CashRules wrote:I don't mind people stating their opinions and I don't insult people for that. What I do mind and find personally insulting myself is when people think that opposition to vast, over-reaching gun-control is only due to selfishness. It's not. It's due in large part to the fact that no evidence exists to support the view that fewer guns, or more restrictions on guns, has any effect on the crime rate. I'm also not interested in any faulty comparisons between different countries because such comparisons always involve the person making the comparison be selecting which two countries they want to compare and basing solely on one factor, guns, while ignoring an almost limitless number of other demographic factors. I can easily select countries to compare that would show that more guns equals a drastically lower crime rate but those comparisons would be just as faulty as the comparisons I just complained about. So the truth remains that no valid evidence exists either way and the truth, as far as it can be known, is that the number of guns and the extent of gun laws has no statistically significant effect on crime. If you want to make a valid comparison then you do so either by comparing trends or by comparing the same jurisdiction both before and after a new law goes into effect or expires.
The guns that are most often mentioned as the ones that should be banned were in fact banned in the U.S. for a decade and the result does not make the case that gun-control supporters wish it made. the result in the decade since it expired also does not make their case. There is an especially stupid poster by the name of Goz on the RFS board who has argued many times that Australia's gun massive gun buyback program resulted in a significant reduction in crime. She steadfastly refuses to accept the demonstrable fact that the trend that she boasts about for Australia actually began two decades before that law was enacted and every western industrialized nation on earth experienced the same trend during the same time period regardless of whether they enacted gun-control laws, or laws more favorable to gun owners or no gun laws at all. These are the kind of people who irritate me. It is like arguing with creationists about evolution because these people insist on arguing about a topic they simply do not comprehend.
There are essentially two issues that are trying to be addressed, both of which are separate and both of which require different solutions.
The first is the high level of gun crime along the lines of inner city gang shootings, robberies, that sort of thing. Very often these will be committed with illegal sourced weapons.
The second are the mass shooting events like the recent one in Oregan where someone is "mentally disturbed" or "racist" or otherwise "not normal" and takes what was generally a legally obtained weapon and goes on a killing spree.
I don't have the stats to hand and I can't be bothered to try to find them, but the first category almost certainly accounts for the overwhelming majority of gun-related causalities in America. But the solution to is far from simple - it's extremely expensive and ineffective. What's more, in a large number of those cases it's either criminals killing other criminals or it's criminals killing poor socially disenfranchised people (ie non-white, non-voters) so the government doesn't care.
But the second category at least is something that can be addressed. And whilst the numbers may only be in the hundreds rather than the thousands a year it's still far more than any other developed country on the planet. So shouldn't there be an attempt to do something about it?
Now unlike all those other developed countries America is fairly unique in that it does not have Universal Healthcare and it does not (in any serious fashion) restrict people's access to guns. Perhaps the latter part of it is not the problem. Perhaps the significant differentiating problem is the lack of Universal Healthcare.
Actually, there's one other factor thinking about - "Free speech" - everywhere else has legislation restricting Hate groups and things like the promotion of racial violence, but that's another thing that America is happy to tolerate, so racist hate groups can openly convene
and then go and buy guns
and then...
And although UHC and the preaching of hatred should possibly be addressed, asking responsible gun owners to just take a few minutes to prove that they're responsible to help weed out the irresponsible gun owners seems like a fairly inoffensive, non-invasive way of helping to ensure that mentally unstable/ex-felons find it a bit harder to get hold of guns.
But I suspect that this will be deemed an infringement on their rights, so they'll fight tooth and nail to not do it.
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