Gun control: the results are in?

the island of Australia?

and how does it not solve gun related deaths?
like the gangland shootings
or Martin Briant who took an automatic into a tourist canteen and shot everyone he could?

how could you kill 30 (cant rember how many died EXACTLY) with a knife before the police arived?

 

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One more thing

can anyone HONESTLY say that all those school shootings in the US were because the kids got guns on the black market and not because they got daddys gun from home?

 

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assuming the victims were themselves unarmed, you could probably kill 30 or so with a katana, if properly trained. and this is assuming you cannot construct an incendiary device of some kind. or chlorine gas for that matter. but does it really matter whether the death toll is three or thirty? lethality does not require extravagance... :bugeye: i need sleep.

 

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this guy was insane

he probably couldnt tie his SHOE LACES let alone make an incinary device

 

People can find any means to kill with. Guns are the easiest of weapons to use and provides the best bang for the buck. Let's see a bully with a knife fight another person with a knife and that innocent person most likely won't know what to do. The same with bare hands or some other offensive weapon. A gun is simple to use and is deadly as well. It's basically like M.A.D.. mutually assured descruction. A bully will laugh at someone trying to defend themself with a knife but with a gun, it's a bit more serious.

No because a weapon can be made out of anything. I can use a lead pipe, break a table leg off, break a bottle, stab you with a pencil. The USA and USSR didn't fear one another because of guns, tanks, or bazookas but rather nuclear weapons. Why? Nuclear weapons provide the best bang for the buck when it's a whole country vs a whole country that are each far away. When it comes to one on one combat, a gun provides the best bang for the buck, offensively and defensively.

Tazers are a nice secondary device for those against guns, but you better hope you don't miss that one shot you get. Not to mention there are a couple ways to not get zapped by them so it's not as threatening to the bully. One could easily go up against someone but still, when the offender has a gun, it still doesn't compare.

As opposed to using a chef's knife to slice and stab a bunch of people or use a baseball bat to bash a few heads and put them in comatose? If a victim is defensiveless, they can be killed many various ways, but can only defend themselves with their bare hands.

- N

 

Ok you COULD use my chefs knife to kill (i keep it very sharp because its safer for me) BUT how EASIERLY could you kill a whole class room full of people with a knife? ANY knife?

You stab one guy and the knife jams on the bone for example (YES that happens ALOT, or atleast i would asume it does seeing as it does when your butcuring and you are alot less rushed with a dead carcus) or while u stab one guy someone else atacks u with a chair and ur now unconciouse

Now same senario with an M16 or an uzi?

Class mowed down in one min

No chance

THIS is why gun control is more important than knife control

Not because you CANT kill with anything else but because of the chance the victoms HAVE of survciving Vs need of people to have them

A knife is nessary. They are my job and even domestic people need knives to prepare food. A gun on the other hand is ONLY there to kill and do we really NEED that?

NO we dont

there is another reason guns are worse than knives

someone else mentioned swords and yes swords kill, kill well infact BUT have you seen the size difference between a samri sword and an automatic hand gun?
what could i sneak into a school, workplace more easerly?

the Gun

so not only is it the easiest to kill with its the hardest to find

seems to me a very GOOD reason for confiscating them

 

Martin Bryant was not clinically insane. He had an IQ of 66, and had the mental development of someone around 10 years old from memory (he was in his late 20's). He was always "detached", from a very young age, and only developed one lasting relationship in his life - with an older woman who left him her fortune when she died in an accident he may have caused. He was declared legally sane to stand for trial - attempts were made to pin various mental illnesses on him (Asperger's syndrome was the main one, he displayed some of the symptoms but had a very low intelligence, where most Asperger's sufferers were relatively normal in intellectual capacity) but none stuck.

There are several conspiracy type theories around about the massacre itself - how an intellectually subnormal man with no military or firearms experience was able to obtain an an AR-15 automatic rifle and a FN-FAL rifle (two weapons with very different firing characteristics), kill 35 people and wound 22 (a very abnormal ratio) in less than half an hour and in 6 separate locations, with a total of 64 bullets fired. Of the victims, a very high percentage were killed with a single shot to the head, and the ratio maintained even after the shooter changed weapons - an achievement which has been marvelled at by military marksmen. This is the same man who fired hundreds of shots at police when they came to his home - without hitting anything at all. A man whose previous experience with firearms was limited to an air rifle.

Idle speculation aside though -

Gun control laws have no real effect in Australia because most murders here are not committed with guns to begin with (both before and after controls were introduced), and of the ones that are, only a small percentage of the weapons were legally obtained. The statistics on guns used as murder weapons have remained virtually unchanged since stricter gun control laws were introduced following Port Arthur.

As for policing Australia's shores... the idea is ridiculous. We have a population of around 20 million concentrated mostly in a few densely populated areas, and the largest coastline on the planet. We can't stop guns, drugs, or anything else from getting in. Any seizures made are a mere drop in the ocean - literally.

 

Firstly we have very few mass murders PERIOD

and no big ones that i can think of since Port Aurthur unless you count the gang land killings (which are a sieris of murders not a mass murder)

So you COULD say it was 100% sucessful

 

No, you could not say that.
Read carefully :

The proportion of murders commited using firearms in Australia has remained virtually unchanged since the introduction of strict gun control laws following the Port Arthur massacre.

Most murders commited in Australia using firearms have been by perpetrators using illegally obtained firearms, both before and after strict gun control laws were introduced.

Gun control laws in Australia have had almost no effect on murder statistics using legally obtained weapons. Clear?

 

Actually, Nasor, you're wrong about the crime figures. The year after handguns were banned in the UK (1997) after the Dunblane shootings in 1996, there were fewer handgun deaths than the previous year (I'll find a link). I really doubt that the handgun ban was the cause, it was just a statistical glitch in a very low number. A small deviation can have a big effect on a small number. We have what, 80 gun homicides per year in the UK. So five would be significant. As the population of the US is roughly five times that of the UK, would another 30 deaths in the USA represent a significant increase? No, against the 10,000 or so homicides, 20,000 suicides, and hundred thousand woundings each year, nobody would notice.

Compare the homicide rates between the USA with lax gun control, and the coutries you mentioned;

http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcgvinco.html (scroll down for the table)

Each of the countries you mention has far lower gun crime, thanks to strict regulation.
Now you might say that stats from different countries aren't relevant, and America is a 'more violent society', which completely contradicts the 'an armed society is a polite society' notion, doesn't it?

Here's the Australian myth dealt with;

http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp

and another;

http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/gunaus.htm

If Defensive Gun Use (DGU) claims are taken at face value, the USA has a real crime problem, which largely goes unreported, as claimed DGU figures are larger than reported crime;

Proponents of gun control frequently argue that carrying a concealed pistol would be of no practical use for personal self-defense. Proponents of gun rights argue that in the US, there are up to 2.5 million incidents per year in which a lawfully-armed citizen averts a crime by confronting a would-be attacker with a loaded gun (source: http://www.yourencyclopedia.net/Gun_control.html).

That would be 1% of the total population, if _everybody_ carried weapons. but they don't, that is just for gun owners. So an average American is _more_ than 1% likely to be a victim of crime each year. That's more than the UK! And guns keep you guys safe, right?

But if you want to keep guns, and that rather impressive bodycount, it's up to you. But you can keep all the BS justifications too, because they don't fly.

 

And Canada, one of the highest proportions of gun ownership in the world... their figures? Japan, with the strictest gun laws going? Their figures?

I have yet to see a truly comprehensive study using all known variables in an unbiased fashion to determine the effect of gun laws on firearm murder rates. Until you can show me one, I'll keep my own counsel.

Not at all. Again, the article completely missed the legal ownership versus illegal ownership of guns... statistics mean nothing until the differentiation is made. The article notes "Although the old adage says that "Figures don't lie, but liars figure," those who seek to influence public opinion often employ a variety of means to slant statistical figures into seemingly supporting their point of view: " but fails to see how it might apply to its own statistics. I reiterate - most gun related murders in Australia are done with illegal weapons. Weapons brought into the country using vast stretches of unpatrolled coastline. Get it?

You cannot give a sample website to show your point of view in this situation - if I tried, I could find one giving a different story. Then you'll give me another, and I'll give you two more... ad nausea.

Gun ownership, it appears to me, has more to do with the attitude of the society than gun ownership or the laws pertaining to it.

 

You're missing my point. Yes, shooting deaths went down, but the total number of murders went up. England's murder rate has been increasing steadily ever since the handgun laws went into effect, even though the number of shootings has dropped.

Again, you're missing my point. Yes, those countries have lower homicide rates then the U.S., but the homicide rates of individual countries don't go down when they impose gun control laws, even after the laws have been in place for many years.

Look up the murder rate in Australia over the last 10 years. It's practically a flat horizontal line, both before and after the gun ban.

Actually, I believe that with the exception of rape and murder the UK has higher rates for virtually all crimes than the United States. And since the murder rate in the U.S. has been steadily falling, while in the U.K. it's been steadily rising, pretty soon the U.K. will surpass the U.S. in murders as well.

 

Nasor, what do you want? A handgun ban to reduce the number of stabbings? Just how can banning guns effect the overall murder rate? That's absurd. Changing firearms laws will cut out firearms related deaths, that's all.

The murder rate in the USA falling. Well fluctuating would be a better term.

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Murder rates reached a peak in the 80's, came down, went back up, and are coming down again. I think the variation is fairly hard to explain (although some link it to 'prohibition' periods, first booze, and then the 'war on drugs'), but the general level is down to lax gun laws and widespread gun ownership.

Relative crime UK vs USA. Well, yes, we have slightly elevated levels of crime for robbery and assault than you do in the USA, but your murder rate is five times ours. So, if someone in the USA gets robbed, and then murdered, does that count as one crime, or two? I'm guessing one, so in the uK, we get robbed, end of story. In the USA, you may get robbed, then murdered, and the robbery isn't necessarily recorded as a crime itself, but as the cause of the murder. This would detract from the overall incidences of robbery, wouldn't it, giving you a lower number?

Anyway, if DGU stats are used, America is still more dangerous than the UK, if not, well, I'm far less likely to get murdered, and if someone tries to rob me, chances are that it won't be at gunpoint, so they'll get nothing, and I won't get hurt.

Question is, do you think your murder rate is acceptable?

 

Thats an interesting point

what about rapes?
Assults that END in murders

B\W i have herd people here claim that gun control doesnt fix anything because assult rates are higher in other places than the US

For those people i have a question

Would you rather be killed or beaten up and live?

 

That question is invalid because you're assuming if all guns are taken away, being beaten up is the only thing that will happen to a victim of a crime which is far from untrue. A person can be killed through many means, not just by guns. To think deaths are caused only by guns is silly and shows you really don't know much.

If talking about guns and defending oneself from a crime, the question should be more along the lines of "Would you rather kill or be killed" which then makes it even less likely to be a victim of a crime because it's basically suicide for the person to assuault someone when everyone is packing heat. Gun crimes happen because the assaulter and victim aren't on even grounds. That's how bullies are able to do what they do. Once you put them on even playing fields, they back off like the wimps they are.

- N

 

what a LOAD of twoddle

By that lack of logic no one could die in a gun duel

gun crime happens BECAUSE there ARE guns, surprise surprise
no guns, no gun CRIME

By your logic we should have a HIGHER instance of gun related deaths in australia because there are less guns than the US which is totally BOGUS

YES people die by other means but i would rather take my chances against a baseball bat than a gun

while a bat MAY kill you a gun WILL kill you, simple as that

 

Neildo, the question;

Is still relevant, as he didn't specify via what means you would be killed.

The truth is, however, that the majority of murders in the USA are committed with guns (66%), and it always makes sense to go after the big problems first. You cannot assume that knives and bats will replace guns and the murder rate won't change either.

According to Kleck, Americans use guns defensively around 2.5million times each year. That's just people who carry weapons, or who have weapons at home. Bearing in mind that according to the Harris poll, 39% of adults live in a house where one or more gun is owned, either gun owners are potental victims of crime more often than non-gunowners, (comparing the DGU figures to reported crime), or reported crime is far lower than actual incidences of crime. If we extrapolate the DGU figures to cover the whole popualtion of the USA, we see 6.25million crimes per year, making the USA crime rates 2.5 times that of the UK.

So either DGU figures used to defend gun ownership are BS, or the USA is in the middle of an unreported crimewave.

So, I don't see how guns can be keeping you safer. You certainly aren't any safer than I am.

 

The most dangerous weapon is your mind. More people are killed with fist in the United States than with automatic weapons. I do think that there is no reason for a private individual to have automatic weapons. I also think that you can make sufficiently deadly explosives out of any ones kitchen items that you really can't stop people from killing groups of people with or without guns.

 

My point is only that gun control laws don't reduce crime rates, which is contrary to what many people in the U.S. seem to believe. What's the point of reducing the number of shooting deaths if stabbings and bludgeoning increase proportionally? The only thing that matters is the overall murder rate, not the murder rate for any particular weapon. If you ban handguns and the rate of shooting deaths decreases, but the overall murder rate increases, then your gun conrol laws have failed and you might as well let people have their guns back.

Yeah, if by 'fluctuating' you mean 'plummeting'. If the murder rate continues to decrease through 2004 like it has every year in the last decade, then by 2005 the murder rate in the US will be at it's lowest since the year 1912.The U.S. is currently experiencing the longest period of declining murder rates in the country's history. England's murder rate, on the other hand, has been climbing steadily since 1997 and is now at a 100 year high.

No, obviously I would much rather have the U.S.'s murder rate be as low as England's currently is. I'm not trying to argue that people in England are more likely to be murdered than people in the U.S., because that obviously isn't true (yet). My point is that banning handguns probably isn't the way to lower the murder rate in the U.S., because all evidence indicates that banning handguns doesn't lower the murder rate.

 

Yeah, actually we can, because we've already seen it happen twice - in both England and Australia. That's the entire point of this thread.