6 ms·

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 yo

by 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...
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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!
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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.

by na85 10y ago

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

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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

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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.