so the right to bear arms is being challenged?

[johnny blaze]

Like short sleeves, I bear arms.

Nah but seriously, that's not going to stop me from owning a 9mm, there's plenty of people willing to sell 'em.

[ZeikHunter]

If the lawful and not-so-lawful are armed, it clearly won't escalate.

lets say i was a bad guy, looking to invade someones home or mug someone in the street. would i be more likely to do so in an area where gun ownership is prevalent, or would i want to find a spot where im the only one with a gun?
thats why crime in Switzerland is so low. everyone has a weapon, and they all know how to use it.

the majority of legal gun owners, especially those licensed to carry concealed, are very knowledgeable, responsible, and mature. when was the last time you heard in the news about someone with a ccw shooting someone in the street?

not as often as you hear about random thugs shooting people, im sure.

[WolfCoder]

"Good...? Bad...? I'm the one with the gun"
I am so surprised ilovefirearms has not said that yet. Humans sure love killing each other.

[ZeikHunter]

thats because he dosnt have any worth shooting, lol.

[_M_]

thats because he dosnt have any worth shooting, lol.

Na, goin Waterfowl hunting tomorrow.

I say waterfowl because I don't know what's going to be out there. Maybe ducks and geese. Taking my new shotgun out. Gas operated so the 3 1/2 inch steel shot won't kill my shoulder.

I'd much rather hang a duck or an elk on my wall than some crack head trying to rob my house and hurt my family.

[Dr Mario]

lets say i was a bad guy, looking to invade someones home or mug someone in the street. would i be more likely to do so in an area where gun ownership is prevalent, or would i want to find a spot where im the only one with a gun?
thats why crime in Switzerland is so low. everyone has a weapon, and they all know how to use it.

the majority of legal gun owners, especially those licensed to carry concealed, are very knowledgeable, responsible, and mature. when was the last time you heard in the news about someone with a ccw shooting someone in the street?

not as often as you hear about random thugs shooting people, im sure.

That's a remarkably simplified take on reality.

[Paladin_Hammer]

Then let's see some links to studies, not the most recent case we have heard of.

You may want to read the following, especially the 3rd part: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/guncrime.htm

39% of Deaths were committed with firearms. Just 39%? 57% of suicides were committed with Firearms. But thats suicide, if your going to kill yourself, think about it, anything could do.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/viort.htm

Violent crime rates have stablized? Despite the loss of the assault weapons ban? Eh? Strange huh Evans.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/theft.htm

Theft has been dying. Despite ownership? Whats that tell you?

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

Notice the higher rates of violent crime during the Clinton era, where anti-gun laws ran amuck. And how property crime rates stablized in the tens of millions during the 90's and early 2000's, and have then taken a downward turn. Look at robbery compared to yesteryear. Agravated Assault has gone down. Burglary has hit all time lows.

Generally, it looks like the right to own hasn't caused a rise in the rate of crime. In fact, its been going down according to all those.

That empirical enough?

EDIT:

That's a remarkably simplified take on reality.

Here's some reality for you: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1440764.stm

And whats above is only more.

[Dr Mario]

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/guncrime.htm

39% of Deaths were committed with firearms. Just 39%? 57% of suicides were committed with Firearms. But thats suicide, if your going to kill yourself, think about it, anything could do.

39% of deaths, 68% of murders. Also, that data set only goes up to 2001, prior to the sunsetting of certain gun restriction laws. Oh, and not all methods of suicide are equal in success rates.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/viort.htm

Violent crime rates have stablized? Despite the loss of the assault weapons ban? Eh? Strange huh Evans.

Violent crimes including both simple and aggravated assault. Which make up 80% of the counted violent crime and don't include firearms to begin with. Aside from that, now follow with me: The highest mark is 1993, just prior to the effects of the assault weapon ban and the brady handgun act. The lowest mark is in 2002-2003, spiking slightly for 2004-2005. Which is when the ban ran out. Not that you can attribute the results to any one change here.

I'm pulling data from the full study here, not just the graph you posted.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/theft.htm

Theft has been dying. Despite ownership? Whats that tell you?

Did you read the definition of theft in that study? It doesn't count burglaries or muggings, so the kind of crimes associated with self-defence aren't counted to begin with. They also see their sharpest drops in the 93-94 timeframe.

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

Notice the higher rates of violent crime during the Clinton era, where anti-gun laws ran amuck. And how property crime rates stablized in the tens of millions during the 90's and early 2000's, and have then taken a downward turn. Look at robbery compared to yesteryear. Agravated Assault has gone down. Burglary has hit all time lows.

Generally, it looks like the right to own hasn't caused a rise in the rate of crime. In fact, its been going down according to all those.

That empirical enough?

A 40 year data set, abstracted to the highest level. Which also sees the crime rate stabilise from 89-93 followed by a significant drop, mostly in violent crime. Need I remind you which 2 control laws came into existence in 93-94

EDIT:



Here's some reality for you: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1440764.stm

And whats above is only more.

And yet, both the article and the activist group backing it fail to name which study they're pulling their figures from. Ergo, I can't verify it one way or the other.

[Paladin_Hammer]

39% of deaths, 68% of murders. Also, that data set only goes up to 2001, prior to the sunsetting of certain gun restriction laws. Oh, and not all methods of suicide are equal in success rates.

I won't get into a discussion about the different ways to for someone to kill themselves, but, with minimal thought, its easy to see how the levels of success could be quite similar.

Violent crimes including both simple and aggravated assault. Which make up 80% of the counted violent crime and don't include firearms to begin with. Aside from that, now follow with me: The highest mark is 1993, just prior to the effects of the assault weapon ban and the brady handgun act. The lowest mark is in 2002-2003, spiking slightly for 2004-2005. Which is when the ban ran out. Not that you can attribute the results to any one change here.

I'm pulling data from the full study here, not just the graph you posted.

Strange, I'm reading the same data, here , you can reach that by clicking on the graph, according to this study, the levels of total violent crime in '04 and '05 are 21.1 and 21.o, when in '03 it was 22.3, and regressing we see the total violent crime level rising all the way back to 1994. 1993 Level: 49.1 , 1994 level: 51.2.

Did you read the definition of theft in that study? It doesn't count burglaries or muggings, so the kind of crimes associated with self-defence aren't counted to begin with. They also see their sharpest drops in the 93-94 timeframe.

According, when clicking on the graph of said survey, here , crime levels decreased from 2003-2004.

A 40 year data set, abstracted to the highest level. Which also sees the crime rate stabilise from 89-93 followed by a significant drop, mostly in violent crime. Need I remind you which 2 control laws came into existence in 93-94

Wait a minute, so your saying this data, although correlating with the information from The Bureau of Justice statistics, is invalid? What? You'll also notice that crime rose in 1999-2003, then dropping in 2004 (the year the ban expired), then rising again in '05-'06. However, according to this article , gun sales are on a much greater rise than the rate of murder when correlating it with the information from the other studies.

And yet, both the article and the activist group backing it fail to name which study they're pulling their figures from. Ergo, I can't verify it one way or the other.

School's name: "The Centre for Defence Studies at Kings College in London, which carried out the research, said the number of crimes in which a handgun was reported increased from 2,648 in 1997/98 to 3,685 in 1999/2000. "

The school did the study independently, and the BBC is (when stacked up against its US competitors), more liberal in its stance. Also here they cite the police. A short trip to google later, I find these:

http://www.firearmsafetyseminar.org....wood_Paper.pdf
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6372717.stm

Article also references a "The Home Office", which when googled: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ . Which houses This within its network, which (the articles are all in pdf, grrr) holds all the information your looking for. Happy reading!

EDIT: Here's a little http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cr...-capita&int=50, notice the UK and Australia are #7 and #1 respectively, yet they have the tightest gun laws in the world (save for dictatorships of course). Here's another tid-bit, and another bit. Interesting enough, Canada ranks pretty low on everything in these surveys, and others I've found all over the web. However, its perfectly legal for Canadian citizens to own firearms.

If anything, I'd suggest we copy Canada on this one. It's obvious they're doing something right.

[Evans]

Tum dee dum dee dummm...

With the passage of the 1995 Firearms Act, Canada established a national registry of all firearms and their owners.

The Act required Canadian gun owners to apply for a license by January 1, 2001, from the Canadian Firearms Centre, a branch of the Justice Department, and register their guns with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) by the beginning of 2003. Associated amendments to the Criminal Code in 1996 increased the penalties for using firearms to commit crimes and for the illegal trafficking and smuggling of guns.

The registration of all handguns has been required by federal law since 1934, and since 1968 permits to carry them have been restricted to a few specific circumstances, for example, use in target practice or competition, protection in extreme cases where police protection isn't adequate, and in certain jobs, such as transporting large amounts of cash or other valuables. Fully automatic weapons have been banned since 1977. The new law extends the registration requirement to unrestricted long guns such as shotguns and rifles and adds short-barrelled handguns and those discharging 25- or 32-calibre cartridges to the list of prohibited weapons.
Gun Ownership and Crime

A national survey commissioned by the Canadian Firearms Centre in 2000 found an estimated 2.3 million firearm owners.

More than 1,000 Canadians die every year from gunshot wounds, most of them by their own hand. In 1996 the total firearm deaths amounted to 1,131, of which 815 were suicides, 45 were accidents and 156 were homicides.

The violent crime rate has been steadily declining in Canada over the last two decades, and progressively fewer crimes are being committed with firearms. In 1978, Canada recorded 661 homicides, a rate of 2.76 per 100,000. Of these, 250, or 37.8%, were committed with guns. In 1998, Canada had 555 homicides, a rate of 1.83 per 100,000. Guns were involved in 151 of the homicides, 27% of the total, the lowest proportion since statistics were first collected in 1961. Robberies using firearms accounted for 18% of all such crimes in 1998, down from 25% in 1988 and 37% in 1978.


"All guns are capable of being used in crime. All guns pose a threat to public safety."
— The Supreme Court of Canada
June 15, 2000

[Paladin_Hammer]

Tum dee dum dee dummm...

Originally Posted by http://www.canadianembassy.org/gover...control-en.asp
With the passage of the 1995 Firearms Act, Canada established a national registry of all firearms and their owners.

The Act required Canadian gun owners to apply for a license by January 1, 2001, from the Canadian Firearms Centre, a branch of the Justice Department, and register their guns with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) by the beginning of 2003. Associated amendments to the Criminal Code in 1996 increased the penalties for using firearms to commit crimes and for the illegal trafficking and smuggling of guns.

The registration of all handguns has been required by federal law since 1934, and since 1968 permits to carry them have been restricted to a few specific circumstances, for example, use in target practice or competition, protection in extreme cases where police protection isn't adequate, and in certain jobs, such as transporting large amounts of cash or other valuables. Fully automatic weapons have been banned since 1977. The new law extends the registration requirement to unrestricted long guns such as shotguns and rifles and adds short-barrelled handguns and those discharging 25- or 32-calibre cartridges to the list of prohibited weapons.
Gun Ownership and Crime

A national survey commissioned by the Canadian Firearms Centre in 2000 found an estimated 2.3 million firearm owners.

More than 1,000 Canadians die every year from gunshot wounds, most of them by their own hand. In 1996 the total firearm deaths amounted to 1,131, of which 815 were suicides, 45 were accidents and 156 were homicides.

The violent crime rate has been steadily declining in Canada over the last two decades, and progressively fewer crimes are being committed with firearms. In 1978, Canada recorded 661 homicides, a rate of 2.76 per 100,000. Of these, 250, or 37.8%, were committed with guns. In 1998, Canada had 555 homicides, a rate of 1.83 per 100,000. Guns were involved in 151 of the homicides, 27% of the total, the lowest proportion since statistics were first collected in 1961. Robberies using firearms accounted for 18% of all such crimes in 1998, down from 25% in 1988 and 37% in 1978.


"All guns are capable of being used in crime. All guns pose a threat to public safety."
— The Supreme Court of Canada
June 15, 2000

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Gungeek <-- Canadian. Notice how he owns three pistols, two rifles, etc etc. Canada has laws that make sense, they don't ban everything. Not like Britain, which recently banned "Assault Knives"! When crimes with baseball bats and blunt object go up, I wonder if they'll start a permit system. "Hey dad, me and my friends want to go play cricket. Can we go get a bat?", "Sorry boy, but we don't have a permit".

Check out Sweden (also here and Finland. Both of these countries have high rates of Gun-Ownership (Finland for example has 32 to every 100 citizens, see Sweden in the above links).

Also

If anything, I'd suggest we copy Canada on this one. It's obvious they're doing something right.

They aren't like THIS. Thats the fucking dumbest thing I've ever seen, replica's do not have the parts to hold clips in most cases, and that they lack other necessary parts, but this clip suggest that CHILDREN have the capability to convert a fake gun into a real one. Unless children in Britain are born Einsteins, I doubt they have the expertise of a military or police grade Armorer. I'm all for some laws that prevent another Virgina Tech, things like a registration, background checks (effective ones that don't leave off psychological information!), and having a reason to own (hunting, sport shooting, home defense, etc). But I'm not for this... ludicrous idea that the moment someone dies we ban anything and everything that could have been used to do it. I guarntee you Britain will look into banning certain blunt objects within ten years.

[Kosmo Yagkoto]

Why gun bans don't work:

1) Too integrated into American Society (Someone already mentioned it).

2) Would require an immense invasion of privacy to enforce (we can't stop a few million illegal immigrants, how can we check every person in America?)

3) I'm not going to shoot someone unless they threaten my well-being, why punish me?

Why the US shouldn't be compared to other countries like Canada (or really any country for that matter):

Population makeup is much different (more people, less rural, WAYYYY more diversity)

[Skinner8]

If they take away my right to arm bears, I'm moving to Canada.

[Panda Man]

If they take away my right to arm bears, I'm moving to Canada.

The genius has returned!

[_M_]

And if the Gov't does ban all firearms and takes away all my weapons, what's stopping me from visiting my old hood and buying a few guns from someone I probably went to school with? Ethics? Respect for the law?

The law is failing to let me protect myself and my family, respect goes right out the window with my guns. And if worse comes to worse I move to Canada.