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I don't think that is obvious at all. I would assume most illegally owned guns have been legally owned in the first place so gun laws can have a big effect.
by pandem 6y ago
I don't think that is obvious at all. I would assume most illegally owned guns have been legally owned in the first place so gun laws can have a big effect.
- zepto 6y agoCan you explain how?
- ralusek 6y agoPeople legally buy guns and then distribute them illegally.
- zepto 6y agoSure but the GP’s point they there is little overlap is correct. Out of approx 400,000,000 guns, only very roughly 12,000 are used in crime. There is less than 0.01% overlap.
- jdkee 6y agoNot sure where you got this number from. The US had 13,500 firearm homicides in 2018. https://health.ucdavis.edu/what-you-can-do/facts.html https://health.ucdavis.edu/what-you-can-do/facts.html If you include the number of persons shot but not killed directly you are looking at about 20x that number. And that doesn’t include firearms used in other crimes of violence.
- zepto 6y agoIf your numbers are correct, the overall point still stands.
- axaxs 6y agoI've had guns stolen. So overnight they went from legally owned to illegally owned.
- jiofih 6y agoEvery illegal gun is either stolen from a legal owner, the police, the military, or imported (where it comes from those same sources). By increasing the supply their availability for criminals also goes up proportionally.
- laverya 6y ago3rd option - manufactured by the criminal. This isn't common today, but considering ongoing the efforts to make 3d-printing Glock and Hi-Point frames easier I can't imagine it will remain uncommon forever. These aren't exactly hard to find, see [0]. And for those who think you can just ban all other gun parts and fix the problem, I present to you the FGC-9 - a pistol-caliber carbine manufacturable in your basement with a 3d printer, metal bar stock, and some high-pressure pipe. Semi-auto, rifled barrel - the works. [1] Is it a trivial process? No. Is it going to get easier and produce higher quality results with time? Yes. 0: https://www.defcad.com/library/60d6a735-4a8c-4b42-8dd7-33b136361975/ https://www.defcad.com/library/60d6a735-4a8c-4b42-8dd7-33b13... 1: https://www.defcad.com/library/ac26b242-720f-4608-a202-0ecea6efa8c7/ https://www.defcad.com/library/ac26b242-720f-4608-a202-0ecea...
- omginternets 6y agoThe proportion of such weapons on the street is on the order of a rounding error.
- laverya 6y agoYeah, 3d-printed guns are essentially nonexistent in criminal hands today. (to the best of my knowledge)
- zepto 6y agoSure, but the evidence from other countries strongly suggests that this would change if commercially made guns got harder to obtain. In the UK and Europe, criminals modifying replicas or other close starting points is quite common.
- LorenPechtel 6y agoOnly if you are talking about basically totally disarming society. Note some problems with this: 1) There are something like 300-600 million firearms in the US. Attempts to disarm only get the guns from those who are law abiding, you disarm the defenders without doing much to the criminals. 2) You probably increase the death rate as you have made people less able to defend themselves, but done basically nothing to most murders because you didn't succeed in disarming the criminals.