In America, I’m glad there’s less gun control, but some states ban it, the mobsters,well… LOVING IT, the peaceful and innocent can’t have guns, for the criminals…THEY DO IT ANYWAY, your opinions everyone?
I agree. I wouldn’t mind banning automatic weapons and such, but let the people own handguns. I wouldn’t mind making them have a license, but the criminals are going to get them one way or another. Unless civilians started packing those beanbag guns or something.
Pretty sure that private ownership of handguns isn’t going to keep one safe from the mafia. Plus, as long as there’s any gun control, the “criminals will have access to the guns that the rest of us don’t” conclusion still follows–and yet, oddly enough, we aren’t currently being terrorized by AK-47-wielding criminals.
banning object a results in a scarcity of object a, therefore increasing the costs of getting object a. since there are a number of object a’s still around from when it was legal to get one, you have to wait for them to breakdown/get used up before you starve the populace of object a.
if object a is a handgun then it would become more difficult to get a handgun. since criminals use handguns to generate more money, they are willing to pay more to get one. so if you ban handguns, at first you will see criminals with handguns, while law abiding citizens will generally not have them. given enough time the number of criminals with handguns will diminish.
most people look for a result immediately upon passing a law, which is unrealistic. any state that has strong gun control laws ends up with less guns used in crimes, so long as you give enough time for the laws to take effect. one thing to note, is that a ban does not eliminate guns altogether (they are being produced somewhere in the world), and that it does nothing to stop violent crime in general (a criminal seeking a gun to use in a crime is a criminal first). as for guns stopping violent crime (used in defense), it is not a statistical relevancy, in fact it is more likely that the criminal will use the gun against you.
both sides of the issue operate on statistically false principals, the 2nd amendment demonstrates the real issue of gun control, whether or not the safety of a nation should rest in the hands of the people or the government. anyone that angers a large number of people probably doesn’t want them to have weapons, so if anyone doesn’t want people to have weapons they fear what the people might do if they are empowered, which tends to go hand in hand with the first amendment.
That turns out to be false. Illinois (Chicago) and New York (NYC) and DC (Washington) have the strongest gun control in the US, but they have the worst gun crime.
Apparently gun control disarms victims, not perps.
Washington DC enacted a handgun ban in 1976, chicago enacted it in 1982. Both saw a very sharp and rapid incline in the murder rate, regardless of weapon used.
All major spree shootings have taken place in places with gun bans in effect:
Colombine and Virginia Tech - covered by gun free school zone federal law enacted in 1990 and also enacted on a state level in most states
Aurora shooting and salt lake city mall shooting - posted gun free zones
There are many, many more examples. The simple truth is that a gun free zone with posted signs and all of that merely tells criminals that they have a safe work environment. They are setting out to rob and or murder, they aren’t going to care about some sign on a wall. Criminals don’t follow laws, by definition.
Gun legislation that has had a positive effect: background checks required to purchase; background checks, exam and qualification for carry license
Other gun legislation that fails: Registration, serialization, microstamping, bans on features, magazine limitations, may issue carry licenses
We can see a very similar correlation to alcohol regulation in US history - a complete ban instantly created a lucrative black market which enabled organized crime to grow and flourish at astounding rates. Later as it was pulled down from a complete ban to regulation via taxation, the black market mostly dissolved and switched to legitimate operation.
Gun regulation can be positive, but outright bans are a definite negative. Picture if you would, baring your throat to a wolf…
There’s a big difference between gun control, and gun-free zones.
Gun control means making it harder for people to get hold of a gun without first demonstrating they can be trusted. Examples would be only selling to adults, checking for a criminal record, or confirming that you have a valid reason for having a gun in the first place.
As an aside, it sometimes includes making a database of gun characteristics so you can tell whose gun was used in a crime.
One consequence of gun control is that it’s hard to carry out a gun crime “on impulse,” or even in a week or less, which gives people time to cool down and possibly make a different decision. But a more important point is that when it’s no longer “normal” to own a gun, there’s more of a social stigma against having one… people are less likely to make that choice in the first place.
On the other hand, a gun-free zone doesn’t make it harder to get a gun, or less socially acceptable - you can defend against it by hiding your gun in a pocket and walking in. Just because they’re not always stopping crimes, that doesn’t mean that gun control in general can’t be effective.
[size=85]EDIT: The “they” in the final sentence refers to “gun-free zones.” i.e. “Even if gun-free zones aren’t stopping crimes, that doesn’t mean that gun control in general can’t be effective.”[/size]
What passes for gun control in the US turns out to be counter-productive. Such laws may dampen “crimes of passion”, but they also stop people from running out to get a gun for defense after receiving a credible threat. Ironically, most of such victims are women, but women are more likely to ask politicians for the sorts of laws that end up stripping them of any chance at self-defense.
As far as I am concerned, the only beneficial gun control is the steadiness of hand to hit what yer aiming at.
Assuming that women don’t routinely carry handguns in their purses, what kind of scenario are you talking about?
Suppose that gun laws were enacted, so that you needed to obtain a license to own a gun, and renew it every 5 years. To obtain a license you need two referees as well as the approval of your doctor - to say you’re of good character, mentally stable etc. - and you also need police to confirm you’re trained to use the gun and have somewhere secure to keep it.
Now, if the woman’s at home and hears a robber, she can still get her gun. “Secure” doesn’t mean “inaccessible.”
If the woman’s not at home - well, like I said, she’s not going to have a gun in her purse, is she? So how have those gun laws made her less safe?
Some women do carry concealed, even routinely. CC rates vary from state to state, hovering around 5% in shall-issue (CCW permit) states, but I don’t know the variance between men and women.
There are purses specifically designed to hide a gun. There are also other holsters and fanny-packs. If a woman wanted to protect herself in response to a specific threat (such as a possessive ex who said he would do something to her, forcibly take kids away etc), then she would be able to do so. Whether she would be allowed to do so legally (or in time to meet the threat) is another matter.
The most common confrontation scenario is where a perp makes a threat, the would be victim brandishes a gun, and the perp runs without any shots being fired. The number of such confrontations in the US each year is very hard to determine because they’re rarely reported to police. Would you want to tell a policeman that you had just brandished a gun, even if it were legal and justified? You have other things to do besides waste an hour+ exposing yourself to a great risk of prolonged legal entanglement.
Other scenarios are less common, including the one where an assailant takes a victim’s gun and uses it against the victim and/or others. However, when facing an unarmed victim, perps almost never run away, so their victims fare rather poorly, losing property, suffering injury and even death. Unarmed victims end up dead at least as often as armed ones, and that only counting the armed victims whose stories are told to police. All of the unreported ones are gravy on top of the calculus of being armed.
In addition to the direct confrontation scenarios are all of the indirect ones. This is the first external benefit to having armed but unlabeled citizens. Perp assails a would be victim; somebody else nearby shows a gun, and the perp runs away. The second external benefit to concealed carry is that would-be perps rarely know for sure who the armed citizens are, so as long as there are enough to worry about, then perps must worry about all of us.
And this leads to the tragedy of gun-free zones: We’re telling would-be criminals that they can go nuts here or there where they can be sure that nobody will be able to return fire for maybe 20 minutes. Gun-control in a state or city is similar. Even if a criminal can’t get a gun, simply being a young male with superior upper-body strength can be enough of an advantage to prevail in an “even” match up using bats and/or knives, so gun-control still fails even when its enforcement is successful.