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Britain and Australia top U.S. in violent crime (the U.S. wasn't even in the top 10!)

Crime is higher in the UK in every major category except rape and murder, which are declining in the U.S. and have for the past decade

Official crime rate facts

No matter how much some need to believe it, the U.S. is not some downtrodden, crime-ridden hellhole. Europeans and other foreigners need to stop watching Law & Order to get their idea of what the U.S. is like.

Can you quote some before and after statistics to back your claim that crime in the UK is way up ?

Of course I can, but why don't you go ahead and spend five minutes with google yourself?

Try searching for "UK Crime Increase". The fourth hit is what you're looking for. That essay cites " Crime Victimisation in the Industrialised World: Key Findings of the 1989 and 1992 International Crime Surveys, van Dijk and Mayhew, The Hague: Ministry of Justice, Department of Crime Prevention, 1993.", among other sources.

I do hope that the people of the UK get sick of this, and demand a restoration of the Rights of Englishmen as set forth in your 1689 Bill of Rights, which enjoined the sovereign from infringing the right of free men to have "arms for their defence."

-jcr

Referance for militia:
militia n.
1. An army composed of ordinary citizens rather than professional soldiers.
2. A military force that is not part of a regular army and is subject to call for service in an emergency.
3. The whole body of physically fit civilians eligible by law for military service.

Pay particular attention to the bolded parts for why the Guard isn't a militia.

Otherwise, I tend to agree with you. Bush's moves have been fairly straightforward if you wanted to take the US into a dictatorship. Oh, there might be other reasons, but that's a quite logical conclusion from his actions.

Because DC is not a very large place, and immediately surrounded by places with less restrictions.

Well, then, explain the increase in gun crime in Britain since they banned handguns.

While you're at it, you can explain why the homicide, assault and armed robbery rates are up in Australia as well

After all, they're obviously not very large places, and surrounded by places with less restrictions -- oh, wait, no they're not. ;)

ne could also go into the socio-economic forces which usually parallel crime rates.

Of course we could, and there would be the meat of a cause of a lot of crime - but it's so much easier to blame guns, especially when you want to ban them (not you specifically, I'm referring more to the anti-gun movement in general).

For the average person in fit of rage/anger, if they don't have immediate access to a gun, or had to sit through a 10 day waiting period. You are aruging that every single one of those people will instead commit the same crimes if they didn't have ready access to such a simple and suddenly lethal instrument?

No. I am arguing that many but not all would.

If everybody having guns is supposed to level the playing field between criminals and victims ( an arguement btw, that I do not buy into ), what happens when everyone has a gun, and criminals move up to more fire power?

210 lb rapist. 110 lb woman.

Both with guns, the odds are evener than niether with a gun - whoever is quickest wins, rather than who is stronger/heavier.

I don't understand how you can not see that as leveling the playing field.

As far as "everyone having a gun", I've already said that not everyone needs to have a gun. We just don't need gun ownership arbitrarily restricted to 'necessity'.

down, firebreathingdog, DOWN! ;)

I think you've hit the nail on the head when you say humans are half assed.

However, YES, there are plenty of examples of other countries being more fully assed than us 'mericans. For example, gun ownership in switzerland.
In terms of murder rates, they are doing it better than we are.

That's right, gun control works. Australia is a very safe place to live, now that crimes like armed robbery are more common than before the 1996 ban/confiscation took effect. You sound brainwashed to me.

Keep in mind that those towns are pretty small. How would this make my city of 3.5 million people safer?

I live in Seattle, where anyone can carry a gun as long as they have these 2 things:

1. $60
2. Nothing bad on their record

Is Seattle famous for its high violent crime rate?

MOST US states have similar "shall-issue" weapon permits... if there was a correlation between such laws and increases in crime, wouldn't someone have pointed it out by now? The states and Feds collect a lot of crime data. Surely it would be obvious by now. There are enough people with an anti-gun agenda, wouldn't Brady or someone like that have presented the irrefutable proof that gun permits cause carnage?

It's strange, I wouldn't trust the average guy on the street to fix my hamburger right. But I'll be damned if they don't manage to carry a gun responsibly most of the time when they are given the right to do so. Pretty weird.

You might want to read this summary of Gary Kleck's study on defensive gun use.

This page has a summary of crime stats that relate to CCWs. Quick factoid: Florida's homicide rate has declined 21% since adopting a permissive CCW law in 1987. This is not an unusual kind of result.

I realize that figure does not PROVE that concealed weapons reduce crime. But it does seem to indicate that a CCW law doesn't turn a state into a bloodbath.

Give your fellow American a little more credit. Surprisingly, they seem to deserve it.

I am starting to think that gun supporters just MAKE UP THE STATS AS THEY GO ALONG.

Funny, that's what we say about you anti-freedom people.

Give us a bit of proof, eh guys?

I don't have proof, but here are statistics. That page claims to summarize official FBI data into a human-readable format.

A highlight:

"Since adopting CCW (1987), Florida's homicide rate has fallen 21% while the U.S. rate has risen 12%. From start-up 10/1/87 - 2/28/94 (over 6 years) Florida issued 204,108 permits; only 17 (0.008%) were revoked because permittees later committed crimes (not necessarily violent) in which guns were present (not necessarily used)."

You can slice and dice the statistics any way you want to, looking for support of a particular opinion, but you can't get around one thing: Florida's easy access to concealed weapons just hasn't turned the state into an Old West bloodbath. Heck, in Vermont you don't even need a permit: stick a gun in your pants and walk around if you like. Can't find the stats, but Vermont sure isn't known for its crime rate, at least as far as I know.

Now this will really drive you nuts: 31 states have "shall-issue CCW laws. Thirty-one. That's most of them. And many of those states joined the club in the last few years. Like it or not, the trend is towards more personal freedom in this regard.

Ultimately, statistics don't matter. You guys would still want all the guns gone even if there were unimpeachable studies showing their benefits... and we gun nuts would want to keep them even if it was revealed that guns walked around by themselves at night and shot people. It's a deep philosophical difference rooted in concepts of self-reliance and style of government, and number's ain't gonna do nuthin' but give us something to put in posts like this one.

Oh, by the way, nyah nyah, you guys suck, cold dead hands, I'm carrying a gun right now, etc.

It is worth noting that the American freedom to own a gun is seen here as a reason that they have a per capita murder rate 100 times greater than ours.

We have equal access to fists and sticks, and I bet our murder rate is higher with those weapons too. America is just a different culture -- it IS more violent here. I don't know why. But it isn't the guns.

In US cities where they pass laws allowing you to carry a concealed weapon, crime rates tend to go down. Check this link, which has stats on that, especially Florida, a recent case.

We can argue about statistics and sampling methods and all that crap if you want, but at the least the numbers make one thing clear: concealed carry laws don't make cities into Wild West bloodbaths, despite what anti-gun advocates may hope for.

I have OFTEN had discussions on this matter with friends from Australia. Their gun attitude is similar to the UK. It always amazes me how different we are, culturally, on this matter. The Aussies in the office thought the gun-totin' Americans were just INSANE, while we thought they were crazy for not caring about personal freedom, self defense, government control, etc. But we still managed to get along. :)