Why illegalizing guns will not work in the U.S

[Something Amyss]

With all the talk of guns and shootings recently I've read allot of posts from users oversees that suggest we simply make guns illegal in the U.S. The problem is it just wont work, guns have become an enormous part of america's culture and are apart of the nation's heritage/identity.

So was slavery. People said it couldn't happen, either.

 

[tangoprime]

America hasn't tried banning guns and committing to it, have they? Seems to me that nothing else has worked so far. Could be worth a try.

When guns were banned in Australia, the murder rate dropped on par with that of the United States in the following 5 years. But violent crime went up 42.2%. Rape went up 29.9%. No thanks.

I fully believe you, disarming citizens is a retarded idea, but could I get a source on these numbers?

Sure, I've posted a few times in earlier posts, but here you go: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=17847

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

First I want to recommend a book "Deer hunting with Jesus" that I had to read in college. The author grew up in a very conservative home and is a "cultural defector" if you will. This book will give you an insight into the U.S gun culture, its also very funny.

With all the talk of guns and shootings recently I've read allot of posts from users oversees that suggest we simply make guns illegal in the U.S. The problem is it just wont work, guns have become an enormous part of america's culture and are apart of the nation's heritage/identity. I don't identify with the subculture that is obsessed with guns but I know people who are and if guns were made illegal there would be very large, very dangerous, armed riots all over the country.

Secondly there are huge, powerful lobbying groups that spend billions to maintain influence in Washington and they will not see the day when guns become illegal.

Gun laws and control might work but making guns completely illegal is not an option anymore.

1) While you are correct that going from your current gun laws (ie practically nothing baring a few progressive states) to a total ban would cause chaos, most people are advocating...

2) At very least an Assault weapon ban, until 1994 such a ban was in place until it was allowed to lapse.

 

[dagens24]

I've been angry enough that if I had a gun infront of me somebody, myself at the very least, would be dead.

Making guns harder to obtain cuts down on situations such as this; momentary rage murders.

I don't think banning guns all together is the solution, but surely limiting who has access to them is a good idea.

 

[ninjaRiv]

Is this relevant? I think it is. Quite.

http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/38187184067/on-march-13-1995-in-the-small-scottish-town-of

 

[ThreeWords]

First I want to recommend a book "Deer hunting with Jesus" that I had to read in college. The author grew up in a very conservative home and is a "cultural defector" if you will. This book will give you an insight into the U.S gun culture, its also very funny.

With all the talk of guns and shootings recently I've read allot of posts from users oversees that suggest we simply make guns illegal in the U.S. The problem is it just wont work, guns have become an enormous part of america's culture and are apart of the nation's heritage/identity. I don't identify with the subculture that is obsessed with guns but I know people who are and if guns were made illegal there would be very large, very dangerous, armed riots all over the country.

Secondly there are huge, powerful lobbying groups that spend billions to maintain influence in Washington and they will not see the day when guns become illegal.

Gun laws and control might work but making guns completely illegal is not an option anymore.

Y'know, I'm not entirely sure that having a cultural heritage involving weapons is entirely a good thing. It might, to an outsider, sound like exactly what you would be trying to prevent by banning firearms.
And personally, the idea of denying people the means for "very large, very dangerous, armed riots all over the country" seems pretty wise to me.

Of course, I am not a USA citizen. But then again, I think it's a bad sign that you can tell a American TV drama when the good guys carry the means to quickly and easily end a life. And the do so casually, as a matter of course.

 

[Vegosiux]

I've been angry enough that if I had a gun infront of me somebody, myself at the very least, would be dead.

Making guns harder to obtain cuts down on situations such as this; momentary rage murders.

I don't think banning guns all together is the solution, but surely limiting who has access to them is a good idea.

Yeah and that's why states with large gun control tends to have the highest crime, tend to have the most mass shooting, and tend to get the most gun homicide. Say compared to states where lax gun restriction means less crime, barely any mass shooting, and having a lower gun homicide.

I asked you for a source on that before, in order to put the numbers in context. You failed to deliver. Right now it looks as if you painted a noticeable red circle on the ass of an elephant, and are trying to prove the elephant is, in fact, red, by trying to make us ignore the rest of it, except for that red circle.

 

[Ushiromiya Battler]

Am I the only one that has noticed how silly the argument ''Make guns illegal, like criminals cares about illegal'' or whatever it is named, when pretty much every massacre that turn up the guns were bought legally by people who where pretty much normal people till something said pop in their head?

They didn't become criminals before they did the shooting.

And yes, ban all guns is damn silly, you can't do that in a country ruled by their guns.
What you can do is make sure the bloody teenagers don't get the guns or at least make anything more powerful than a handgun illegal unless it comes to hunting/sports...etc..

And for christs sake, lock those damn guns in a locker where your stupid crazy kids can't get a hold of them.

And, I'm out...

 

[dagens24]

Yeah and that's why states with large gun control tends to have the highest crime, tend to have the most mass shooting, and tend to get the most gun homicide. Say compared to states where lax gun restriction means less crime, barely any mass shooting, and having a lower gun homicide.

Trying to distinguish between US states, or even worse, cities, is a pointless excersize since they share the same prevalence of firearms. In short, the US is one geographical unit when it comes to gun crime, and one can't compare it to itself.

Countries with and without a gun ban show remarkable differences in violent crime though. The showcase of the gun lobby is Switserland, but if you take into account population density and wealth, they have a soaring violent crime rate, and especially family dramas are about a weekly occurance there, because there's guns in every household, so any domestic dispute is at all times mere seconds away from turning into a massacre.

Yesterday figures were revealed in Belgium that showed the number of gun related deaths, especially suicides, were cut in half since their tightening of weapon laws in 2006. I looked it up, and there was no equivalent rise in non-firearm related deaths. The number of suicides decreased sharply and didn't return to the pre-2006 level, despite the economic crisis occuring during that time period.

Australia too tightened their weapon laws dramatically following several spree shootings, and they've not had any such shootings since, and Australian crime statistics too show that an increase in other methods of for instance homicide, do not show the same increase as the firearms decrease, meaning that the ban is indeed saving lives.

There's very little to stop cross state gun flow of firearms as opposed to cross country flow; that may well be a factor. Certainly there is large body of evidence that, when examined on a macro scale ie country by country, those with stricter firearms laws have, on average, less gun related violence. Beyond that there are all kinds of social and economy elements that come into play. But for the situation I've described there is no doubt that having a gun in the house vs not having a gun in the house will play an important factor into that type of violent crime or gun related accidents. Children, for example, cannot accidentally shoot themselves or friends when they don't have access to gun (legal or illegal); stricter gun laws would absolutely cut down of this type of issue.

 

[the clockmaker]

What is an untrained civilian popolous going to do against a fucking TANK
Most people in the US are reasoned enough to give up something at gun point.

tell that to the Al Queda who go against the strongest military in the world with a bunch of household suppplies turned into bombs.

For the love of.....

The vast, vast vast majority of old AQ is dead, so dead in fact that you never hear of the old organisation anymore, it is AQ in the arabian peninsula, a splinter faction with a fraction of the power and influence. As it turns out, fighting an insurgency like that has an insanely high casualty rate that relies soley on the enemies culture being less able to absorb casualties (so big hint, IT DOESN'T WORK AGAINST THE SAME CULTURE)

On top of that, AQ spent a long time and a lot of money training, funding and coordinating its fighters into something like a fighting force, a level of cohesion and training that all you in your head insurgents don't have.

On top of that, AQ was never the main threat in Iraq and it certaintly isn't in Afghanistan (Mahdi army and Taliban/Narco insurgents/local warlord blend respectively)

On top of that, AQ sourced its fighters from cultures that A- place a lot less value on 'me and my rights' and B- are used to a lot more hardship than your average yank and therefore could last longer out in the field, take greater personal risks and show a lot more willingness to continue the fight after setbacks.

On top of that, before AQ was effectively destroyed as a fighting force (and the majority of its fighters killed or absorbed into other organisations) it failed to complete a single one of its long term goals. There is safe haven for it and groups like it in afghanistan, Iraq's government did not fall, there is no caliphate taking hold. AQ failed in every way that it is possible to fail and it begs the question of why you would use them as an example.

On top of that, in the Mid east, the Nato forces are the outsider, they are the interloper with a limited understanding of local culture, traditions and desires, so one of the insurgents largest advantages vanishes when Nato is fighting on its own turf.

Can we have a moratorium on using war on terror anecdotes until people educate themselves a bit more?

 

[J Tyran]

I'll have to repeat myself from your other topic, because my point still stands.

Ban all guns! Ignore the fact that there are literally millions, if not billions, of guns in the U.S., a good deal of which are in the hands of private owners! The U.K. did it! Never mind the fact that the U.K. has about a quarter of the population and 2 percent of the area. If one country can do it, every country can!

The UK didn't ban all guns, they let farmers have shotguns, which is why the sawn-off has risen in popularity with British criminals.
They could have specified that guns that could easily be modified to be concealable were also not allowed, but they didn't think things through.

Shotguns are one of the most used firearms in the UK but converted pistols are common as well. Criminals would take certain blank firing and air pistols and convert them to fire live ammunition, the home office had to change the law to ban those as well. Generally the firearm bans works in the UK, the three worst mass shootings in the UK all used legally owned firearms.

But those cases where also a failure in existing legislation, for example why did a taxi driver living in a terraced house in a town and was not a member of a gun or hunting club need to own several high powered (by UK standards) hunting rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition? Why wasn't his fragile mental state questioned? To hold a gun license the police are supposed to examine the circumstances of the owner and have reports about their psychiatric state. All of this failed and it cost lives.

Oh and to the UK people that keep saying we never had a school shooting, unfortunately we did. In 1996 a nutter walked into a primary school carrying several handguns and gunned down 17 people, 16 of them where children. This was another failure of existing legislation but led to a ban of handguns and tougher enforcement of existing laws.

 

[Friendly Lich]

America hasn't tried banning guns and committing to it, have they? Seems to me that nothing else has worked so far. Could be worth a try.

When guns were banned in Australia, the murder rate dropped on par with that of the United States in the following 5 years. But violent crime went up 42.2%. Rape went up 29.9%. No thanks.

That is an interesting piece of information. Where did you find it?