States with Weak Gun Laws Lead in Gun Violence (vs, world, wars)
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But, but the OP and their vast statistical knowledge is defacto claiming that poverty has nothing to do with gun violence. Nope, the only significant variable is what gun laws a state has.
Why would a suicide be included in gun violence figures? When you shoot yourself who is the victim of this "violence"?
My point exactly. Suicide by gun is a violent act, no doubt. But it is not a public safety threat. If they had a piece of data that showed a bystander was hurt as a result of firearm suicide - that could be included. But if someone in Alaska is despondent because they have no nighttime for months on end - that is an entirely different public safety issue.
The study only includes firearm suicides, which makes sense. If tighter gun laws make it more difficult for a mentally ill person to obtain a firearm, then there may be an effect on suicide rates. And yes, a person could always use another method. You can go ahead and discount the firearm suicide data, but I agree with the researcher's decision to include it in the study.
well guess what? i dont include any suicides no matter what is used. if a person wants to kill themselves, then there is nothing anyone can do if they want to off themselves. ask japan, where their suicide rate is very much higher than the USA's and almost no firearms in private hands at all.
I have no interest in infringing on your or anyone else's freedoms. The idea is that someone says "gun control" and people hear "they want to get rid of guns" and that's simply not the case.
Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Whatever we're doing in this country has led us to a point where public shootings, mass killings are almost commonplace. Where a human being ending the life of another human being isn't even always considered "headline" news, because it happens all the time.
The instrument most commonly used for the purpose of murder SHOULD be regulated. It doesn't mean that people shouldn't own one. It doesn't mean that regulating them is going to put an end to death, murder or even gun violence. But just hiding behind your interpretation of the second ammendment hasn't gotten us any closer to what I think the supposed goal is, which should be to make this place a safer place to be.
Response to your responses in red.
1. The current regulations are not being inforced. Why don't you start with I forcing those instead of creating more regulations.
2. The current laws work, you actually have to arrest the people committing the crime. Here is the form you have to fill out when you buy a gun, I'm sure you have never seen it before. Read the top then read the questions. Educate yourself.
3. So it doesn't work in Canada with a much smaller gun culture but it is going to work here.
4. Criminals already obtains their guns illegally. How hard is it to get illegal drugs in this nation, why would guns be any different?
5. Their is nothing in the constitution about the Internet either, but the 1st amendment still applies.
6. Good luck trying to change the constitution, the original bill of rights has never been changed.
All these things you want to change are specifically infringing on my civil rights. You are not the first person trying to restrict my freedoms. I live in California, my civil rights have been restricted for the last 20 years. You come along acting like I should make compromises, but all I have done my entire life is compromise my civil rights to others who think they know better than I do.
The goal of this country is freedom, not safety.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin
I have no interest in infringing on your or anyone else's freedoms. The idea is that someone says "gun control" and people hear "they want to get rid of guns" and that's simply not the case.
Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Whatever we're doing in this country has led us to a point where public shootings, mass killings are almost commonplace. Where a human being ending the life of another human being isn't even always considered "headline" news, because it happens all the time.
The instrument most commonly used for the purpose of murder SHOULD be regulated. It doesn't mean that people shouldn't own one. It doesn't mean that regulating them is going to put an end to death, murder or even gun violence. But just hiding behind your interpretation of the second ammendment hasn't gotten us any closer to what I think the supposed goal is, which should be to make this place a safer place to be.
the problem I have with your post is this. it sounds like you are stating that we need more sensible gun control laws. why would we need more of those when the feds and states wont even enforce the ones we have in the books now.
also, if we need sensible gun control laws, then that must also mean that the current gun control laws are not sensible and that every voting citizen that wants sensible gun control, should be screaming for all these not sensible gun control laws to be repealed.
when all these past gun control laws are gone and repealed, then maybe we can talk, until then you are just blowing into the wind.
The question has never been how high our rates might be but rather what can we do to EFFECTIVELY lower it.
Let's look at a US problem of auto fatalities and see what was done to lower it.
1) Identify the major contributors to the problem. This turned out to be drunk drivers.
2) Target that behavior. As such you see much stiffer penalties as well as checkpoints etc. aimed at reducing drunken driving. (Impaired driving is still involved in about 50% of auto fatalities and it didn't even use to be explicitly illegal.)
I think we can call that a success.
Now let's look at guns.
1) the majority of gun murders are related to drugs and gangs.
2) The proposed solution instead of targeting drug dealing gangs etc.....is to instead target all gun owners, the vast majority of which are law abiding.
See, that's why you have so much resistance. You aren't targeting the problem, you are targeting the tool.
Look at Chicago. They have neighborhoods with 1 death per 100k and others with 40+ per 100k just a couple miles away. Same laws. So why is it that with the same laws and availability the rate is 40x higher? Could it be the problem isn't the guns there?
I don't know if that was supposed to be a general "you" or if you are actually talking about me. I'm not trying to target guns and gangs/drugs are the issue. Poverty and education is as well.
I'm looking for the relationship between gun laws and murders in general. Does having less restrictive gun laws make a state more or less prone to having people kill each other (not including justified self defense.) My take is that either people want to kill other people or not. If they do, they'll find ways of doing it. If guns are handy they'll use that.
So Chicago, in IL, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, his hugely violent. Then there are vast area that have next to no gun laws, but don't have hordes of people who want to kill other people, and have very few murders.
The point being, it's the people, not the guns. Get rid of the right set of people, and the problem gets signficantly reduced. Leave the people but ban the guns, probably no change.
Note that I said ban guns, not get rid of them, because the two are totally different things.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ellemint
If you are interested in the relationship between gun laws and gun violence, you don't look at total murders.
A new study released yesterday by The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence reported "a clear link between high levels of gun violence and weak state gun laws."
Across the key indicators of gun violence that were analyzed, the 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively had an aggregate level of gun violence more than twice as high—104 percent higher, in fact—than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws.
The data analyzed in this report relate to the following 10 indicators of gun violence:
-Overall firearm deaths in 2010
-Overall firearm deaths from 2001 through 2010
-Firearm homicides in 2010
-Firearm suicides in 2010
-Firearm homicides among women from 2001 through 2010
-Firearm deaths among children ages 0 to 17, from 2001 through 2010
-Law-enforcement agents feloniously killed with a firearm from 2002 through 2011
-Aggravated assaults with a firearm in 2011
-Crime-gun export rates in 2009
-Percentage of crime guns with a short “time to crime” in 2009
States were ranked on these indicators and then compared to the ranking of states on the strength of their gun laws.
You can access the report and download fact sheets on the most violent states here:
Ok, since when Chicago is the murder capital of the world?
Chicago - when it comes to murder rate - is not even on the top twenty in USA... you live in Ohio, a State with some of the most crime-ridden american cities: let's face it, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Youngstown, Akron aren't exactly Kyoto and Melbourne... how are your (weak) gun laws working?
Anyway, your statement confirms just one thing: conservatives don't care about facts, they just live in an alternative reality.
I don't live in any of those cities you mentioned and I really don't give a rats arse what the crime rate in them is. It's just a matter of simple logic really, that when you have an area { such as a city } where there is a high concentration of people, there will certainly be more crime in that area. Just simple math. More crimes of opprtunity, more chance for random conflict, etc. etc. I live in a very rural area of Ohio and I can't remember the last time someone shot and killed someone out here, likely because it has probly never happened.
I'm looking for the relationship between gun laws and murders in general. Does having less restrictive gun laws make a state more or less prone to having people kill each other (not including justified self defense.) My take is that either people want to kill other people or not. If they do, they'll find ways of doing it. If guns are handy they'll use that.
So Chicago, in IL, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, his hugely violent. Then there are vast area that have next to no gun laws, but don't have hordes of people who want to kill other people, and have very few murders.
The point being, it's the people, not the guns. Get rid of the right set of people, and the problem gets signficantly reduced. Leave the people but ban the guns, probably no change.
Note that I said ban guns, not get rid of them, because the two are totally different things.
I see what you're saying, but even states with stricter gun laws have guns in them. Most murders are committed with firearms---if you want to kill someone, obviously that's the method most people choose. It's hard to take them out of the equation in the U.S. because they are so prevalent. Of all homicides in 2011, 68 % were committed with firearms, 13 % with knives, 13 % with unknown or other dangerous weapons, and 6 % of them with hands,fists etc.
However, if you compare Canada to the U.S., Canada has a firearm homicide rate of 0.5 per 100,000 population, and the U.S rate is 640 % higher, at 3.2 per 100,000 per population.
Canada's overall firearm death rate which includes suicide, accidental death is 2.13 deaths per 100,000 population, vs. 10.20 deaths per 100,000 for the U.S. You could argue, well, Canada is a lot less violent, but is it less violent because it has fewer guns? It's a chicken & egg question.
There seems to be some agreement that at least some of the high level of homicide in the U.S. compared to other similar developed industrialized nations is because it has so many guns, and has relatively lax gun laws.
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