One of the most common arguments for gun ownership is personal protection of family and property. Every gun based question on GAG has a string of members claiming guns keep America safe and should they give them up criminals would have a field day.
Given the huge number of guns in America it should be the safest place on earth, but. it isn't. www.nationmaster.com/.../Violent-crime shows violent crime is far higher in the USA even taking in population differences. Comparing the USA with other countries shows similar results.
So if we buy the American argument that guns reduce crime then why does America have one of the highest crime rates in the world.
If guns keep you safe, why is the USA more dangerous than the UK?
Politics, not guns, are the reasons why crime and violence are such a problem in the US. A bit of investigation will also show that the most violent cities in the US are without exception cities that have been under Democratic control at all levels for decades - and that, no surprise, these cities have draconian gun control which disarms the law-abiding citizens, while, of course, the criminals disregard the laws and always have guns. But even if you remove guns from the equation completely, the larger problem becomes apparent: criminals in high-crime areas generally get very light punishments or none at all, until they finally commit multiple murder (and sometimes not even then). The government, especially in these cities, is much happier to prosecute law-abiding citizens with no criminal record who defended themselves against violent criminals than they are to prosecute the criminals themselves - even criminals with dozens of convictions.
The US is, overall, a safer place than the UK, but we also have a handful of hotspots where crime is completely out of control, and these skew the numbers massively. People who avoid those hotspots have relatively little to worry about - which is not to say that the hotspots should be ignored. But the electorate in those cities continues to elect soft-on-crime leaders election after election, and the problems there only get worse.
States that have the fewest restrictions on guns also have FAR lower violent crime rates than states that have the highest restrictions. Gun laws aren't the only reason for this, of course, but they are definitely part of the reason. The larger reason is that politicians in general, and left-leaning politicians especially, aren't especially interested in reducing crime or violence. If they could end all violence in their city or state with a push of a button, that button would go unpushed. Why? Because if they pushed the button, they would not be able to justify all of the people they oversee and all of the budget they control. Solving crime would reduce their power and influence, and most politicians want the opposite.
Let's look at Chicago - it's America's most violent city, and it's never been more violent. The vast majority of the violence occurs in the South Side, which is gang-infested and largely black. But that's a big part of the problem: the Left has been pushing racism as the primary cause of social problems for the last decade, and there is very little political will to enforce laws and prosecute crimes committed by blacks in Chicago - a city where the Mayor, Police Chief, and District Attorney are all black and all Democrats. The DA is the same person who declined to prosecute Jussie Smollet, who staged a fake racist attack on himself in order to get a raise from the TV show he was on, resulting in thousands of hours of investigation that proved the whole thing was a hoax. Meanwhile, black children were being killed on the South Side as collateral damage to the gang wars, and their murders were not being investigated.
The Democrats that control Chicago have little interest in putting black criminals in prison - even though they're killing other black people, including children and elderly - because they are more concerned with being seen as "race traitors" than doing the jobs they were elected to do. Police there are undertrained and underfunded, work in a war zone, and are asked to do the impossible, and the second something goes wrong, the city not only abandons them, but is happy to testify against them.
Guns are a small issue in a much larger problem - a problem that leaders have no intention of trying to solve.
It also needs to be mentioned that crime is reported very differently in the US vs the UK. In the UK, only SOLVED crimes are counted. If a person in the UK is murdered, but the prosecution can't get a conviction, then that murder isn't counted - it's just a death. In the US, a murder is counted as a murder even if the police don't even have a suspect. This results in very skewed crime stats from the UK - but it makes the government look better on the surface, and of course the media happily plays along.
@MrOracle I am talking about this tidbit: "If a person in the UK is murdered, but the prosecution can't get a conviction, then that murder isn't counted - it's just a death." Where did you get that from?
I totally agree with you somewhere somehow America people got lost parents quit being parents they let their kids talk to them the way they they talk to their kids which is usually rude you have presidents like Trump you think they can say and do anything in this world because that's who they are and when you have mentality like that you have people out of control mental health in America is not good and it starts with parents if your kid did something wrong you don't yell and scream at them because that's what you're teaching them to do when they are pissed off it may take a little bit further I have guns there for one thing and one thing only they're not a when I get pissed off at somebody and I'm not grown up enough to understand that just because somebody called me a name or peed on my flowers doesn't give you the right to do something fucking stupid and shoot them and that's where kids are nowadays you watch these kids play video games stealing cars just being a bad person on those games they think that they can do that in real life I don't think people that get married or even date should have kids not in this you're going to be there with him twenty-four hours a day teaching them wrong from right and that was an attitude because that's where it all starts fix that you fix part of our guns problem
I think gun rights and violence rates have a correlative, not causative relationship. So, I don't think guns cause the crimes, but the catalyst is actually related to other factors, like our wealth disparities, poverty relief programs (or lack thereof), poor youth education system in many areas, low income housing programs, and criminal justice system.
We tend to smash poor people together, minimize their income, remove vertical movement in most industries, limit available work to low income industries, police them rather than protect them as a community, isolate them from family planning programs, punish them after incarceration as workforce pariahs, wrongfully arrest many of them, put them in schools that are structured for high rates of failure, minimize sex education, and allow their neighborhoods to enter extreme levels of decay.
I think that if we were limited to medieval weaponry, then the crime rate would be just as high, but with maces and spears. Maybe less car jackings, and less successful murders that would just become assaults with deadly weapons.
I think successful suicides would drop, though.
Then again, I am saying that our rate of violence is comparatively high within the impoverished communities, and/or that we have a larger impoverished community, and I don't have the data table. I'm sure that we can get it, and run a Chi-Square Goodness of Fit test, or some other inter-generational/cross national comparison with an ANOVA test. I honestly don't have the time to gather, calculate, and analyze that data, so someone else would have to.
I agree completely this was a very well thought out answer and a sad situation that has been created by the powers that be I believe it’s going to take young fresh and brilliant minds like this to fix this problem and many others that the broken out dated minds that are running our country have created
You may have crafted the perfect answer. I agree with you that the crime rate amongst ethnic minorities and impoverished communities without guns will be just as high due to the aforementioned reasons, but the successful murder rate would drop significantly, and that's one step in the right direction. At the end of the day, it's harder to kill someone with a knife than with a gun. That's the first radical step that should be taken, gun control. With time, a long-term plan to do with infrastructure development in the inner city and better education for the impoverished communities can help them prosper and achieve the same as others.
@Datboi65 Gun control seems to have three approaches: 1) control the weapons manufacturers, 2) control the dispersal of guns (dealerships), 3) control individuals within the population.
None of these approaches seem to help poor communities, or even seem to be possible with our current and past political arrangements, court decisions, and wording within the constitution. I was going to link an interesting documentary about Sig Sauer, Heckler & Koch, and German gun control law failures on the bottom of this post, but I think DW Documentaries removed the video. I can't find it, and I find that a little distressing. My point was to show that they have enough money and power to support themselves in a legal or political battle.
Controlling the middle man may be the easiest, so make it harder for people to get guns, but this still wouldn't get to the core of the underlying issues that were noted, and the black market is beyond us. When you are poor, and in the midst of real danger, you need a gun. The cat is out of the bag, and ghost gun tech, including 3D printed guns, have evolved into a full on and reliable black market industry. People who need a gun in this situation will get one, because it is their lives that are in danger, and it is real. They have no protection, and that leads me to the third approach to gun control.
If we try to punish people for having black market guns, which the poor will have to survive living in high traffic areas for black market goods, then we have just increased the size of the prison population, and simply fed back into the cycle of poverty.
I just don't see how it will be possible to reverse widespread knowledge of gun technology, not to mention explosives. It would be nice to keep guns out of mentally ill peoples' hands, though.
If we can achieve limiting the power of the guns manufacturers, then I believe that we will really have a chance to save some lives, because they are the hurdle to jump on a political level.
@youngmix how do we address the fact that stricter gun laws or making citizens turn in their guns only effects the law abiding citizens because the criminals will be criminals and won’t obey those laws so it just makes it so the bad guys and cops and military have guns so when a bunch of bad guys do a home invasion on you and you don’t have a gun to defend your family and if you’re lucky enough that they police even get called they’re slow as hell and by the time they get there the damage is done and bad guys are already gone. Sometimes the cops don’t even show up at all. Just interested in your opinion
@humpbackjack The questions you are posing are extremely important parts of this issue for me, if not the most important. 1) How do you successfully uphold a prohibition on a product that is widely in use, can be homemade, and was legal for a large portion of history?; and 2) how do you protect people from guns once you ban them?
As for a prohibition of this type, my thoughts depend upon the precise definition of the prohibition. Are we talking all guns, post production weapon attachments, or specific models or types of guns? If all guns are prohibited, then I would say that is absolutely unachievable. I believe that a comparable event occurred during the notorious prohibition of drinking alcohol. The rise of a massive black market, the rise of major criminal enterprises, a spike in violent crimes, increasing rates of incarceration, and the destruction of entire communities (e. g. the German micro brewing communities that faced heavy prosecution early on).
@humpbackjack Concerning weapon attachments, like: extended clips, silencers, hollow-point bullets, and others that may be of concern; I do not know enough about their market share to guess resistance. But, I do know that some of the laws passed concerning their control are very misleading or outright incorrect in their assumptions or remedies. For example, possessing a silencer in California carries a life sentence, because they are assuming that you wish to assassinate people if you own one. That makes no sense to me, and I believe that is cruel and unusual punishment. I believe that if someone wishes to commit murder, the presence of a silencer will not effect their decision. I also wonder if their are more practical uses for a silencer, like for hunting, or even during a gun fight during a break in. As for extended clips, switching between clips is not a laborious task, as that is a major design point of modern gun models, to seamlessly unload and load clips or bullets/shells. It may save a life during an attack due to user error, or gun jamming, or a split second difference in location, but it will ruin many lives by increasing our prison population or increasing time owed during incarceration (punishment because someone also committed this crime of ownership).
@humpbackjack As for banning gun models, I believe that this will simply lead to a larger prison population, as these weapons can be produced or assembled at home, or really, out of the factory. Models can also be altered at home, and criminal enterprises have their own knowledge base and methods for educating members on various weapons based tasks.
I just believe that people are looking for answers to a problem which lies at the roots of human nature, and social structure. We want peace, as we all should, but we have a history of violence, and some people have a propensity for such. We want fairness, but society is controlled by avarice. We need far sighted thinking, but we have short term power.
I'll write my viewpoint on the second question, on how to protect citizens after a prohibition began, in the next post. It will not be long.
The answer to that is actually more simple than you think. Weapon manufacturers cannot be controlled, because they are needed for the military. However, a bill can be passed (should be passed at least) by Congress that restricts the sale and distributions to mostly the military, while Civilians can have basic weapons like handguns and shotguns for self-protection. Allow for the sales of any and all semiautomatic and automatic guns that are owned by Civilians within a window of time (let's say 3 years for example) to the pentagon, and that's the disarming stage (stage 2). Now a Black market will be created, that's true. However, due to supply and demand, weapons aren't going to be affordable in the Black market, so most likely the impoverished will not be able to purchase them. As for protection, you don't have to use a gun for protection against a person that doesn't own it, because they have no range leverage over you like someone with a gun has. 2 things have to be considered before all of this: 1) Expect a lot of pushback from the NRA, a very powerful organization. 2) The American constitution and the 2nd amendment calls for the right to bear arms, which in this case we are not banning all guns, only the most dangerous types. However, there could be room to argue that it is the right to bare ALL kinds of arms, since that point isn't included, and we just go back to square 1.
I don't think the argument is that guns reduce crime. The argument is that guns in the hands of criinals cause crime and guns in the hands of law abiding citizens acts as a partial deterrent to crime. You wold need to look at how many victims of gun-involved crimes were themselves gun owners vs. how many were not gun owners.
To me.. you are like someone who sees lots of rats running around in an open field and you then claim that it proves the rat traps and poisons inside the barn don't work. Even tho there are zero rats running around inside the barn. Meanwhile a lot of do-gooders are trying to ban rat traps and rat poison with the 'evidence' that they don't work where they're not placed. The place where law abiding gun owners live are like the barn.
When a firearm is used to prevent a crime then the would-be crime does not appear in stats. It could be that the US crime rate would be far worse if law abiding citizens did not have firearms. Also, firearms aren't a guaranteed way to prevent crime. It's a tool designed to terminate people and a good guy can use it to terminate a violent attacker. What would the stats say if the violent criminal murdered 5 people before he ran into the good guy with a gun who terminates him? The stats don't show that 5 to 20 more murders were prevented.
There are lots of criminals who are repeat offenders running around, and the legal system doesn't allow law abiding citizens to hunt them down.
Most crime is from illegal guns to begin with. If the USA cannot even keep people from crossing the borders illegally how would they keep guns out? It is also mostly in big liberal cities with gang violence and the most restrictive gun laws.
Drugs come across illegally the most, followed by guns. Even if the USA outlawed all guns right now, and everyone willingly turned theirs in, and there was zero guns in the country.
There would still be thousands up on thousands coming in illegally every day, just like drugs and human traffickers.
It could make sense if the border was 100% secure and no way to get illegal guns in but that will never happen as we can't even keep illegals out.
However, if I didn't conceal carry I would be dead years ago. As I was attacked by a guy with a knife, no less... had to shoot him. I'm not a fighter, no way I could have fought off a guy with a knife. All I did was come out of a store, heard a woman screaming, yelled HEY and he charged me with a knife, stabbed me pretty deep and then did a 18 inch or so slash that I still have scars for. Not to mention internal scaring that for the rest of my life is causing bowel issues that can never be fixed, as fixing it creates more scar tissue and makes it worse.
To me personally, guns do save lives, my life specifically.
I would not use the argument that it keeps people safe over all, but on a personal level it does. Especially when your hours from law enforcement help. There is millions of people who have used them in self defense over the years that can attest to that.
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Because the gun nut argument is bullshit, and every gun violence statistic from modern, industrialized first world countries with gun control proves it's bullshit. Including the assumption that banning guns will result in purge like mayhem and anarchy. Not only is their no precedent supporting this argument, it's proven wrong by Australia who enacted strict gun control over 25 years ago, saw gun violence plummet, and hasn't had one mass shooting since.
well yeah... but it depends on the comparisons you choose
USA is in general way more safe than Mexico
when I am in the USA... I can go pretty much "anywhere" without a gun and feel safe in general
but, when I am in Mexico... I cannot go just anywhere I want, even if fully armed... I'd still feel a decent level of concern
so yes, overall... and all things considered, USA is way safer than Mexico precisely because more people have their own personal guns and means to protection so both criminals and the government have to think twice or three times before they do something against "the people"
over here in Mexico, both criminals and the government know very well that they can use their guns against "the people" and they can quite easily get away with it
@NYlatefun first of all... it is a bit funny how you reduce and limit what "truth" is to just one year, and that year being 2019
whatever data reported, REPORTED... for 2018 or 2020, is not true?
or 2004, 2008?
there is a key word on what I said... "reported" deaths, that's the problem with your "data"
I will mention just one example, there was this one big ass gunfire battle in Mexico between several factions of certain cartels, and several branches of the Mexican Armed, and also Government forces... by the that time that mess had ended, the OFFICIAL reported data was this "six people died after a confrontation between a regional drug lord and the Mexican armed forces"
however, I was around that day... and the whole city was obviously there as well, I personally saw at least 14 people that were no longer breathing in just one street, just one street in a battle that spread all over six different towns and cities
I don't want to go into details as to why I was around but I ended counting at least 40 people dead, but the thing is... these are disposable people for the cartels, so they do not "count" for the government because is not convenient for the government, and cartels do not count losses either because they don't want to look weaker, so yes... and like this, I have many more examples
there has been entire towns that have been attacked but never reported in the media, or by the government... till years later, you find out from the news but they never go on official records or "reported data"
if you care to learn more about these never reported "incidents" here's a good link
" How The U. S. Triggered A Massacre In Mexico
The inside story of a cartel’s deadly assault on a Mexican town near the Texas border — and the U. S. drug operation that sparked it. "
Sure 50 years ago things were different. There's another reality today, the most recent data is 2019 and those are the numbers. You want to come up with your own anecdotal reality, sure have a blast.
@NYlatefun this didn't happen 50 years ago but that, really doesn't matter here... you obviously have no clue about how things really go outside your little bubble...
USA also uses more space, creates waste and so on. Its different culture. Taking guns away not gonna change minds of criminals, they will keep ganging up with knives. Thats what happens here in uk, knives everywhere, i dont feel safe at all, i can't even protect myself, in USA at least i would get a chance to shoot the fuker back here i just have to get fuking killed and accept it. Pisses me off. Give me at least fuking taser but no. I have to let them stab me. Fuking 12y kids come and try fuk with me cuz they have knofe and feel powerfull fuk that shit. I could end them right then and there. Thats why u have more murders.
Everybody on here that commented the things that guns and my hands as an American citizen protecting my family and myself and my home and my property is wrong all I can say is you can go fuck yourself. Wait till the day of criminal comes after and breaks into your home or whatever and try to take your stuff that you worked hard for or threaten your family by breaking into your home. It's not the cops fault I don't blame cops cops are doing a great job some of them are fucking bad like everybody else some are bad some are good but I'm sorry you come into my home and you're going to eat a fucking 45 caliber fucking bullet and several of them and I honestly don't give a fuck if you die or not I'm trying to kill you at that point you're in my home threatening my family so as far as I'm concerned you're going to fucking die. You can take that up with the man upstairs after your fucking dead and feel stupid for breaking in my fucking home
In the US, gun ownership is considered by many to be safer than not owing a gun because there are so many criminals that have guns... both criminals and non-criminals have the right to own guns ("bear arms") per the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.
In many other countries (UK for example), guns are not allowed to be owned by individuals or are severely restricted, and that includes criminals as well as non-criminals.
Put all the above together and you get the US vs UK statistics shown in the question.
If you were planning to break into someone's house for nefarious reasons, would you be more prone to break into a house where they own guns, or one where there aren't any? A couple years ago, some asshole raided a church, I think, and started shooting people at random! Had he not been stopped, a LOT of people would've died but, a few of the people IN that room were also carrying guns and they shot his fucking worthless ass dead and saved everyone else's life!! Do you think less people would've been killed if that happened in England?
Because there's been guns here since the beginning you're not going to take that away from us so criminals have been using guns since then and since we know criminals are not going to give them up so we have to keep them to protect ourselfs and in Europe the criminals I was told in another post on gag someone said people commit crimes with a knife over in Europe because they know people will do what they say and so that's all they have to carry but now im sure the high criminal enterprise has guns and uses them
First of all, no one buys that argument because as you have already pointed out, it's false. You have to understand the history of America to understand why guns are so popular. The 1st amendment is freedom of speech, well if you expect free speech you better be prepared to defend yourself against those that disagree. Also America was settled from East to West as millions of Pioneers went across the country in search of a better life. They needed to guns to hunt for food and defend themselves against natives. Overtime the nostalgia of this has allowed new less informed generations to simply equate gun ownership w/ freedom.
Firearms do reduce crime. During his presidency, Obama asked for a study to be conducted on how many times firearms were used in self defense or to prevent a crime from happening. He thought it would show firearms were seldom used for self defense, thus contradicting those who defend the right to own them. The 2013 study done by the CDC cost $10,000,000 and it concluded there were 500,000 to 3,000,000 defensive uses of guns every year, compared to 300,000 crimes committed with guns. The U. S. is actually a very safe place in relation to the number of guns in circulation. The number 1 cause of gun deaths is suicides. The 2nd cause is gang violence.
The worldwide average murder rate across all nations stands at approximately 11 per 100,000 people. The U. S. has the world's highest gun possession rate and falls far below that average at approximately 4 per 100,000.
Gun control advocates elevate European nations as some sort of gun-banning, violence-free utopia, their murder rates are only slightly better than the U. S. at 2 or 3 per 100,000.
That is a fallacy because you can't prove it was the gun that stopped the crime. If a shopkeeper points a gun at a kid stealing candy he'll stop the crime but he'd do so just as effectively by shouting at him.
Purplepoppy is useless trying to show evidence to the Americans. Their use of weapons is part of a kind of psycho-religion/toxic addiction. All evidence leads to circular reasoning to try to demonstrate that the free carrying of weapons serves to increase security. Try telling a drug addict that the drug will lead to his death or ruin his life, he will try in every way to justify that his drug is actually saving him. You have the same effect. Doing this is like to ask questions is like question about water in idiocracy.
"Why does America have one of the highest crime rates in the world?"
Maybe because it's the third most populated country on the planet, and the other two (India and China) have exceptionally more crime per capita than the US does? Not to mention, most of the US' crimes happen in big cities. You're conflating "all crime" into "violent crime" and "preventable crime than firearm safety could prevent" and it's disingenuous as f*ck.
@UCrayCray You have the internet. You can look it up yourself. India is almost tied with the US, however. And I should've mentioned that crime in China is based on what the CCP views as "crime." for example, being a Uighur Muslim or disagreeing with CCP policy, and much of it is covered up (under-reporting). Things like human trafficking, domestic abuse, stabbings, and drug abuse are more common in China, but homicides and muggings are less common. (And I hate to use Wikipedia as a source, but it's the easiest one you'll find.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_China#Murder en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking_in_China en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_in_China
I did look it up. That’s why I said “I’m not finding any information that confirms that.” I looked and found nothing to support what you said.
And yes, we do need to consider how controlled the information coming out of China is. So all we really have at this point is speculation since we have no real idea as to what the numbers are. Information on India is also showing much less crime than the USA. I’m only asking about where you get the information to back up your claim. Assuming the numbers are bigger just because they are not honest in their reporting is, like I said, speculation.
Giving guns to an American seems to be the same as giving liquor to an alcoholic, you can only expect failure. It's the mentality towards gun that is wrong. Even the ones that doesn't commit crime are handling them and viewing them wrong. There is a few countries that manage a high gun count but they also got a strict culture around guns. US citizens see them as toys and tools.
Comparing two countries that are nothing alike is not a great argument. Even within the United States you can’t really compare states. Alaska is supposed to (per capita) have the worst gun crime in the nation, and we get maybe 12-24 murders a year. We often have more deaths from plane crashes than guns each year. And we probably have 3-5 million firearms for our small 700k population. I for one owe my life to a firearm, so nothing with ever change my mind about the right to bear arms.
Well because you guys can't really have guns dummy. Since we can have guns that means the criminals have easier access to guns so that means we need more guns to protect us from the criminals that's why we have so many guns on the bright side is you'll never see concentration camps in this country unless it's for the Japanese or some other alien race
In UK it is also difficult for criminals to get guns. If you implement strict gun laws in USA then criminals will still get their guns while law abiding citizens won't. Existing illegal guns won't just disappear and illegal unregistered guns will go to the black market if they are banned. Moreover US borders and not exactly water proof while UK is a island.
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