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Heh - I probably shouldn't have checked in on Life board today. But anyway...

Posted by: RogerMore on Dec 21, 13:31 in response to Scorpion's post Bad arguments, or just ones you don't want to accept?

Those arguments were bad. I'm prepared to listen to and accept arguments from the pro-gun side, and I don't need people to agree with me, but those were bad. I provided an explanation of why I thought each one was bad and I think it's telling that you only responded on the confiscation one - and to clarify I've said elsewhere in the thread that I don't think a UK-style gun control solution would be practical, popular, possible or constitutional in the US. (What you could maybe do is have a (non-compulsory) buy-back scheme and make it illegal for people to sell those weapons. It's not a perfect solution and would have side effects like black-market trading, but you'd also have fewer weapons in circulation.)

The rest of this is quite an essay, and takes things more seriously, So if you've read this far read on...

I think your argument of "It's more guns or more crime" is a stronger one that deserves discussion, but before I get into this, we should get the statistics down. This doc has comparisons of OECD countries, but we'll focus on the US and on "England & Wales" (Scotland and N Ireland are separate jurisdictions)

http://www.civitas.org.uk/crime/crime_stats_oecdjan2012.pdf

The original US data comes from here:

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1#overview

And the UK data from here

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/science-research/research-statistics/crime/crime-statistics/british-crime-survey/

When you look at the comparison, US murder rates are much higher, recorded rape cases are around the same level (and relatively high in both countries compared to others), robberies are around the same level. I'm not sure where your crime stats came from, but this paints a very different picture from your post. (Also, there are a lot of weird crime stats in that first link - check out robberies in Belgium, burglaries in Denmark and rapes in Australia - crazy! But then Japan has no guns and a ridiculously low assault rate and robbery rate. Also, Canada is probably the best comparsion in terms of culture, demographics, needs of the rural population, and what a stricter US gun control scheme could potentially look like, and it's lower on everything except vehicle theft.)

But let's stick with US and England/Wales.

Anyway, the really big difference is on assault, where England & Wales have a rate nearly three times higher than America's. That's huge. Now we're getting somewhere on the "more guns equal less crime" argument.

Now, we can't seriously make the assumption that assaults are so high because England & Wales have strict gun controls - there are a bunch of other factors involved in crime, and crime rates are decresing in both the US and the UK despite their different views on gun control.

But let's assume it anyway, and also that we have a straight trade-off - you can have strict gun control and England/Wales homicide rate but you have to accept its higher rate of assault. Or you can have loose gun control with the US' low rate of assault and be much more likely to be murdered.

I'll put some numbers behind this to make the choice starker: from the strict gun control side, and you're three times more likely to be assaulted, and five times less likely to be murdered. Or from the gun control side, you're preventing 1.4 million assaults, but sadly it's at a cost of 12,000 deaths.

If someone had put it like that and said "This is America, it is our decision - the extra deaths are tragic, but everyone feels a lot safer because the threat of being beaten up or stabbed is so much lower", I'd actually be fine with it. I realise people dont want to say it because it sounds callous, but society accepts these risks every day in everything from traffic rules to medical procedures.

But instead the argument was still "gun control doesn't do anything", which is simply denial. That's why I was frustrated. Not because people don't agree with me, but because it's just so obvious that if your first priority is to reduce the number of gun deaths, gun control works. It has indirect effects on other things things that affect out quality of life, sure, but the key point to remember is "if you want to reduce gun deaths, gun control works".

And I understand to a point why there is resistance to this view and the claim that gun control doesn't work persists. People don't want to say that "reducing the number of gun deaths" is not their first priority. But if you think that the status quo is acceptable, then it obviously isn't.

Anyway, I said that the murders/assaults trade-off assumption was unrealistic, and it is. Reality is far too complex. And that implies that the more guns/less crime argument is really a false choice.

Imagine you're the Home Secretary in Britain, with responsibility for preventing crime. You'd look at where England/Wales falls on that comparison report and say "This is an international embarrassment. I have to do something to lower these assault rates. We can't go on like this, always afraid of getting beaten up". But any increase in murders from looser gun controls would also be bad, so you'd find some other solution that doesn't involve more guns - better prevention and enforcement by police, poverty reduction, assisting lower socio-economic groups with post-secondary education, etc. So there's really no trade off - you can get lower assault rates through other options (and they have been dropping. Not hugely or as much as other crimes, but still dropping)

And it's exactly the same in the United States. Obviously, the number of gun deaths need to be reduced from 11,000 because that's a ridiculously high number. And the number of spree killings need to be reduced because that's also ridiculously high. Gun control is the answer to this. But at the same time, you don't want to compromise on personal security. So what steps do you take to do that? The simple answer is, people can own weapons they need for their personal security, and you restrict the ability to own weapons beyond that need.

Obviously what "need for personal security" means is up for debate, and probably deserves its own post. Without going into specifics on particular weapons, I mean the minimum necessary to deal with risks you likely to encounter on a really bad day (a snake, a bear, an angry guy with a bat, a guy breaking into your house)

I think this will definitely be my last gun control post though, because they are exhausting.

Re: Guns and crime: The rate of both homicides and shootings has been dramatically decreasing in the U.S. forlorne Dec 18, 07:46

What do you mean "all of the recent mass shootings have taken place specifically where firearms are banned". It's clearly legal to own RogerMore Dec 18, 08:52

specifically, the schools, the particular theater, and the shopping mall all banned firearms, including those with forlorne Dec 18, 11:56

I don't think it's very pragmatic to have loaded firearms in places where there are lots of children - like schools, or theatres. RogerMore Dec 18, 13:07

An interesting article from Ezra Klein of the Washington Post. He addresses Switzerland in a correction piece also linked. Paul2k Dec 18, 09:02

More American Stupidity - richest country in the world - and no Universal HealthCare for its citizens - Pathetic. {nm} RotoHockeyYTD2012 Dec 18, 15:13

From wikipedia, crime statistics and gun violence statistics for the U.S. Paul2k Dec 18, 10:38

I'm a pragmatist. It seems abundantly clear laws do not keep guns away from criminals, and random mental illness will always be with us. forlorne Dec 18, 11:58

Hmm. Laws do not keep guns away from ciminals? While that is true, from my perspective, it seems to be the wrong way of looking at it. Paul2k Dec 18, 13:53

Yesterday, someone pulled out a gun at a theater and started shooting. They got one shot off, and someone who had a gun dropped them. forlorne Dec 18, 11:59

That someone was an law enforcement officer, not some random citizen. {nm} Antibody Dec 18, 12:02