spartan231490 said:Nevermind the fact that the murder rate in the UK has been skyrocketing ever since. Nevermind the fact that study after study shows that gun control has no meaningful impact on crime rates.
Wikipedia then notes that "Firearms statistics in England and Wales include airguns and imitations guns, which make up a high proportion of these recorded offences" Which is correct (4000 of those offences were air-guns) So the UK's gun crime has been falling after the increased restrictions, on gun control, consecutively, for years.The Statistical News Release Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence 2010/11: Supplementary Volume 2 to Crime in England and Wales 2010/11
In 2012 the Home Office reported that, "in 2010/11, firearms were involved in 11,227 recorded offences in England and Wales, the seventh consecutive annual fall".
Maybe so, but America clearly has a huge problem with school shootings not present anywhere else in the world. This year (2012) America had 6 incidents of guns being used in school (mainly only as a weapon of suicide) and one with a knife. The rest of the world have had one incident this year. Just look at the sheer distribution of school shootings in the Wikipedia article about it: America get their own separate page to list their shootings, which dwarves the lists of the other continents. There is a big problem in the US, and it seems to be getting worse.spartan231490 said:Nevermind the fact that 3 of the 4 deadliest elementary school shootings took place in the UK or Germany.
Oh I agree completely. The most common cause of death by white males aged 28-30 is suicide. Clearly something is seriously wrong with the way our society is treating mental health issues, this is a huge problem, and one that I would say is very much a main cause of these school shootings. A better infrastructure of mental care must be created for people, and this is perhaps more needed than gun control because it is such a widespread problem that will, if it is successful, do a lot to help reduce school shootings, but I also think it would be very much worthwhile to reduce the ease with which guns can be obtained by people.spartan231490 said:Nevermind the fact that you might actually be able to stop these mass shootings and even reduce the overall crime rate by improving the US mental health system beyond it's current, incomprehensibly in-effective state, nevermind all these facts and just go with the knee-jerk reaction of banning guns and watch things get even worse than they were in the early 90's.
According to this website: http://mortality-rates.findthedata.org/l/14990/Accidental-discharge-of-firearms It averages at 747 people per year killed by accidental misfire, which is no small amount.spartan231490 said:Oh really?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre
Also, don't even talk about the "huge amount of death caused by accidental discharge of guns every year in the US." That is a lie. Only a few hundred people a year die in the US because of accidents involving guns, and that includes mis-fires and drunk hunters shooting their hunting buddies. More people accidentally poison themselves than die from an accidental discharge. The idea that guns are these dangerous things that will just decide to fire on their own is a lie, that has been told to you by the anti-gun community to scare you over to their side.
This Wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
Includes accidental deaths, with a population average death rate thingymibob, to average everyone's out for comparison. The US had 0.27 accidental discharge deaths per thousand, (11th from top overall) the U.K had 0.1. [EDIT: It's 0.01, derp] (11th from bottom overall) That IS a big difference, in fact there is a huge difference in every figure.
Australia had a huge gun culture, much like the US's, until a terrible mass shooting there, this article explains it better than I could: http://world.time.com/2012/12/17/when-massacres-force-change-lessons-from-the-u-k-and-australia/?iid=gs-main-lead.
If you look back at the wiki chart, you'll see Australia a good 3/4 of the way down the chart, with very little gun crime and related deaths compared to America, and no Mass shootings since, so it can happen in a very pro-gun area. No other first world country has as much gun related crime or death as America, no other country has as many school shootings, there is a reason for that, and a solution, yes it requires not just a change of law on weapons, but a change of attitude as well, and an addressing of the issues of why young American males are taking their own lives and the lives of others in these 'events', but it'll take all those things to properly make an impact on these horrific incidents.