Gun laws work

[Bern80]

Sent packing? Hahahahahaha. You guys jumped me five on one, and I still left you all bleeding on the ground.

And yet again all you have is poo-flinging insults. Not a thing to refute my original point. Personally I don't really care about this issue, but I did want to see what the response would be. So far all I've seen is logical fallacies and TOS violations. But the day is young.

The flaw in your argument is the same one that Chris made in a related thread. You looked at some stastitics then leapt to the determination that one caused the other. That is, because London has fewer shooting per capita than Baltimore you then made the baseless assumption that stricter gun laws is what CAUSED there to be fewer homcides by gun per capita. The reality is there are many variables in play and it takes a bit more research to determine which variables correlate to fewer deaths and which don't.

 

[Father Time]

Pro-gun advocates have been telling us that gun laws don’t prevent crime.

My hometown, Baltimore, has a population of 637,000. Last year, homicides were down to a 20-year low, at 234 killings.

My temporary hometown, London, is the largest city in Europe, at 7.5 million. Gun killings in 2008: seventeen.

London has one tenth the shootings, with ten times the population. A citizen of Baltimore is a hundred times more likely to be shot to death, than a Londoner.

Gun laws work.

What were the gun crimes in London before the ban?
What's the knife crime rate been in London over the years?
Can you prove the drop in crime in Baltimore was because of the gun ban?
The crime rate has been decreasing overall you know.

 

[Missourian]

What were the gun crimes in London before the ban?
What's the knife crime rate been in London over the years?
Can you prove the drop in crime in Baltimore was because of the gun ban?
The crime rate has been decreasing overall you know.

I can answer at least a couple of those questions. This article is from 2002:

England vs USA
Gun control myths​

Thomas Sowell
November 26, 2002
​

Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm of Bentley College deserves some sort of special prize for taking on the thankless task of talking sense on a subject where nonsense is deeply entrenched and fiercely dogmatic.

In her recently published book, "Guns and Violence," Professor Malcolm examines the history of firearms, gun control laws and violent crime in England. What makes this more than an exercise in history is its relevance to current controversies over gun control in America.

Gun control zealots love to make highly selective international comparisons of gun ownership and murder rates. But Joyce Lee Malcolm points out some of the pitfalls in that approach. For example, the murder rate in New York City has been more than five times that of London for two centuries -- and during most of that time neither city had any gun control laws.

In 1911, New York state instituted one of the most severe gun control laws in the United States, while serious gun control laws did not begin in England until nearly a decade later. But New York City still continued to have far higher murder rates than London. If we are serious about the role of guns and gun control as factors in differing rates of violence between countries, then we need to do what history professor Joyce Lee Malcolm does -- examine the history of guns and violence.

In England, as she points out, over the centuries "violent crime continued to decline markedly at the very time that guns were becoming increasingly available." England's Bill of Rights in 1688 was quite unambiguous that the right of a private individual to be armed was an individual right, independently of any collective right of militias. Guns were as freely available to Englishmen as to Americans, on into the early 20th century.

Nor was gun control in England a response to any firearms murder crisis. Over a period of three years near the end of the 19th century, "there were only 59 fatalities from handguns in a population of nearly 30 million people," according to Professor Malcolm. "Of these, 19 were accidents, 35 were suicides and only three were homicides -- an average of one a year."

The rise of the interventionist state in early 20th century England included efforts to restrict ownership of guns. After the First World War, gun control laws began restricting the possession of firearms. Then, after the Second World War, these restrictions grew more severe, eventually disarming the civilian population of England -- or at least the law-abiding part of it. It was during this period of severe restrictions on owning firearms that crime rates in general, and the murder rate in particular, began to rise in England.

"As the number of legal firearms have dwindled, the numbers of armed crimes have risen," Professor Malcolm points out. In 1954, there were only a dozen armed robberies in London but, by the 1990s, there were more than a hundred times as many. In England, as in the United States, drastic crackdowns on gun ownership by law-abiding citizens were accompanied by ever greater leniency to criminals. In both countries, this turned out to be a formula for disaster.

While England has not yet reached the American level of murders, it has already surpassed the United States in rates of robbery and burglary.

Moreover, in recent years the murder rate in England has been going up under still more severe gun control laws, while the murder rate in the United States has been going down as more and more states have allowed private citizens to carry concealed weapons -- and have begun locking up more criminals.

In both countries, facts have no effect whatever on the dogmas of gun control zealots. The fact that most guns used to murder people in England were not legally purchased has no effect on their faith in gun control laws there, any more than faith in such laws here is affected by the fact that the gun used by the recent Beltway snipers was not purchased legally either.

In England as in America, sensational gun crimes have been seized upon and used politically to promote crackdowns on gun ownership by law-abiding citizens, while doing nothing about criminals. American zealots for the Brady bill say nothing about the fact that the man who shot James Brady and tried to assassinate President Reagan has been out walking the streets on furlough.

Link to Article

 

[Father Time]

Now I just need confirmation that all these guys banned guns (I know for instance that Hitler banned guns from all except Nazi party members).

 

[Zoom-boing]

Gun control is hitting your target.

 

[Diuretic]

London has one tenth the shootings, with ten times the population. A citizen of Baltimore is a hundred times more likely to be shot to death, than a Londoner.


But is several times more likely to be raped beaten or robbed or stabbed to death...

"Likely"? How do you work that out? Shouldn't you be presenting proof of the reported crimes in both jurisdictions before you can make that claim?

 

[Diuretic]

The flaw in your argument is the same one that Chris made in a related thread. You looked at some stastitics then leapt to the determination that one caused the other. That is, because London has fewer shooting per capita than Baltimore you then made the baseless assumption that stricter gun laws is what CAUSED there to be fewer homcides by gun per capita. The reality is there are many variables in play and it takes a bit more research to determine which variables correlate to fewer deaths and which don't.

Exactly.

There are probably some cultural issues at work which haven't been explored. The Brits are not a gun-owning culture, Americans are. There are probably not that many privately (and legally) owned firearms in London as against a city in the US which is much smaller. That means that there will be less firearms incidents in London in toto then there are - apparently - in Baltimore. However given that, shouldn't it give the good citizens of Baltimore some concern?

 

[Bern80]

Exactly.

There are probably some cultural issues at work which haven't been explored. The Brits are not a gun-owning culture, Americans are. There are probably not that many privately (and legally) owned firearms in London as against a city in the US which is much smaller. That means that there will be less firearms incidents in London in toto then there are - apparently - in Baltimore. However given that, shouldn't it give the good citizens of Baltimore some concern?

If the other variables are so different from each other as to render the two really uncomparable(which they are) then no, it should not be taken as cause for concern.

This brings up another issue I have with people who advocate gun control: Indentifying the problem. What is the problem? The problem is that for whatever reason, per capita, more people have propensity to kill each other in Baltimore than in London. Since we want people to NOT do that the solution is some form of behavior modification. Now I ask you, does focusing on and restricting access to (which by a criminal would most likely be ignored) the inanimate object that people use to carry out this behavior really sound like the best way to modify that behavior?

 

[52ndStreet]

Americans have the right to bear arms.And I men all arms,Hand Guns and Fully automatic
Assault Rifles.Guns laws, only disarm law abiding citizens, and get innocent people killed by criminals who do not respect any laws, and will alway arm them selves with Guns.

 

[elvis]

The reality is that gun crimes went UP in England when they banned nearly all types of guns. And they spiked again after a farmer protecting himself was put in prison for shooting someone.

Tell ya what, when you figure out how to eliminate all guns from the world and remove the ability to make more, get back to us on how well gun laws work. Of course then we will need to ban crossbow, Bows, axes , clubs , lead pipes, bats, etc etc.

Didn't the Nazis take away everyone's guns?

 

[alan1]

Pro-gun advocates have been telling us that gun laws don’t prevent crime.

My hometown, Baltimore, has a population of 637,000. Last year, homicides were down to a 20-year low, at 234 killings.

My temporary hometown, London, is the largest city in Europe, at 7.5 million. Gun killings in 2008: seventeen.

London has one tenth the shootings, with ten times the population. A citizen of Baltimore is a hundred times more likely to be shot to death, than a Londoner.

Gun laws work.

The Chief of Police in Baltimore has a gun while he is in his office, surrounded by policemen.
Maybe he's afraid some other police officer is going to attack him.

 

[michiganFats]

Article15, I agree with you. A waiting period is a good idea. The only reason I would object to one is if I wanted one immediately to do damage to someone. Or, option number two, I could be RetGySgt and I want to kill my gay hooker. Either way, waiting periods are a good idea.

 

[Father Time]

err bern80 the government having enough power to really modify the behavior of the populace sounds wrong on many levels (and quite scary).

Oh and batboy your signature is wrong

The one legged man always loses the ass-kicking contest BECAUSE he has to work hardest at it.

 

[Diuretic]

If the other variables are so different from each other as to render the two really uncomparable(which they are) then no, it should not be taken as cause for concern.

This brings up another issue I have with people who advocate gun control: Indentifying the problem. What is the problem? The problem is that for whatever reason, per capita, more people have propensity to kill each other in Baltimore than in London. Since we want people to NOT do that the solution is some form of behavior modification. Now I ask you, does focusing on and restricting access to (which by a criminal would most likely be ignored) the inanimate object that people use to carry out this behavior really sound like the best way to modify that behavior?

That's an interesting question. If you want to lower crime then you address the causes of crime as well as making sure that criminals are apprehended and dealt with. That's crime, all types of crime.
Criminals who want firearms to facilitate their crimes will always be able to get firearms and they're not likely to use their own firearms so they will steal or buy them in the underground market. When I refer to criminals I mean the sort of criminal that uses a firearm to commit an armed robbery, for example. I'm not referring to the person who snaps and grabs their firearms and shoots up a public place.

If you want to minimise harm from misuse of firearms then you regulate their ownership and conditions of use.

Let me make this point before anyone gets upset. It's up to a society to decide what it wants to do. If it wants to maximise the ability of individuals to own and use firearms then it will probably accept a higher rate of harm from misuse than a society which wants to minimise as much as possible such harm from misuse and which will seek to more tightly regulate the ownership and use of firearms.

 

[michiganFats]

I'd rather accept the higher rate of injury. You have to stand on principle, it's more important then so called security.

 

[Diuretic]

I'd rather accept the higher rate of injury. You have to stand on principle, it's more important then so called security.

And if a community, whether it be a country or a county, comes to that conclusion then that's their business. Of course that doesn't stop folks living there from agitating for change of course, but that's what happens in a democracy.

 

[michiganFats]

I agree, and I can't believe that I agree. but maybe the county level is the best place to handle this argument.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

And if a community, whether it be a country or a county, comes to that conclusion then that's their business. Of course that doesn't stop folks living there from agitating for change of course, but that's what happens in a democracy.

However when it is ILLEGAL to bar ownership of weapons then the only way to change that is to change the condition that makes it ILLEGAL. In the US that would be the Constitution. If Gun Grabbers want to ban weapons they need to create an amendment to do so and get it passed. That is how it works.

 

[Diuretic]

I agree, and I can't believe that I agree. but maybe the county level is the best place to handle this argument.

Well given that some of your counties are bigger than the population of my entire state (1.5m) I reckon you could be right!

 

[Diuretic]

However when it is ILLEGAL to bar ownership of weapons then the only way to change that is to change the condition that makes it ILLEGAL. In the US that would be the Constitution. If Gun Grabbers want to ban weapons they need to create an amendment to do so and get it passed. That is how it works.

Yes Rock, I believe that's a fair description of the laws in the US on this. Me, I've got no comment on it apart from that.