15 ms·

I'm genuinely curious what your thoughts are on the argument that criminals will break the law and obtain firearms illegally, regardless of the law.

atom_enger 10y ago
Yeah we solved that problem in Chicago </s>. We learned that criminals don't obey the law and the law abiding citizens have a difficult time obtaining the proper tools they need to protect themselves.
- baby 10y ago
  When you have weapons in every city/states around you, and an already large amount of weapons sold, you will have a problem.
na85 10y ago
And yet if you compare the US with the next umpteen countries combined, totalling the same number of people, gun deaths in the US are vastly more common. Do you think it's because Americans are more homicidal by nature? Or is it perhaps because Canada, England, Japan, et al have gun control laws?
- EpicEng 10y ago
  Cat's out of the bag though. How are you going to get all of those guns off of the street at this point?
  - baby 10y ago
    By forbidding them and waiting years.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
      That might not work, guns last fairly indefinitely if looked after.
      - baby 10y ago
        Of course the longer you wait, the less practical this solution becomes. In some years the only solution will be to wear a body armor at all time.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    Heavy penalties + buy-back program + an amnesty period. The problem isn't a lack of creative solutions but a lack of united will.
    - pryce 10y ago
      I believe Australia used a very similar plan to this.
  - scholia 10y ago
    Australia did it, and hasn't had any mass shootings in 20 years since it opted to remove guns. You can argue about how much of the change is due to whatever, but the fact is that Australia has seen a dramatic decline in gun-related homicides and suicides. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/23/australias-gun-laws-stopped-mass-shootings-and-reduced-homicides-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/23/australias-gun...
    - EpicEng 10y ago
      I figured someone would bring up Australia. I'd say that they _tried_ to do it, but in reality ended up creating a huge black market for illegal guns. As far as I can tell, there has yet to be established a causal relationship between the buyback program and a decrease in gun related homicides. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia The suicide argument appears to be fairly weak. Yes, the rate went down, but suicides by hanging went up at nearly the same pace. Many of the studies which look at hun related suicides ignore suicides by other measures.
      - scholia 10y ago
        Yeah, I understand that Americans are in love with the idea of killing thousands of people a year and there is very little chance of them being rational about it. When people's lives are at stake, I'll settle for the correlation, which is a matter of fact: gun ownership went down, and gun deaths went down. QUOTE 1 "Using differences across states, we test[ed] whether the reduction in firearms availability affected homicide and suicide rates. We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80%, with no significant effect on non-firearm death rates. The effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude but is less precise [somewhere between 35% and 50%]." http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf QUOTE 2 "Following enactment of gun law reforms in Australia in 1996, there were no mass firearm killings through May 2016. There was a more rapid decline in firearm deaths between 1997 and 2013 compared with before 1997 but also a decline in total nonfirearm suicide and homicide deaths_ of a greater magnitude. Because of this, it is not possible to determine whether the change in firearm deaths can be attributed to the gun law reforms." http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2530362 http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/253036...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- roel_v 10y ago
  Why do you only look at gun deaths? Does it matter whether a criminal shoots or bludgeons someone to death? And if we compare all murder rates (not just those committed using guns), there is very little evidence that guns being available to law-abiding citizens as well as to criminals (even if that makes it easier for criminals to get guns) causes higher murder rates. There are many countries with strict gun control laws that have higher murder rates than the US.
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    The subject of the conversation is gun deaths. That's why. We weren't talking about knives, ropes, shuriken, or feral animal mauling. > And if we compare all murder rates (not just those committed using guns), there is very little evidence that guns being available to law-abiding citizens as well as to criminals (even if that makes it easier for criminals to get guns) causes higher murder rates. Citation needed. Every source I can find suggests that the US has more violent crime per unit population than most other developed countries in the world, and in terms of actual fatalities gun crime leads. Can you provide some sources for this assertion? > There are many countries with strict gun control laws that have higher murder rates than the US. Which first world countries with strict gun control laws have a higher overall murder rate? Because it's not fair to compare underdeveloped nations to developed nations in terms of public order.
    - roel_v 10y ago
      "The subject of the conversation is gun deaths." But it's a wholly irrelevant metric. The argument is 'we should restrict guns in the US because they're causing more people to be killed than in other countries'. But if in other countries people are being bludgeoned, then what good would restricting guns do? Hence, you need to compare murder rate, not gun murder rate. This is such an obvious point, I don't see any way someone using only gun deaths in the US isn't begin deliberately obtuse. "Can you provide some sources for this assertion?" Well how about an obvious one, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... . Of course it's easy to pick a bunch of countries, like say based on GDP and then completely ignore geographic and socio-economic circumstances and say 'look at horrible the US is!' (this is the tactic most anti-gun lobbyists use - taking Western Europe and comparing the gun deaths there to the gun deaths in the US, and then go all 'tss tss look at how backwards the US is'). But if you look at the total number of homicides, the US is in the middle of the pack, with less homicides per capita than say Argentina, or Lithuania, or Turkey; and the same as, say, Iran - which I imagine (although I'll admit I haven't looked into it) has very strict gun laws. Or even Mexico - but then people say 'but but drug war!'. Sure, but so is the US; i.e. a large percentage of homicides are part of drug-related crime violence. It's easy to cherry pick a few countries that have lower homicide rates than the US and say 'it's because of stricter gun laws'. And yet Switzerland is near the top of that list (i.e., few homicides - depends on how you sort it, obviously :) ) and the Swiss have gun ownership rates comparable to those of the US! Could it be (gasp!) that overall economic prosperity, social homogeneity and income equality are better predictors of homicide (and other crime) rates? No that can't be it, we need to take the guns away!
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- ekianjo 10y ago
  > And yet if you compare the US with the next umpteen countries combined, totalling the same number of people, gun deaths in the US are vastly more common. The comparison is not as simple to make. Virtually very few other countries have metropolis/urban centers like in the US, or any culture resembling it. I know it's the best data that we have, but it's certainly not apples to apples.
zepolen 10y ago
I fully agree that criminals - and basically any determined human will always find a way. If a market is illegal, it will be artificially limited, because only the businessmen capable of getting around the law will thrive, leading to massive profit margins. If the market is legal, anyone can do it - which also means it's a lot simpler for wrong hands eg. a kid, to gain access to a gun. Where as in eg. Europe it would be much much harder.
baby 10y ago
It will be harder. Way harder. And common people who bought a firegun don't protect us against real and organized criminals. The police or the army does.
- zepto 10y ago
  The police don't protect people against criminals - they only attempt to bring criminals to justice.
freen 10y ago
Long and short of it is this: black markets have fundamentally higher barriers to entry and substantially higher costs. An AR-15 in Australia costs as much as a very very fancy car. Moreover, the people who will sell it to you are deeply risk averse. Sure, criminals will have them, but it will be an entirely different class of criminals, specifically, those that benefit from low "random violence" environments.
- elcct 10y ago
  If there is a market there will be people willing to satisfy. I am sure someone who can't afford AR-15 would be able to hire a pistol for a price that won't break his bank.
KirinDave 10y ago
> I'm genuinely curious what your thoughts are on the argument that criminals will break the law and obtain firearms illegally, regardless of the law. It's a rhetorical device. Every shred of actual evidence we have is that making gun ownership illegal reduces the number of gun crimes that occur. There is this strange equation of all gun violence with either extremist organizations or organized crime. In actual stats, that's only one relatively minor component. What's more, I genuinely question the premise that we want to respond to acts of gun violence with more projectiles. As every gun owner who takes a safety course is taught: every bullet goes somewhere. Just because you miss doesn't mean the bullet dissolves into the ether.
- zepto 10y ago
  Every shred of evidence we have is that violent crime is decreasing whether we make guns illegal or not. Also, in the US, significant gun ownership is for the 2nd Amendment purpose of being a safeguard against a tyrannical government.
  - freen 10y ago
    Hah. Good luck against the 101st airborne.
    - zepto 10y ago
      Yeah - that's the usual flippant kind of answer - pistols and rifles are no match for the military. But it's a bogus position - if a significant portion of the country is armed, a very strong resistance can be mounted. In any such situation it wouldn't be the 101st airborne against a civilian population.
      - KirinDave 10y ago
        So if you're pro-civilian resistance to tyranny, I suppose you supported the Oregonian federal occupation, the civil disruptions caused by Black Lives Matter, and the Alcatraz occupation? Forgive me, but lately I've run into a lot of people who talk about the importance of enabling civil resistance until they actually see civil resistance and suddenly they're the living embodiment of law and order.
bicknergseng 10y ago
Not OP, but here's some unsolicited thoughts. While it's true that criminals, by definition, will break the law, all laws are not treated equally by individuals. Millions of people litter or speed despite the law, but I imagine not all who speed in a car also rob banks. It's my understanding that psychological, social, and legal thresholds are not the same for all people, nor are they binary (there's some really great research into ethics thresholds if someone knows of a link). Sure, adding an additional law might not deter the truly determined, but what about those who have a lower threshold for criminal activity? Why not call all manslaughter murder? Would those who commit suicide with a firearm (half of American suicides [1]) choose a more difficult and less immediate method? So the question might be, how does changing a law affect those thresholds? Maybe we don't stop determined criminals or mass shootings, but maybe we can make a dent in the more than 20,000 Americans who choose to shoot themselves every year, or make a difference in urban gun violence. That said, I personally believe that American society is probably too violent and too committed to gun ownership change anytime in my lifetime. We as a society value arguing about gun ownership over actually taking steps to reduce gun violence, or even gathering data on it. The folks that crack me up the most are the ones who say things like you can take my gun from my cold, dead hands because that'd somehow be a check on government power, despite the fact that the federal government possesses tanks and stealth bombers and whatnot. Bonus points if they also think net neutrality is bad, even though open information is demonstrably better for civic checks and balances. [1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm
- ensignavenger 10y ago
  "maybe we can make a dent in the more than 20,000 Americans who choose to shoot themselves every year, or make a difference in urban gun violence." If those are your goals (and noble goals they are), why not work on health care, notably mental health. If we fixed that, we would probably make an even more substantial dent on the number of suicides, improve the quality of life of those who aren't killing themselves, reduce the amount of urban violence, and even possibly make an impact on mass shootings. I can certainly understand the compelling societal goal- but I'm a big fan of using the least restrictive (and most effective) means to achieving those goals.
sfifs 10y ago
Your gun problems in the US appear to be not so much about "criminals" using guns as it's about random ordinary people under influence of stress or propaganda shooting ordinary people. Having a legal firearms market with ready availability makes it demonstrably easier for such characters to acquire firearms and shoot people vs. other developed economies. Criminals in contrast in most jurisdictions (except notably in Mexico) tend to want to limit violence and fly under the radar and tend to use firearms as a last resort.
matt4077 10y ago
I'm in Europe. I could get weed within 3 minutes, on the street. Hard drugs would maybe take a day. But I have no idea where I could buy an illegal gun. Not saying it isn't possible, but it seems to take a bit of work. That sort of friction doesn't deter a would-be bank robber, but by and large the gangs here don't acquire guns. I've seen a few ugly scenes in public transport, and I'd be hesitant to use it if I thought the people who have knives today had guns. So that's the answer to your question. It's the same as "why are shoulder-launched AA missiles illegal in the US – only criminals will use them". The other part of an answer is that as far as I can see the deaths from accidents and suicides are vastly more important, and I believe even for crime, it's still an open question if gun-owners are safer. Obviously all this depends on the low amount of firearms in circulation, so it doesn't directly apply to the US. There, it would require a transition period with buybacks etc. – which may or may not have worked quite well in Australia.
- throwaway1892 10y ago
  In France gangs have aquired weapons, you can't read the weekly news without having at least one gun related crime. And there are weapons in Europe, mostly from the Balkan war and circulate easily within Schengen space (no border control).
EvilTerran 10y ago
Even if a criminal can still acquire an illegal firearm, that wouldn't be in his best interests if it's prosecuted with sufficiently more vigour than the other crimes they intend to commit. For example, your average British mugger or burglar is exceedingly unlikely to be so armed - the UK police will dedicate a lot more resources to catching a thief if his victims report he has a gun, and once caught he'll be locked up for a lot longer with it added to his rap sheet.

atom_enger 10y ago

Yeah we solved that problem in Chicago </s>. We learned that criminals don't obey the law and the law abiding citizens have a difficult time obtaining the proper tools they need to protect themselves.

baby 10y ago
When you have weapons in every city/states around you, and an already large amount of weapons sold, you will have a problem.

na85 10y ago

And yet if you compare the US with the next umpteen countries combined, totalling the same number of people, gun deaths in the US are vastly more common. Do you think it's because Americans are more homicidal by nature? Or is it perhaps because Canada, England, Japan, et al have gun control laws?

EpicEng 10y ago
Cat's out of the bag though. How are you going to get all of those guns off of the street at this point?
- baby 10y ago
  By forbidding them and waiting years.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    That might not work, guns last fairly indefinitely if looked after.
    - baby 10y ago
      Of course the longer you wait, the less practical this solution becomes. In some years the only solution will be to wear a body armor at all time.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  Heavy penalties + buy-back program + an amnesty period. The problem isn't a lack of creative solutions but a lack of united will.
  - pryce 10y ago
    I believe Australia used a very similar plan to this.
- scholia 10y ago
  Australia did it, and hasn't had any mass shootings in 20 years since it opted to remove guns. You can argue about how much of the change is due to whatever, but the fact is that Australia has seen a dramatic decline in gun-related homicides and suicides. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/23/australias-gun-laws-stopped-mass-shootings-and-reduced-homicides-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/23/australias-gun...
  - EpicEng 10y ago
    I figured someone would bring up Australia. I'd say that they _tried_ to do it, but in reality ended up creating a huge black market for illegal guns. As far as I can tell, there has yet to be established a causal relationship between the buyback program and a decrease in gun related homicides. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia The suicide argument appears to be fairly weak. Yes, the rate went down, but suicides by hanging went up at nearly the same pace. Many of the studies which look at hun related suicides ignore suicides by other measures.
    - scholia 10y ago
      Yeah, I understand that Americans are in love with the idea of killing thousands of people a year and there is very little chance of them being rational about it. When people's lives are at stake, I'll settle for the correlation, which is a matter of fact: gun ownership went down, and gun deaths went down. QUOTE 1 "Using differences across states, we test[ed] whether the reduction in firearms availability affected homicide and suicide rates. We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80%, with no significant effect on non-firearm death rates. The effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude but is less precise [somewhere between 35% and 50%]." http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf QUOTE 2 "Following enactment of gun law reforms in Australia in 1996, there were no mass firearm killings through May 2016. There was a more rapid decline in firearm deaths between 1997 and 2013 compared with before 1997 but also a decline in total nonfirearm suicide and homicide deaths_ of a greater magnitude. Because of this, it is not possible to determine whether the change in firearm deaths can be attributed to the gun law reforms." http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2530362 http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/253036...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
roel_v 10y ago
Why do you only look at gun deaths? Does it matter whether a criminal shoots or bludgeons someone to death? And if we compare all murder rates (not just those committed using guns), there is very little evidence that guns being available to law-abiding citizens as well as to criminals (even if that makes it easier for criminals to get guns) causes higher murder rates. There are many countries with strict gun control laws that have higher murder rates than the US.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  The subject of the conversation is gun deaths. That's why. We weren't talking about knives, ropes, shuriken, or feral animal mauling. > And if we compare all murder rates (not just those committed using guns), there is very little evidence that guns being available to law-abiding citizens as well as to criminals (even if that makes it easier for criminals to get guns) causes higher murder rates. Citation needed. Every source I can find suggests that the US has more violent crime per unit population than most other developed countries in the world, and in terms of actual fatalities gun crime leads. Can you provide some sources for this assertion? > There are many countries with strict gun control laws that have higher murder rates than the US. Which first world countries with strict gun control laws have a higher overall murder rate? Because it's not fair to compare underdeveloped nations to developed nations in terms of public order.
  - roel_v 10y ago
    "The subject of the conversation is gun deaths." But it's a wholly irrelevant metric. The argument is 'we should restrict guns in the US because they're causing more people to be killed than in other countries'. But if in other countries people are being bludgeoned, then what good would restricting guns do? Hence, you need to compare murder rate, not gun murder rate. This is such an obvious point, I don't see any way someone using only gun deaths in the US isn't begin deliberately obtuse. "Can you provide some sources for this assertion?" Well how about an obvious one, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... . Of course it's easy to pick a bunch of countries, like say based on GDP and then completely ignore geographic and socio-economic circumstances and say 'look at horrible the US is!' (this is the tactic most anti-gun lobbyists use - taking Western Europe and comparing the gun deaths there to the gun deaths in the US, and then go all 'tss tss look at how backwards the US is'). But if you look at the total number of homicides, the US is in the middle of the pack, with less homicides per capita than say Argentina, or Lithuania, or Turkey; and the same as, say, Iran - which I imagine (although I'll admit I haven't looked into it) has very strict gun laws. Or even Mexico - but then people say 'but but drug war!'. Sure, but so is the US; i.e. a large percentage of homicides are part of drug-related crime violence. It's easy to cherry pick a few countries that have lower homicide rates than the US and say 'it's because of stricter gun laws'. And yet Switzerland is near the top of that list (i.e., few homicides - depends on how you sort it, obviously :) ) and the Swiss have gun ownership rates comparable to those of the US! Could it be (gasp!) that overall economic prosperity, social homogeneity and income equality are better predictors of homicide (and other crime) rates? No that can't be it, we need to take the guns away!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ekianjo 10y ago
> And yet if you compare the US with the next umpteen countries combined, totalling the same number of people, gun deaths in the US are vastly more common. The comparison is not as simple to make. Virtually very few other countries have metropolis/urban centers like in the US, or any culture resembling it. I know it's the best data that we have, but it's certainly not apples to apples.

zepolen 10y ago

I fully agree that criminals - and basically any determined human will always find a way. If a market is illegal, it will be artificially limited, because only the businessmen capable of getting around the law will thrive, leading to massive profit margins. If the market is legal, anyone can do it - which also means it's a lot simpler for wrong hands eg. a kid, to gain access to a gun. Where as in eg. Europe it would be much much harder.

baby 10y ago

It will be harder. Way harder. And common people who bought a firegun don't protect us against real and organized criminals. The police or the army does.

zepto 10y ago
The police don't protect people against criminals - they only attempt to bring criminals to justice.

freen 10y ago

Long and short of it is this: black markets have fundamentally higher barriers to entry and substantially higher costs. An AR-15 in Australia costs as much as a very very fancy car. Moreover, the people who will sell it to you are deeply risk averse. Sure, criminals will have them, but it will be an entirely different class of criminals, specifically, those that benefit from low "random violence" environments.

elcct 10y ago
If there is a market there will be people willing to satisfy. I am sure someone who can't afford AR-15 would be able to hire a pistol for a price that won't break his bank.

KirinDave 10y ago

> I'm genuinely curious what your thoughts are on the argument that criminals will break the law and obtain firearms illegally, regardless of the law. It's a rhetorical device. Every shred of actual evidence we have is that making gun ownership illegal reduces the number of gun crimes that occur. There is this strange equation of all gun violence with either extremist organizations or organized crime. In actual stats, that's only one relatively minor component. What's more, I genuinely question the premise that we want to respond to acts of gun violence with more projectiles. As every gun owner who takes a safety course is taught: every bullet goes somewhere. Just because you miss doesn't mean the bullet dissolves into the ether.

zepto 10y ago
Every shred of evidence we have is that violent crime is decreasing whether we make guns illegal or not. Also, in the US, significant gun ownership is for the 2nd Amendment purpose of being a safeguard against a tyrannical government.
- freen 10y ago
  Hah. Good luck against the 101st airborne.
  - zepto 10y ago
    Yeah - that's the usual flippant kind of answer - pistols and rifles are no match for the military. But it's a bogus position - if a significant portion of the country is armed, a very strong resistance can be mounted. In any such situation it wouldn't be the 101st airborne against a civilian population.
    - KirinDave 10y ago
      So if you're pro-civilian resistance to tyranny, I suppose you supported the Oregonian federal occupation, the civil disruptions caused by Black Lives Matter, and the Alcatraz occupation? Forgive me, but lately I've run into a lot of people who talk about the importance of enabling civil resistance until they actually see civil resistance and suddenly they're the living embodiment of law and order.

bicknergseng 10y ago

Not OP, but here's some unsolicited thoughts. While it's true that criminals, by definition, will break the law, all laws are not treated equally by individuals. Millions of people litter or speed despite the law, but I imagine not all who speed in a car also rob banks. It's my understanding that psychological, social, and legal thresholds are not the same for all people, nor are they binary (there's some really great research into ethics thresholds if someone knows of a link). Sure, adding an additional law might not deter the truly determined, but what about those who have a lower threshold for criminal activity? Why not call all manslaughter murder? Would those who commit suicide with a firearm (half of American suicides [1]) choose a more difficult and less immediate method? So the question might be, how does changing a law affect those thresholds? Maybe we don't stop determined criminals or mass shootings, but maybe we can make a dent in the more than 20,000 Americans who choose to shoot themselves every year, or make a difference in urban gun violence. That said, I personally believe that American society is probably too violent and too committed to gun ownership change anytime in my lifetime. We as a society value arguing about gun ownership over actually taking steps to reduce gun violence, or even gathering data on it. The folks that crack me up the most are the ones who say things like you can take my gun from my cold, dead hands because that'd somehow be a check on government power, despite the fact that the federal government possesses tanks and stealth bombers and whatnot. Bonus points if they also think net neutrality is bad, even though open information is demonstrably better for civic checks and balances. [1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm

ensignavenger 10y ago
"maybe we can make a dent in the more than 20,000 Americans who choose to shoot themselves every year, or make a difference in urban gun violence." If those are your goals (and noble goals they are), why not work on health care, notably mental health. If we fixed that, we would probably make an even more substantial dent on the number of suicides, improve the quality of life of those who aren't killing themselves, reduce the amount of urban violence, and even possibly make an impact on mass shootings. I can certainly understand the compelling societal goal- but I'm a big fan of using the least restrictive (and most effective) means to achieving those goals.

sfifs 10y ago

Your gun problems in the US appear to be not so much about "criminals" using guns as it's about random ordinary people under influence of stress or propaganda shooting ordinary people. Having a legal firearms market with ready availability makes it demonstrably easier for such characters to acquire firearms and shoot people vs. other developed economies. Criminals in contrast in most jurisdictions (except notably in Mexico) tend to want to limit violence and fly under the radar and tend to use firearms as a last resort.

matt4077 10y ago

I'm in Europe. I could get weed within 3 minutes, on the street. Hard drugs would maybe take a day. But I have no idea where I could buy an illegal gun. Not saying it isn't possible, but it seems to take a bit of work. That sort of friction doesn't deter a would-be bank robber, but by and large the gangs here don't acquire guns. I've seen a few ugly scenes in public transport, and I'd be hesitant to use it if I thought the people who have knives today had guns. So that's the answer to your question. It's the same as "why are shoulder-launched AA missiles illegal in the US – only criminals will use them". The other part of an answer is that as far as I can see the deaths from accidents and suicides are vastly more important, and I believe even for crime, it's still an open question if gun-owners are safer. Obviously all this depends on the low amount of firearms in circulation, so it doesn't directly apply to the US. There, it would require a transition period with buybacks etc. – which may or may not have worked quite well in Australia.

throwaway1892 10y ago
In France gangs have aquired weapons, you can't read the weekly news without having at least one gun related crime. And there are weapons in Europe, mostly from the Balkan war and circulate easily within Schengen space (no border control).

EvilTerran 10y ago

Even if a criminal can still acquire an illegal firearm, that wouldn't be in his best interests if it's prosecuted with sufficiently more vigour than the other crimes they intend to commit. For example, your average British mugger or burglar is exceedingly unlikely to be so armed - the UK police will dedicate a lot more resources to catching a thief if his victims report he has a gun, and once caught he'll be locked up for a lot longer with it added to his rap sheet.