than the likelihood of death from a serious knife wound.

All statistics cited were on a per-incident basis, of course.
 
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