Why would you leave a gun where a little kid can get it?Follow

Pick me 4 westernised countries and i'll go and look up the figures.

(I would say USA, England, Canada, Germany maybe but it's upto you)

Would you agree thats the following should provide reasonable conclusions?

% of gun owners per head of population

people killed intentionally per 100,000 people

No of violent crimes per 100,000 people

No of reported crimes per 100,000 people

I think if higher gun % correlates with the other three it is reasonable to conclude that accses to guns increases crimes.

i don't think you can disagree with the statement that" more guns availible makes it less safe for people" if that is the case.

And err i think it will show B if your interested, but i'm willing to be proved wrong.

Edited, Thu Jan 26 13:43:18 2006 by tarv

I can prove that it has nothing to do with access to guns. It has everything to do with access to ammunition.

It has to do with society's view of guns. For example, Canada has more gun owners than Americans, but less gun related crime. In Canada guns are viewed as tools for hunting and protecting someone's self and family. In America their viewed as tools of death and destruction, means to an end, usually a violent one.

Edited, Thu Jan 26 14:01:23 2006 by dedboyz

I disagree. Throw a pack of rimfire bullets hard at a wall, or light the cardboard box of a brick of ammo on fire in a room filled with people.

In another instance. Go into a room full of people and declare that you have an unloaded gun with no ammo. Start beating people with it.

Count up the damage done by each. Also, if you ban guns due to the blunt instrument potential, you might want to ban baseball bats too. They swing better and have greater range.

An interesting proposal, but I can already see the upcoming debate about that validity of statistics either way.

My one major issue with looking at violent crime vs. gun ownership overall in the is that the laws differ so much based by region. For example, while New York has vert stringent firearms laws regarding handguns (permit/liscense required to purchase, waiting periods, can't get a concealed carry permit) in Virginia the laws are much more pro gun (Can carry open w/o a permit, can obtain permit to carry concealed). It is literally like two different worlds.

Now for a little hypothetical argument:
___________________________________________________

Let's say that the stastics show that the U.S. has
A) Lots of guns, and B) lots of crime. Now if you
just look at the country at a whole, a reasonable
conclusion is guns = crime.

However, what if we broke the U.S. down into states
and saw: A)Low crime states with lax gun laws,
and B)High crime states with strict guns laws?

Now if seeing those seperate you could reach the
conclusion that guns != crime. If grouped
together you could reach the conclusion that
guns = crime.
___________________________________________________

Now all that is strictly hypothetical. All that being said, I would rather see a comparison of violent crime by state, and then compare that to each states gun laws. I don't think grouping stats for the entire U.S. together and just averaging it out makes sense, as it doesn't fully show the extremely hetrogenous nature of our states.

Oh but if you want to pull those stats on countries anyway feel free to go with the first 4 you mentioned.

I find what works best for me is to politely ask the cuddly woodland critter to please hop into my skillet. We then sit at the campfire singing "Kum Ba Yah" until the critter stops singing and then... well, then I know that dinner is done.

I am not a huge fan of guns, but I think it all comes down to responsible parenting (in the case of the OP, which obviously the father of the child fails). When my oldest was only two years old, we were concerned about his interest in guns, as my inlaws had just purchased one. At the end of all of our teaching him right and wrong in regards to the handgun, this is what he came up with. Guns are only for "Police Officers, Soldiers and Stormtroopers." Worked for us.

You may not advocate it yet.... Hitler!


Naw, in all seriousness, I only plan on hating you for a few days. My life has been slightly slow-going lately and I needed a kick. Tag, your it!

You are mixing your terms. Households do NOT equal gun owners. You can have multiple gun owners in a household.



No it isn't? You can't simply conclude a causality base on a correlation. There is a strong correlation between drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. You can't conclude that drinking alcohol causes smoking.

Most of the studies I read, when I was writing a paper arguing against gun banning in college, had correlations between increased gun availability and the use of guns in criminal acts, but they were not statistically relevant. For those that haven’t taken a statistics class that means the correlation wasn’t so great that it could not be attributed to chance.

The problem is not with gun availability. It’s with irresponsible ownership. If you are a gun owner you should be locking your gun away safely, with the ammo stored separately. If you are keeping a gun loaded for “protection” you should be wearing holstered on your hip. It’s unlikely if you are in a situation where you truly need use it that you will have the time to run and get it.

Also a handgun for home defense is pretty lame. Most gun owners are not the best shooters, even in the best conditions. Even people who have shot at the range for years will likely not shoot that well under conditions where your life is in danger. You are much better off getting a pump-action shotgun for home defense. Odds are you just have to rack a round and the person breaking into your home will leave. It’s a very distinctive sound.




OK anyone can draw a pretty graph. Where is the relevant data? Need the data that supports the graph.

Many factors need to be considered. What was the timeframe? What other factors were involved? Number of guns in the household? Legally owned? Accidental or intentional shootings?

This is why I've never felt the need to have a gun for protection. I realize I would end up killing my child and maiming myself and I'd never get a bullet near an intruder.

But I can walk and chew gum!

BloodwolfeX, just get it over with by going and shooting Tarv with a hand gun making you both a statistic. Then you both get to win.

Hey just cause I want him to base his aregument on relevant statistic, rather than some ******** he found on the web, doesn't mean I want to shoot him.

Unless he trys to take my handgun away...

Here's some real info from Bureau of Justice Statistics.

While its just a summary, you can look at PDFs of their publications if you like.

Oh but wait, what about the cops? Surely they can save us...

Police cannot protect, and are not legally responsible for protecting, individual citizens, as evidenced by the following:

(A) The courts have consistently ruled that the police do not have an obligation to protect individuals, only the public in general. In Warren v. District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department (D.C. App. 444 A. 2d 1 (1981)), the court stated `courts have without exception concluded that when a municipality or other governmental entity undertakes to furnish police services, it assumes a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community'.

(B) Former Florida Attorney General Jim Smith told Florida legislators that police responded to only 200,000 of 700,000 calls for help to Dade County authorities.

(C) The Department of Justice found that, in 1989, there were 168,881 crimes of violence which were not responded to by police within 1 hour.

(D) Currently, there are about 150,000 police officers on duty to protect a population of more than 250,000,000 Americans.

But whatever. I won't make you own a gun, you don't make me not own one.