Indeed. Something like this happens and every flips out over a statistical drop in the bucket. The media in this country has gone totally off the rails.
It's no different than the anger if there was a list published of who owns gold and how much. It's pointing out that we own something valuable that criminals want because of spite and fear.
You're assuming that Americans don't have a variety of social issues unrelated to guns. We have a high crime rate and WILL have a high crime rate regardless of whether or not we have guns, the fact that most european countries have vastly lower crime rates has no bearing on whether or not guns are a deterrent to crime in America.
From what I've seen of that incident it appears that he wasn't trying to kill them, or if he was he was horribly incompetent at it. I've seen references to multiple times where mass murders of schoolchildren were successfully carried out with knives/axes in China.
Those number are slightly different than the ones I saw before, probably because the year is starting in the middle on those charts. It's nice you didn't have any massacres, I'm sure that's consolation to the higher number of people who died in '98-'02, at least they can know they died alone. I wonder if you have insight to what happened in '02, the numbers I saw indicated that most crime dropped like a rock around then, it looks like that was far more effective than the gun ban in preventing crime.
"Surely, the self-defense argument is voided if there are no guns with which to attack you." I loled heartily, taking away guns in Britain and Australia caused significant increases in violent crime. Without guns the physically powerful can act with near impunity as they don't fear retaliation.
"And I'd have thought the sacrifice of gun-sports would be a small price to pay for any kind of reduction in the number of school shootings." It's not just shooting sports, it's self-defense, defense of the nation (against external OR internal threats), and it's freedom. More to the point it's addressing the symptom rather than the disease.
Hows the overall murder rate? My understanding is that it went UP after the gun ban. The latest number I saw are down but it took 6 years. Gun crime dropped immediately, murders stayed high until about 6 years later. I doubt there's causation between a drop 6 years after the ban.
Compare the homicide rates in Australia pre and post-ban. They went up, slightly, but up. Guns aren't the problem, taking them away won't stop murders, probably won't have a significant positive impact at all on crime. Of course GUN crime would go down, which people would trumpet as proof of the new utopia.
We already HAVE "responsible gun regulation", we just have terrible social issues that cause violence.
Depends on what you mean by "successfully implemented", if you mean the people were disarmed then yes, if you mean violence decreased not so much. Australia saw an increase in murders (albeit a small one) after the ban and a significant increase of non-murder violent crime. I haven't seen numbers for murder in Britain pre and post ban but I have seen non-murder violent crime and it skyrocketed post-ban.
I haven't seen murder rates in Britain pre- and post-ban, but the general violent crime rates of Britain and Australia and the murder rates in Australia seem to indicate that those things don't make us LESS safe either. Guns are tools of violence, not the cause, we will be violent (and yes that includes murder) until we solve our social issues, regardless of the availability of guns.
Above there's a post with a quote from one of the writers of the Constitution wherein he states that "the militia" is everyone. The "shall not be infringed" part of the amendment is attached to "the people" not the "well regulated militia". Others here have posted statements that the word "regulated" would be more accurately translated to "trained" today.
What happened to the murder rate and overall violent crime rate after the ban? I was under the impression that stopping violence was the goal, not just disarming people, everything I've seen indicates that murder rates went UP (albeit slightly) for several years after the ban and didn't start to drop until about 6 years after, property crimes and other violent crimes went up as well.
The buyback may have worked if the goal was to remove guns, but it didn't work if the goal was to reduce crime.
Gun violence is drastically lowered, violence isn't. I was reading a report earlier about how homicide went UP in Australia after the gun ban. Sure they weren't killed with guns, but dead is dead.
Automatic weapons are rare in civilian violence because they are more expensive to buy (even when unrestricted), more expensive to practice with, more expensive to use, usually larger (machine pistols exist, but they're pretty rare) and for most purposes LESS effective.
Slashdot Mirror
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
Most likely it's a typo
Wake-on-LAN
Indeed. Something like this happens and every flips out over a statistical drop in the bucket. The media in this country has gone totally off the rails.
Because the number of people who have defended themselves against criminals or overthrown their oppressive governments is 0, right?
The point
Your head
It's no different than the anger if there was a list published of who owns gold and how much. It's pointing out that we own something valuable that criminals want because of spite and fear.
You're assuming that Americans don't have a variety of social issues unrelated to guns. We have a high crime rate and WILL have a high crime rate regardless of whether or not we have guns, the fact that most european countries have vastly lower crime rates has no bearing on whether or not guns are a deterrent to crime in America.
Out when I'm at home, in when I'm not.
I don't support his analogy, but I'd point out that legal != responsible, or good, or right.
Less likely to be robbed while the homeowners are present because of danger.
More likely to be robbed when not present because of value.
From what I've seen of that incident it appears that he wasn't trying to kill them, or if he was he was horribly incompetent at it. I've seen references to multiple times where mass murders of schoolchildren were successfully carried out with knives/axes in China.
But it wasn't a gun, so it doesn't matter. Don't you know? Only guns are dangerous.
Oh come on, VLC isn't THAT bad.
Those number are slightly different than the ones I saw before, probably because the year is starting in the middle on those charts. It's nice you didn't have any massacres, I'm sure that's consolation to the higher number of people who died in '98-'02, at least they can know they died alone. I wonder if you have insight to what happened in '02, the numbers I saw indicated that most crime dropped like a rock around then, it looks like that was far more effective than the gun ban in preventing crime.
"Surely, the self-defense argument is voided if there are no guns with which to attack you."
I loled heartily, taking away guns in Britain and Australia caused significant increases in violent crime. Without guns the physically powerful can act with near impunity as they don't fear retaliation.
"And I'd have thought the sacrifice of gun-sports would be a small price to pay for any kind of reduction in the number of school shootings."
It's not just shooting sports, it's self-defense, defense of the nation (against external OR internal threats), and it's freedom. More to the point it's addressing the symptom rather than the disease.
Hows the overall murder rate? My understanding is that it went UP after the gun ban. The latest number I saw are down but it took 6 years. Gun crime dropped immediately, murders stayed high until about 6 years later. I doubt there's causation between a drop 6 years after the ban.
That's not counting non-murder crime either.
Compare the homicide rates in Australia pre and post-ban. They went up, slightly, but up. Guns aren't the problem, taking them away won't stop murders, probably won't have a significant positive impact at all on crime. Of course GUN crime would go down, which people would trumpet as proof of the new utopia.
We already HAVE "responsible gun regulation", we just have terrible social issues that cause violence.
How many murders in the years before the ban? How many murders in the years after?
Please note, we're talking about all murders, not just gun murders.
Depends on what you mean by "successfully implemented", if you mean the people were disarmed then yes, if you mean violence decreased not so much. Australia saw an increase in murders (albeit a small one) after the ban and a significant increase of non-murder violent crime. I haven't seen numbers for murder in Britain pre and post ban but I have seen non-murder violent crime and it skyrocketed post-ban.
I haven't seen murder rates in Britain pre- and post-ban, but the general violent crime rates of Britain and Australia and the murder rates in Australia seem to indicate that those things don't make us LESS safe either. Guns are tools of violence, not the cause, we will be violent (and yes that includes murder) until we solve our social issues, regardless of the availability of guns.
How did the overall murder and crime rates go?
Above there's a post with a quote from one of the writers of the Constitution wherein he states that "the militia" is everyone. The "shall not be infringed" part of the amendment is attached to "the people" not the "well regulated militia". Others here have posted statements that the word "regulated" would be more accurately translated to "trained" today.
What happened to the murder rate and overall violent crime rate after the ban? I was under the impression that stopping violence was the goal, not just disarming people, everything I've seen indicates that murder rates went UP (albeit slightly) for several years after the ban and didn't start to drop until about 6 years after, property crimes and other violent crimes went up as well.
The buyback may have worked if the goal was to remove guns, but it didn't work if the goal was to reduce crime.
You'll note that the "shall not be infringed" is on the part referring to the people, not the militia.
Gun violence is drastically lowered, violence isn't. I was reading a report earlier about how homicide went UP in Australia after the gun ban. Sure they weren't killed with guns, but dead is dead.
Automatic weapons are rare in civilian violence because they are more expensive to buy (even when unrestricted), more expensive to practice with, more expensive to use, usually larger (machine pistols exist, but they're pretty rare) and for most purposes LESS effective.