This is one of those subjects that gets beaten to death over and over, with the evidence overwhelmingly supporting one side, but without the people who are obviously wrong ever changing their minds. In the interests of settling matters once and for all, I think we should compile a list of every claim ever made on the matter along with an evaluation of whether it's legit or bull. Claim #1: literally every statement saying anything about "gun crime", "gun violence", or "gun deaths". Fact: These are the wrong statistics to look at. They include firearm suicides and defensive use of firearms, while ignoring the use of other weapons in crime. The relevant statistic is violent crime, regardless of weapon used. Wherever gun-control has reduced the use of guns in crime (and several times when it hasn't), it has produced a far sharper increase in beatings, stabbings, rapes, and other violent crimes. Claim #2: literally every statement saying anything about "homicide" rates Fact: This is also the wrong statistic to look at. It fails to distinguish between murders and justifiable homicides. The easier it is for people to use lethal force in self-defense, the more dead criminals you're going to have. This is not a bad thing. Claim #3: The murder rate is four times higher in the US than in the UK because of our gun laws Fact: The murder rate in the US has always been 4x higher than that in the UK, even back when neither country had any gun laws. However, the UK's violent crime rate is 4x that of the US, and this is a relatively recent phenomenon. Claim #4: Literally every other comparison between the US and certain cherry-picked countries Fact: It's true that certain countries with strict gun laws also have low violent crime rates. However, people making this claim ignore all of the countries with strict gun laws and extremely high violent crime rates, like Mexico and Russia. Also, Yemen has even less restrictive gun laws than the USA, and its murder rate is lower, despite being a total third-world craphole with a kleptocratic government. All of the above are based on directly comparing the current state of one jurisdiction with the current state of another, trying to find a correlation, and then arguing that the correlation proves causation. Obvious logical fallacy is obvious. A proper statistical analysis takes a look at the violent crime rates within a single jurisdiction before and after a given gun law is passed, and compares them to the "background" violent crime rate; i.e., looking at the crime rate in Florida in the decade before and the decade after concealed carry was legalized and comparing it to the national crime rate in the same time periods, or looking at the crime rate in Chicago in the decade before and the decade after its handgun ban was enacted and comparing it to the Illinois crime rate in the same time periods. Claim #5: Mass shootings overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, occur in "gun-free zones" Fact: Yup, pretty much. In the case of the Fort Hood shooting, the victims were unarmed due to a law passed during the Clinton administration specifying that on-duty military personnel should only be armed if their base happens to be in a combat zone. Firearms were prohibited at the theater where the Dark Knight shooting took place. Every school shooting? A gun-free zone. Breivik's rampage in Norway would have been stopped by two Chechen kids, Movsar Dzhamayev and Rustam Daudov... if they were armed with something more formidable than rocks.The total number of killing sprees that have occurred at all gun shows and NRA meetings combined? Zero. Claim #6: The book "More Guns, Less Crime" proves that expansion of gun rights deters violent crime, and strict gun-control increases it. Fact: The book's findings are a subject of disagreement. A notable flaw of the book is that it does not look at data from anywhere outside the US. Claim #7: Bans on handguns in Chicago and Washington DC produced spikes in the murder and/or violent crime rates; when these bans were lifted, crime went back down. Fact: violent crimes in both cities were already increasing more rapidly than the national average when the bans went into effect. After spiking, both experienced a downward trend, and the bans were lifted during these downward trends. Correlation is not causation. Claim #8: literally every hypothetical scenario that anyone has ever concocted in this debate Fact: Hypothetical situations are not reality. I'd like to expand this thread with links and statistics and stuff, so contributions are welcome.
I thought this was going to be an anti thread. Phew! There's the cultural aspect as well, when we compare one country to another. There was a time when the UK had far fewer immigrants. It would be interesting to see how the increase in immigration effected violent crime. The US was established as a melting pot. What could one possibly expect, other than higher rates of crime when such diverse cultures are thrown together? The gist of your thread kinda points out that the antis are not looking for better cultural relations. They're looking for better control of the population by tyrannical means.
