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[Arrkhal]

And how is "guncrime" somehow magically worse than being killed some other way?

You can't just fixate on two criteria because they're the only ones that don't make a country look bad.

Also, murders (and other crimes) did not magically go down at any time when England passed more restrictive legislation.  Crime trends stayed largely the same.  Some rising, some falling.

Plus there's the fact that once again, the vast majority of victims of crime, and especially murders, in the USA are gang members.  Crime is, once again, a social phenomenon, and legislation has little to nothing to do with it.  Comparing figures between countries is completely invalid.

You have to look at one country, and see how crime rates changed there, in response to legislation.  Gun bans passed in England, and violent crime continued at the old rate.  Same for Australia and New Gunea.  Same for the lower crime countries too.  Gun bans passed in Japan, crime stayed low.

Social things, like better education and health care in poor areas, has much more of an effect on crime rates in any country.

For stats in the USA:  http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm

Removing rights only creates criminals, it doesn't make existing ones stop doing illegal stuff.

[Cthulhu]

Woah... citations needed?

Well, Illinois has some of the most heavy-duty gun laws in the country [Citation], but around one out of every 30 gun deaths in America happened in Illinois.  [Citation]

[alway]

And also contains 4.2% of the US population (12.9 million/307 million) making 1 in 23.8 people from Illinois. Try again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population

[Neonivek]

Statistics don't have to be true. They just have to SOUND true

[Arrkhal]

Both sides use crappy and misleading statistics, which cannot actually have any logical conclusion drawn from them.

Once again, you cannot draw any kind of valid conclusion by comparing countries.  Switzerland requires all male citizens under age 40 to keep a military assault rifle in their homes, and only recently limited ammunition so that they no longer need to keep ammo for it (though they can go buy some of their own volition).  Murder in Switzerland is very low, and has pretty much always been low.

But South Korea bans handguns altogether, and rifles have to be kept at your local police department and checked out if you want to target shoot or go hunting.  Guess what, murder is very low there, too.

Compare either of those to England, and what conclusion can you draw?  None, because there is no logical connection.  Comparing England to America is just as invalid, it's just the statistics sound nicer to some, and support a preconceived notion.

Here's a fun fact.  Police in Germany estimate that illegally owned guns outnumber legal ones by 10 to 1.  It's also pretty well-known that nearly all illegal guns are owned by neo-nazis.  Would you sleep well at night if your police were telling you "yeah, the neo-nazis have us outgunned 10 to 1."  Of course, neither crime nor neo-nazis are that big a problem in Germany.

Once again, crime, defined as actual violation of human rights, like theft, assault, and murder, is a social issue, not a legal one.  Making theft, assault, and murder illegal do not prevent them from happening, nor do they significantly decrease the rates of occurence, because most people just aren't dick enough to do that to people (plus there'd be a fear of vigilante justice).  How will banning possession of things that correlate to crime, but not cause it, help?  If someone's already willing to kill, they'll be willing to get whatever weapon they want, even if they have to commit lots of crimes just to do that.

[Cthulhu]

Enforced heat-packing, fräuleinage, nice and chilly, what doesn't Switzerland have?

[chaoticag]

Arrkhal takes a point here. It is true that gun control legislation takes political importance, but when you get down to it, what recent laws have been passed to turn ciminals and would-be-criminals into productive members of society. As stated before, prisons are beyond their capacity, and have been for a while (Attica springs to mind, but annectodal evidence is not evidence).

The other end of this issue is whether or not murders have gone down. I tend to hear a lot about gun caused murders, but when you get down to it, did the legislation passed have any effect whatsoever? If not, why bother taking up floor place with the issue when you can try to raise the living standards in the areas so that crime goes down?

[Arrkhal]

If not, why bother taking up floor place with the issue when you can try to raise the living standards in the areas so that crime goes down?

Exactly.  The current system is totally screwed up, pretty much everywhere.  But in America, it boils down to both sides saying "let's do this useless legislation to screw over the people we hate!"

The party balance I'd like to see would be, on one side, decentralist libertarians who want absolutely no laws which affect the individual whatsoever.  On the other side, humanist-moralists who want everyone to be healthy and happy.

And you know what, if we just got rid of the "screw the other side and all they stand for!" laws, that's what we'd have in America (eventually).

When you look at the year-by-year stats, and do logical adjustments for the amount of time it takes for things to change, social projects have way more of an effect.

I hate to use this one as an example, since I'm also anti-abortion, but Roe vs. Wade.  About 13-16 years after Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion nationwide, crime rates went down, and continue on a rough downward trend.  Crediting the crime rate change on the Assault Weapons Ban is ridiculous, because of the number of pre-ban magazines on the market, and the fact that the AWB sunset did not and has not resulted in a resurgence in crime (plus the utter ridiculousness of banning features like bayonet lugs and grenade launcher hardpoints).  However, kids start joining gangs around age 13-16.

A law was passed which changed the social landscape, reducing the numbers of "unwanted" children, and at the time when those children would have been joining gangs (if they were alive), crime went down.

There has to be a better way of dealing with unwanted pregnancies than that, though.

[Dwarf]

Enforced heat-packing, fräuleinage, nice and chilly, what doesn't Switzerland have?

W'the hell is fräuleinage?

[Cthulhu]

You know what I'm talking about, sexy alpine girls, with the pigtails and the skirts.

Awwwwright.

[chaoticag]

There has to be a better way of dealing with unwanted pregnancies than that, though.

Unfortunately, not many people adopt, not many people can afford to raise children and there are cases where childbirth can kill the mother and child outright.
Although I am pro-choice, I can't say that I like abortion and would urge people to be as careful as possible. But accidents happen, mistakes are made and children are sometimes left ignorant. Sometimes it just boils down to whether or not you live and die a horrible life of social stigma because you didn't know any better.

Abortion isn't only about unwanted children, keep that in mind. As with practically anything, it is not a two dimentional thing, and finding people who wish to take in these kids won't stop it.

[Neonivek]

In fact to say that the issue on Abortion is ABOUT children is a pitfall in it of itself.

It has very little to do with children.

[Phantom]

Many "gun crime" statistics work any firearm related into their dataset. Mugger shoots housewife? That's a gun murder. Homeowner shoots intruder? Gun crime? Cop shoots and kills the guy driving a stolen tank down the street (this really happeneed)? Gun crime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vESIVemfG8

I wonder what he'd have get charged with if he survived.

[Jreengus]

Actually, I've been considering writing an article for the Pink Pistols, which draws some incredibly disturbing parallels between the anti-gun and anti-gay movements.

But imagine this.  A "public safety" campaign, related to the genuine statistical fact that unprotected gay sex is the leading way of transmitting HIV in the western world, the alleged danger presented by people with HIV running around everywhere, and a healthy dose of that Canadian guy or whoever who tried to give HIV to as many people as possible.  After all, an HIV positive person can accidentally infect others about as "easily" as accidentally shooting someone (i.e., only through a criminal level of negligence or a completely freak and unforseeable accident, but the ignorant public doesn't know that), and there have been cases of people using their own HIV as a biological weapon.  Conclusion: ban gays, or at least ban certain, more "dangerous" forms of intercourse.  For "public safety."

That's the anti-gun movement, with but a single concept changed.

Like I said, disturbing.

Saying two things are the same does not make them the same. This is a Bad post and you should feel bad.

I'm not even going to bother arguing with you. You don't want a debate of any kind, you can't just say "all statistics are BS but harder gun control has no effect as you can see from [statistic]". Anyhow I'm not going to post in this thread again, it can only go bad places.

EDIT: (Not a new post, yay for getting around my own guidelines ) I prefer to think of it as see a pointless thread point out your fallacies and leave. Now that we have decided that apparently not all statistics are BS please provide actual statistics rather than implied ones. By which I mean you can't just say implementing heavier gun control has had no effect in Britain, you need to provide statistics on comparable crime for several years before and after the laws were implemented.

[Arrkhal]

Saying two things are the same does not make them the same. This is a Bad post and you should feel bad.

I'm not even going to bother arguing with you. You don't want a debate of any kind, you can't just say "all statistics are BS but harder gun control has no effect as you can see from [statistic]". Anyhow I'm not going to post in this thread again, it can only go bad places.

There's one of these bozos in every thread.  Fun.  "I cannot formulate an effective argument, so I shall insult you and leave."  Great approach, very mature.

Here's a hint.  Statistics comparing two different countries are invalid.  Statistics comparing a country to itself, before and after legislation goes into effect, and you wait for it to actually do something, are valid.  Way to totally do the exact same you accused me of.  I probably need to spell this out more.  You apparently think that statistics comparing, say, Japan to the USA, are exactly as valid as comparing the USA to itself before and after the '92 AWB.

Saying that I said something also does not make it true.  It illustrates your reading comprehension and understanding of the subject matter nicely, though.