I'd think that in order to contain them, provoking them would be counter-productive.
Containment doesn't work. We know that. History (of which you have apparently read none) shows this. Provocation works. If provocation fails, provoke some more. Remember the four boxes. Soap, ballot, jury and ammo. In that order. He was trying the "soap". Failing that, he shoudl move to ballot, failing that, if there is a functional justice system, jury. All else failing, time to shoot someone.
It makes a lot of sense that in a country where so many religious enthusiasts live, that doing anything which would push them into action would be a very bad idea
Yes, tell that to the Venetians who pulled Europe out of the Dark Ages. They should not have bothered. Witch burning and religious fundamentalism was so much more fun.
This, by the way, is why we have the right to criticize the fundies in, for example, Egypt. Not because we were always better. Because we were just as dumb and ignorant and homicidal as them, but we learned from it and grew up (as a society).
I just saw a documentry on ancient Alexandria last night with that historian hotty, Betteny Hughes [google.com], and how it and Egypt was the center of learning, knowledge, multicultural and tolerant of others.
Depends on when, but for quite a while they were non-Christian, non-Muslim Europeans (Greeks mostly). That helps.
For example, a belief in a superior race can come across both through religion (we are divinely appointed to rule X people) or without religion (we are ethnically more evolved, thus making us best suited to rule X people).
Ah, but you see, there is still a fundamental difference, and that is what makes religion so bad. The former can not, and will not, change unless you alter the texts that state what is stated. The latter can change with new data. That is what Christians often call moral relativity, claiming they have no such thing, and then professing it being bad. It is not. Moral relativity shows that I am willing to change my opinion based on reality. The opposite says that you are sticking to your moral guns no matter what the reality is.
Sadly, Christians employ moral relativity at will, for example when it comes to killing people, showing that the only thing religion will give you is double standards and (according to the data) a less moral life.
Religious people claim the right to define what is and what is not morally right, the right to claim it in the name of God and in the name of the whole of humanity, for the whole of humanity
Not only that, they also demand to be taken seriously when they fail to live up to those standards at a higher rate than atheists. Remember, by Christian moral standards, removing the superstition items (like it being a-moral to not believe) Christians are far less moral than atheists. In all measurable ways. They commit more crimes, spend more time in jail, get divorced at a higher rate, have more abortions etc.
Religion is only good at making people believe double standards are good. Nothing else.
This only shows that Christians spend more time trying to atone for perceived sins than atheists. They should. Christians generally behave (according to Christian moral standards) far less moral than atheists. They have a higher divorce rate (among conservative Christians a significantly higher divorce rate), they commit more crimes, murder more people, have more abortions etc than atheists.
Christians give more to charities because they feel guilty about being such monstrously a-moral beings. They should if they feel better after paying to rid them selves of their sins (which Jesus took offence to). They could go one better though, they could shed their superstition, become atheists, and in the process, live by higher moral standards than before.
In reality, Christian beliefs generally lead to more double standards, but not a more moral life. In fact, in almost all measurable ways, atheists lead a more moral life than Christians or just about any religious people.
The fact that people who are guided by magical thinking are less moral than people guided by logic and reason should not be all that surprising. Magical thinking means you can justify just about anything. Think about it, the group of people in the US that is most strongly advocating that abortion should be a crime is the same group of people that have the most abortions! It takes an enormous amount of mental disconnect to behave that stupid.
Atheists condemn all religions on the actions of a few
They don't, so your attempt at making a point becomes ridiculous. The fact that you believe that atheism is somehow tied to Stalinism just shows that you are an ignorant idiot. As someone else said - Stalin also didn't collect stamps, which makes him an a-philatelist. Why not pin his actions on his a-philatelism? Here is an idea: Pin his actions on the ideas he had that lead to his actions. Such as his belief in him self as the only competent world ruler.
Well, since the chance of getting killed by an asteroid is higher than getting killed by a terrorist, why not spend the same amount of money on preventing each? Also, the technology gains from investing in the prevention of asteroid attacks could also further the technologies needed to mitigate (not prevent) a GRB attack (seeding with arks for example).
Ah, sorry, the lottery is a serious long-shot compared to death by asteroid. The reason is, given the right asteroid, when someone wins, everybody wins. it's a little bit as if, as the mega jackpot gets bigger and bigger, the number of people who will win the entire thing when the numbers go right increases each time. So, what is the chance? About 1:700K. Doesn't sound like a lot.
You are more likely to die in a fireworks accident, but you are less likely to die by terrorist attack than you are to die by asteroid strike. So, why don't we agree that we'll spend accordingly. We'll spend as much preventing asteroid attacks as we currently spend preventing terrorist attacks. That sounds reasonable to me.
the dumbest thing we could do is establish colonies in another planet's gravity well. It would be much smarter to build the colonies on... near earth asteroids
Slight disagreement, but mostly in agreement. It would however be even dumber to establish colonies outside of a planetary magnetic field, given the rather cheap protection from radiation these provide. At least until we can create habitats that are large enough to them selves protect us from radiation, which is a ways away yet:-)
You find no racism in my post whatsoever. Just because you have religion, please do not lie about what others say. Data is data, it is neither racist nor sexist, it just is. If I said that the reason African Americans shoot other African Americans in rather high number is due to race, I might be treading into racist territory, but supplying data is not.
There is no indication whatsoever that black-on-black killings are caused by race, quite the opposite, it is most likely a result of societal factors. They are still black-on-black killings though. If that is racism, then statistics is racist. Not me.
Oh, my bad. Since, you know, finding guns in Europe is almost impossible. Right? Moron.
You're too much of an idiot to distinguish between the UK and Australia
Ah, yes, you are right, that was my bad. I should have spent a little more time on that one. Completely missed it. I also missed this salient fact:
Since the stronger restrictions on guns in the UK was enacted in 1997, the number of gun crimes in the UK has basically sky rocketed. "The number of crimes in which a handgun was used in England and Wales has risen from 299 in 1995 to 1,024 [in 2006]. Offenses committed with all types of firearms, including air guns, have also increased" (here). Now the number of deaths have not increased as much, that number appears to be unaffected by the gun laws and the number of deaths have stayed the same "According to government statistics, the number of people killed by guns has essentially stayed the same, with dips and spikes, as before the 1997 gun control laws went into effect" (same article).
Yeah, you are right. The 1997 law had a tremendous effect. On nothing at all related to crime.
Please, share with us all the data that shows correlations. Please. Be so kind.
Interesting comment. You have not provided a single datapoint for your absurd notions. The lists you provide above support the notion that, on a country level, there is no relationship between gun ownership (which gun control tends to, you know, control) and gun related crimes. In fact, most of the countries with the highest level of gun crimes are among the countries with the lowest level of gun ownership.
I love people who provide no data whatsoever, only ad-hominem attacks. You sir have just proven that you are much more of a moron than I am.
It is a little difficult to understand what you mean since you answer without indicating what you are answering.
The US is number one, per capita
Yes, the US is. In gun ownership. Not in gun crimes. Not even close. The countries on the top of the list of gun-related homicides mostly have very low levels of gun ownership.
There is a small problem with the article, though I hear that may no longer be as relevant.
Quote from the article: "dividing the total amount of civilian owned guns in a nation by the total population of that nation". My emphasis. Now, having lived abroad for a while, I was not aware of a small change in the Norwegian defense policies, but let me explain where the article misses something. In Norway you have something similar to the US National Guard. It means that a portion, it was rather high when I was included in that portion, of the population keeps a military uniform, a gun and other items in his house in case of an invasion. Those guns are not part of this statistics.
Apparently, the Defense Ministry have now asked those guns be stored in appropriate locations outside of peoples homes. I was not aware of this. The gun "ownership" in Norway is therefore probably rather close to what your article describes.
HOWEVER - that brings up a rather significant point. If the anti-gun lobby is right, the gun-related murder rate in Norway should show a rather significant decline in the past decade or so. Given recent events, that seems unlikely.
Which brings us to the point, given the rather high gun ownership rate in Norway, and the lack of a significant drop in gun related murders when a significant number of guns was removed from Norwegian homes, why do we have such a low murder rate in general and such a low rate of gun-related violence?
A highly egalitarian society is probably the most significant factor. You could go as far as to say that there are no areas in Norway that you would consider "bad" for growing up. There are the typical east-side/west-side differences, but the differences from top to bottom in Norway would be similar to the differences within an egalitarian upper-middle class suburban community in the US.
If rightwingers seriously want to go back to a system where everything was paid for by rich patrons as and when they saw fit
I have no such desire, though I am a right-winger. I would like to go back to a society where the levying happened in such a way that it was efficient and prevented perpetual growth of the government. Remember, income tax is a rather novel concept as a permanent construct. One that didn't exist in times when the government also funded things like you mention.
Yes, that is an interesting list. It shows no correlation. In fact, it completely dispels the myth that there is a correlation across countries. Almost all of the countries with the highest gun-homicide rate is on the lower end of the list when it comes to gun ownership. Countries like Honduras and El Salvador with about 6 guns per 100 citizen top the list of gun-related violence.
Now, the Atlantic article is about as interesting. If you remove all guns from a society, yes, then you will (quite obviously) remove gun violence. Sadly you have also removed a lot of civil liberties. Also, removing all the guns doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on overall murder rate. Japan and Norway have similar murder rates, but are on the opposite end of the scale when it comes to gun ownership. For example.
So, since there is, according to you, plenty of statistics, why don't you show me some?
It's because so many people own guns in Norway that there is so little gun crime.
No, it isn't. We have so little gun crime in Norway because it is a very egalitarian society. It has nothing to do with guns. Guns do not contribute one way or the other to the level of crime. In the case there is a correlation it is extremely weak. There are completely different factors that affect crime rates.
As I have said, and believe me, this is not at all meant to be racist, just a statement of fact, if you remove black-on-black killings in the US, the US homicide rate drops to a perfectly normal European level. That has nothing to do with skin color but it has everything to do with other societal factors in the African American community. Factors that you are not allowed to discuss in public. Sadly.
Now for the list of low possession rates
South Africa: 13.1, 37
Turkey: 13.0, 6.94
Argentina: 12.6, 5.27
Italy: 12.1, 1.06
Pakistan: 12.0, 6.86
Spain: 11.0, 1.2
Russia: 9.0, 14.9
Ukraine: 9.0, 7.04
Brazil: 8.8, 25.2
Colombia: 7.2, 35
UK: 5.6, 1.49
Iran: 5.3, 2.93
Philippines: 4.7, 3.82
India: 4.0, 2.82
China: 3.5, 2.36
By all means, show the correlation. I'd love to see, for example, the explanation for South Africa.
Also, take away black-on-black gun homicides in the US, and the US rate drops to about that of Sweden. Is the gun ownership rate among African Americans that much higher than among non-African Americans? If you wonder, the answer is, not even close.
"Not that tight" is the purest bullshit I've seen in a while.
I have taken my car to the UK a number of times in years past. It has never been searched. I have also never seen any car being searched during or after the crossing. The majority of searches happens on commercial vehicles. Anecdotal, yes, but a few years back I used to go across quite frequently. Are you saying that a majority of cars going into the UK are searched by border officials? If so, there must be a huge number of border patrol agents. More than there are police officers in London I'd say.
gun laws were significantly tightened up in the UK in 1997, and since then gun related homicides have fallen, completely contradicting your claims of no evidence of correlation
Really. In 2006, Dr Jeanine Baker and Dr Samara McPhedran found no measurable effect of the gun legislation, but in subsequent years the number of gun related homicides started falling. So, it took ten years before the law had an effect? Not very likely. More likely, other factors came into play towards the end of the last decade. But hey, I am sure you can produce data that shows a correlation post 1997, preferably one that took a little less than a decade to manifest it self.
Really? There is no such evidence? Is there evidence showing a connection then?
In the following, the author documents why all the gun myths are wrong with references to studies and data. The following graphic shows the murder rate and gun ownership relationship for the states in the US, if you have problems reading graphs you will see that if there is a trend it is negative. The sad, sad truth is that there is a much stronger relationship between African American population size and murder than there is between gun ownership and murder rate. In fact, if you take black-on-black killings out of the US statistics on gun homicides, the level of homicides in the US is equivalent to that of Sweden or so (varying year over year of course).
So, in one sense you are right, you can't prove a negative, but then again, there is no data showing a relationship between gun ownership and homicide rates is there?
Slashdot Mirror
I'd think that in order to contain them, provoking them would be counter-productive.
Containment doesn't work. We know that. History (of which you have apparently read none) shows this. Provocation works. If provocation fails, provoke some more. Remember the four boxes. Soap, ballot, jury and ammo. In that order. He was trying the "soap". Failing that, he shoudl move to ballot, failing that, if there is a functional justice system, jury. All else failing, time to shoot someone.
It makes a lot of sense that in a country where so many religious enthusiasts live, that doing anything which would push them into action would be a very bad idea
Yes, tell that to the Venetians who pulled Europe out of the Dark Ages. They should not have bothered. Witch burning and religious fundamentalism was so much more fun.
This, by the way, is why we have the right to criticize the fundies in, for example, Egypt. Not because we were always better. Because we were just as dumb and ignorant and homicidal as them, but we learned from it and grew up (as a society).
I just saw a documentry on ancient Alexandria last night with that historian hotty, Betteny Hughes [google.com], and how it and Egypt was the center of learning, knowledge, multicultural and tolerant of others.
Depends on when, but for quite a while they were non-Christian, non-Muslim Europeans (Greeks mostly). That helps.
For example, a belief in a superior race can come across both through religion (we are divinely appointed to rule X people) or without religion (we are ethnically more evolved, thus making us best suited to rule X people).
Ah, but you see, there is still a fundamental difference, and that is what makes religion so bad. The former can not, and will not, change unless you alter the texts that state what is stated. The latter can change with new data. That is what Christians often call moral relativity, claiming they have no such thing, and then professing it being bad. It is not. Moral relativity shows that I am willing to change my opinion based on reality. The opposite says that you are sticking to your moral guns no matter what the reality is.
Sadly, Christians employ moral relativity at will, for example when it comes to killing people, showing that the only thing religion will give you is double standards and (according to the data) a less moral life.
Religious people claim the right to define what is and what is not morally right, the right to claim it in the name of God and in the name of the whole of humanity, for the whole of humanity
Not only that, they also demand to be taken seriously when they fail to live up to those standards at a higher rate than atheists. Remember, by Christian moral standards, removing the superstition items (like it being a-moral to not believe) Christians are far less moral than atheists. In all measurable ways. They commit more crimes, spend more time in jail, get divorced at a higher rate, have more abortions etc.
Religion is only good at making people believe double standards are good. Nothing else.
This only shows that Christians spend more time trying to atone for perceived sins than atheists. They should. Christians generally behave (according to Christian moral standards) far less moral than atheists. They have a higher divorce rate (among conservative Christians a significantly higher divorce rate), they commit more crimes, murder more people, have more abortions etc than atheists.
Christians give more to charities because they feel guilty about being such monstrously a-moral beings. They should if they feel better after paying to rid them selves of their sins (which Jesus took offence to). They could go one better though, they could shed their superstition, become atheists, and in the process, live by higher moral standards than before.
Nobody, as far as I know, has ever claimed that a non-religious person can't perform moral acts as religious people do, merely that they don't.
They claim so, but they are wrong. Atheists generally behave morally far better than, for example, Christians. Christians commit more crimes, kill people more often, spend more time in jail, get divorced at a higher rate (and for Christian conservatives at a significantly higher rate) etc than atheists. Christians generally also have more abortions than does atheists even though the average atheist is more likely to be pro choice than the average Christian.
In reality, Christian beliefs generally lead to more double standards, but not a more moral life. In fact, in almost all measurable ways, atheists lead a more moral life than Christians or just about any religious people.
The fact that people who are guided by magical thinking are less moral than people guided by logic and reason should not be all that surprising. Magical thinking means you can justify just about anything. Think about it, the group of people in the US that is most strongly advocating that abortion should be a crime is the same group of people that have the most abortions! It takes an enormous amount of mental disconnect to behave that stupid.
the act was saying the requisite prayers
Not a moral act. Just random time-wasting.
Atheists condemn all religions on the actions of a few
They don't, so your attempt at making a point becomes ridiculous. The fact that you believe that atheism is somehow tied to Stalinism just shows that you are an ignorant idiot. As someone else said - Stalin also didn't collect stamps, which makes him an a-philatelist. Why not pin his actions on his a-philatelism? Here is an idea: Pin his actions on the ideas he had that lead to his actions. Such as his belief in him self as the only competent world ruler.
The fact that a devastating impact didn't happen yesterday does not increase the odds that it will happen today
BZZT! Wrong.
Well, since the chance of getting killed by an asteroid is higher than getting killed by a terrorist, why not spend the same amount of money on preventing each? Also, the technology gains from investing in the prevention of asteroid attacks could also further the technologies needed to mitigate (not prevent) a GRB attack (seeding with arks for example).
Ah, sorry, the lottery is a serious long-shot compared to death by asteroid. The reason is, given the right asteroid, when someone wins, everybody wins. it's a little bit as if, as the mega jackpot gets bigger and bigger, the number of people who will win the entire thing when the numbers go right increases each time. So, what is the chance? About 1:700K. Doesn't sound like a lot.
You are more likely to die in a fireworks accident, but you are less likely to die by terrorist attack than you are to die by asteroid strike. So, why don't we agree that we'll spend accordingly. We'll spend as much preventing asteroid attacks as we currently spend preventing terrorist attacks. That sounds reasonable to me.
the dumbest thing we could do is establish colonies in another planet's gravity well. It would be much smarter to build the colonies on ... near earth asteroids
Slight disagreement, but mostly in agreement. It would however be even dumber to establish colonies outside of a planetary magnetic field, given the rather cheap protection from radiation these provide. At least until we can create habitats that are large enough to them selves protect us from radiation, which is a ways away yet :-)
Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no"
And then you're off on the racism bit again
You find no racism in my post whatsoever. Just because you have religion, please do not lie about what others say. Data is data, it is neither racist nor sexist, it just is. If I said that the reason African Americans shoot other African Americans in rather high number is due to race, I might be treading into racist territory, but supplying data is not.
There is no indication whatsoever that black-on-black killings are caused by race, quite the opposite, it is most likely a result of societal factors. They are still black-on-black killings though. If that is racism, then statistics is racist. Not me.
from continental Europe
Oh, my bad. Since, you know, finding guns in Europe is almost impossible. Right? Moron.
You're too much of an idiot to distinguish between the UK and Australia
Ah, yes, you are right, that was my bad. I should have spent a little more time on that one. Completely missed it. I also missed this salient fact:
Since the stronger restrictions on guns in the UK was enacted in 1997, the number of gun crimes in the UK has basically sky rocketed. "The number of crimes in which a handgun was used in England and Wales has risen from 299 in 1995 to 1,024 [in 2006]. Offenses committed with all types of firearms, including air guns, have also increased" (here). Now the number of deaths have not increased as much, that number appears to be unaffected by the gun laws and the number of deaths have stayed the same "According to government statistics, the number of people killed by guns has essentially stayed the same, with dips and spikes, as before the 1997 gun control laws went into effect" (same article).
Yeah, you are right. The 1997 law had a tremendous effect. On nothing at all related to crime.
Please, share with us all the data that shows correlations. Please. Be so kind.
You are a moron
Interesting comment. You have not provided a single datapoint for your absurd notions. The lists you provide above support the notion that, on a country level, there is no relationship between gun ownership (which gun control tends to, you know, control) and gun related crimes. In fact, most of the countries with the highest level of gun crimes are among the countries with the lowest level of gun ownership.
I love people who provide no data whatsoever, only ad-hominem attacks. You sir have just proven that you are much more of a moron than I am.
It is a little difficult to understand what you mean since you answer without indicating what you are answering.
The US is number one, per capita
Yes, the US is. In gun ownership. Not in gun crimes. Not even close. The countries on the top of the list of gun-related homicides mostly have very low levels of gun ownership.
There is a small problem with the article, though I hear that may no longer be as relevant.
Quote from the article: "dividing the total amount of civilian owned guns in a nation by the total population of that nation". My emphasis. Now, having lived abroad for a while, I was not aware of a small change in the Norwegian defense policies, but let me explain where the article misses something. In Norway you have something similar to the US National Guard. It means that a portion, it was rather high when I was included in that portion, of the population keeps a military uniform, a gun and other items in his house in case of an invasion. Those guns are not part of this statistics.
Apparently, the Defense Ministry have now asked those guns be stored in appropriate locations outside of peoples homes. I was not aware of this. The gun "ownership" in Norway is therefore probably rather close to what your article describes.
HOWEVER - that brings up a rather significant point. If the anti-gun lobby is right, the gun-related murder rate in Norway should show a rather significant decline in the past decade or so. Given recent events, that seems unlikely.
Which brings us to the point, given the rather high gun ownership rate in Norway, and the lack of a significant drop in gun related murders when a significant number of guns was removed from Norwegian homes, why do we have such a low murder rate in general and such a low rate of gun-related violence?
A highly egalitarian society is probably the most significant factor. You could go as far as to say that there are no areas in Norway that you would consider "bad" for growing up. There are the typical east-side/west-side differences, but the differences from top to bottom in Norway would be similar to the differences within an egalitarian upper-middle class suburban community in the US.
If rightwingers seriously want to go back to a system where everything was paid for by rich patrons as and when they saw fit
I have no such desire, though I am a right-winger. I would like to go back to a society where the levying happened in such a way that it was efficient and prevented perpetual growth of the government. Remember, income tax is a rather novel concept as a permanent construct. One that didn't exist in times when the government also funded things like you mention.
When quoting stats, please quote stats that support your case... If you are trying to make a case I mean.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list
Yes, that is an interesting list. It shows no correlation. In fact, it completely dispels the myth that there is a correlation across countries. Almost all of the countries with the highest gun-homicide rate is on the lower end of the list when it comes to gun ownership. Countries like Honduras and El Salvador with about 6 guns per 100 citizen top the list of gun-related violence.
Now, the Atlantic article is about as interesting. If you remove all guns from a society, yes, then you will (quite obviously) remove gun violence. Sadly you have also removed a lot of civil liberties. Also, removing all the guns doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on overall murder rate. Japan and Norway have similar murder rates, but are on the opposite end of the scale when it comes to gun ownership. For example.
So, since there is, according to you, plenty of statistics, why don't you show me some?
It's because so many people own guns in Norway that there is so little gun crime.
No, it isn't. We have so little gun crime in Norway because it is a very egalitarian society. It has nothing to do with guns. Guns do not contribute one way or the other to the level of crime. In the case there is a correlation it is extremely weak. There are completely different factors that affect crime rates.
As I have said, and believe me, this is not at all meant to be racist, just a statement of fact, if you remove black-on-black killings in the US, the US homicide rate drops to a perfectly normal European level. That has nothing to do with skin color but it has everything to do with other societal factors in the African American community. Factors that you are not allowed to discuss in public. Sadly.
Some more data - though I know data doesn't convince the religious:
Gun ownership / murder rate top list:
USA: 90, 5.4
Yemen: 61, 3.98
Switzerland: 46, 1.01
Serbia: 37.5, 1.46
France: 32.0, 1.60
Finland: 32.0, 2.17
Greece: 31.8, 0.98
Canada: 31.5, 1.83
Sweden: 31.5, 0.92
Austria: 31, 0.73
Germany: 30, 0.86
New Zealand: 26.8, 2.00
Saudi Arabia: 26.3, 0.92
thailand: 16.0, 7.92
Australia: 15.5, 1.2
Mexico was the median, 15, 14
Now for the list of low possession rates
South Africa: 13.1, 37
Turkey: 13.0, 6.94
Argentina: 12.6, 5.27
Italy: 12.1, 1.06
Pakistan: 12.0, 6.86
Spain: 11.0, 1.2
Russia: 9.0, 14.9
Ukraine: 9.0, 7.04
Brazil: 8.8, 25.2
Colombia: 7.2, 35
UK: 5.6, 1.49
Iran: 5.3, 2.93
Philippines: 4.7, 3.82
India: 4.0, 2.82
China: 3.5, 2.36
By all means, show the correlation. I'd love to see, for example, the explanation for South Africa.
Also, take away black-on-black gun homicides in the US, and the US rate drops to about that of Sweden. Is the gun ownership rate among African Americans that much higher than among non-African Americans? If you wonder, the answer is, not even close.
"Not that tight" is the purest bullshit I've seen in a while.
I have taken my car to the UK a number of times in years past. It has never been searched. I have also never seen any car being searched during or after the crossing. The majority of searches happens on commercial vehicles. Anecdotal, yes, but a few years back I used to go across quite frequently. Are you saying that a majority of cars going into the UK are searched by border officials? If so, there must be a huge number of border patrol agents. More than there are police officers in London I'd say.
gun laws were significantly tightened up in the UK in 1997, and since then gun related homicides have fallen, completely contradicting your claims of no evidence of correlation
Really. In 2006, Dr Jeanine Baker and Dr Samara McPhedran found no measurable effect of the gun legislation, but in subsequent years the number of gun related homicides started falling. So, it took ten years before the law had an effect? Not very likely. More likely, other factors came into play towards the end of the last decade. But hey, I am sure you can produce data that shows a correlation post 1997, preferably one that took a little less than a decade to manifest it self.
Really? There is no such evidence? Is there evidence showing a connection then?
In the following, the author documents why all the gun myths are wrong with references to studies and data. The following graphic shows the murder rate and gun ownership relationship for the states in the US, if you have problems reading graphs you will see that if there is a trend it is negative. The sad, sad truth is that there is a much stronger relationship between African American population size and murder than there is between gun ownership and murder rate. In fact, if you take black-on-black killings out of the US statistics on gun homicides, the level of homicides in the US is equivalent to that of Sweden or so (varying year over year of course).
So, in one sense you are right, you can't prove a negative, but then again, there is no data showing a relationship between gun ownership and homicide rates is there?