4 ms·

Correct, they are very separate issues. Criminal enterprise has more commonality with gun crime than gun ownership does. If gun ownership was simply the issue,

Correct, they are very separate issues. Criminal enterprise has more commonality with gun crime than gun ownership does. If gun ownership was simply the issue, there would be over 1000x since the US has millions of firearms in private ownership and has for a very long time. This is why overly broad laws that criminalize regular people are stupid. We can use things like gang enhancements and laws that say "gun was used in a crime, increase sentence" to criminalize the correct people.

jariel 6y ago
What is 'stupid' is having millions of guns everywhere, willy nilly, people carrying them, threatening each other, cops afraid to pull people over. It's utterly clear to anyone who's bothered to live in a few different civilised countries, and one of the most shockingly 'wrong' thing that a lot of smart can't grasp. It's more of a case study in 'perspective and information bias' than it is guns. Ratcheting up the laws for use in 'gun crime' will help a little bit, but there are no situations in which the widespread availability of guns won't result in quite a lot of excessive violence. There is no way around the math: zillions of guns means excessive gun crime. That's it. People get angry, vengeful, stupid - when they have easy access, when we have 'gun culture' - they turn to guns. Where guns are sparse, and there is no gun culture ... they don't.
- Alupis 6y ago
  You said this down-thread too, and it was just as incorrect the first time. 1) People do not just carry guns around with them in the US. That's factually untrue, and illegal in most places. Even where open-carry or CCW is legal, these are flatly not the people committing gun violence. There is no evidence of that at all. In fact, these tend to be the least likely people to actually use a gun over some argument or whatever. It's not 1843, it's not the wild west - there are no poker room gun fights or high-noon gun duels. 2) The guns commonly used in gun violence were obtained illegally. Turns out... criminals do not care about background checks, waiting periods, approved gun rosters, and more. 3) When an "otherwise lawful" citizen does use a gun to commit violence, it's usually murder, usually of someone they know (wife cheating, etc). Without a gun, a knife would be used, or a car, or poison, or whatever. Even your "civilized" country examples have this exact same problem - crimes of passion as they are often called. 4) One of the leading stats for gun related deaths are suicides. Without guns, you still have suicides (see Asian countries with zero civilian-owned guns, yet people jump out of buildings). There simply is not a problem with legal gun owners running around committing acts of violence. It's simply not true.

jariel 6y ago

What is 'stupid' is having millions of guns everywhere, willy nilly, people carrying them, threatening each other, cops afraid to pull people over. It's utterly clear to anyone who's bothered to live in a few different civilised countries, and one of the most shockingly 'wrong' thing that a lot of smart can't grasp. It's more of a case study in 'perspective and information bias' than it is guns. Ratcheting up the laws for use in 'gun crime' will help a little bit, but there are no situations in which the widespread availability of guns won't result in quite a lot of excessive violence. There is no way around the math: zillions of guns means excessive gun crime. That's it. People get angry, vengeful, stupid - when they have easy access, when we have 'gun culture' - they turn to guns. Where guns are sparse, and there is no gun culture ... they don't.

Alupis 6y ago
You said this down-thread too, and it was just as incorrect the first time. 1) People do not just carry guns around with them in the US. That's factually untrue, and illegal in most places. Even where open-carry or CCW is legal, these are flatly not the people committing gun violence. There is no evidence of that at all. In fact, these tend to be the least likely people to actually use a gun over some argument or whatever. It's not 1843, it's not the wild west - there are no poker room gun fights or high-noon gun duels. 2) The guns commonly used in gun violence were obtained illegally. Turns out... criminals do not care about background checks, waiting periods, approved gun rosters, and more. 3) When an "otherwise lawful" citizen does use a gun to commit violence, it's usually murder, usually of someone they know (wife cheating, etc). Without a gun, a knife would be used, or a car, or poison, or whatever. Even your "civilized" country examples have this exact same problem - crimes of passion as they are often called. 4) One of the leading stats for gun related deaths are suicides. Without guns, you still have suicides (see Asian countries with zero civilian-owned guns, yet people jump out of buildings). There simply is not a problem with legal gun owners running around committing acts of violence. It's simply not true.