From a New Yorker article our opponents seem to be quite enamored over:
If American had gun laws like those in Canada, England, or Australia, it would have a level of gun violence more like that of Canada, England, or Australia. That’s as certain a prediction as any that the social sciences can provide. To believe that gun control can’t work here is to believe that the psyches of Americans are different from those of everyone else on earth. That’s a form of American exceptionalism—the belief that Americans are uniquely evil and incorrigibly violent, and that nothing to be done about it—that doesn’t seem to be the one that is usually endorsed.
This is essentially a restatement of, “The Arabs yearn for liberal democracy, all we have to do is bring it to them.” Culture matters, a lot. There are parts of this country that do have gun violence levels that low, despite being awash in guns, and there are places, like Chicago, who have restrictions even more severe than Canada and Australia who have many times the crime rates.
Even minus culture, this is already a country with 300 million guns and they aren’t going to disappear just because the laws change. The New Yorker article points to this JAMA study, which includes suicides, and is therefore deceiving. I did a similar run with just crime figures and found there’s no strong correlation.
Our opponents firmly disagree with this, and the meddling nanny doctors groups certainly will, but suicide prevention cannot be a reason for depriving everyone of dangerous objects in a free society. We are not infants, and a free people’s government shouldn’t treat its people like infants.
And if America reported gun-crime statistics like England reports gun-crime statistics, we’d all be eating meatloaf.
Outside of certain areas, we already have rates of violence comparable to those countries, or better. For some reason, though, the politicians feel the need to punish innocent, law-abiding people rather than pursuit life-long criminals.
It is easier and safer to pursue a non-violent person than it is to pursue a known violent one.
What’s right isn’t always easy, and what’s easy isn’t always right.
Should we censor the internet like Australia and the UK as well? Read up on whats going on with the Aussie gov’t and twitter. I can’t stand the people that think we need to emulate these supposedly enlightened countries who have significantly less freedom than we enjoy. I bet Winston Smith didn’t have to worry about street crime.
North Korea has low crime rates. Maybe we need concentration camps.
Exactly!!!! Thank you for posting this point!!!!
And again, they ONLY focus on gun violence. Why is it so much eviler to be killed by a gun? Its better to have three people killed by a knife than one person with a gun?
Read the antis’ responses to those questions, and yes, they do believe that. From Linoge’s quotes page:
“I give you the argument of the guys with the ‘man pants’ on ladies and gentlemen ‘We’re saying that we’d rather have more gun deaths and lower overall violent crime, than zero gun deaths and higher rates of violent crime if given the choice’ And there you have it. Nothing more to say here except ‘Wow’ and ‘unbelievable’.†— Joan Peterson, Brady Campaign board member
Apparently people knifed to death are just dead, and their souls go to heaven – unlike people who are shot, because guns destroy their souls!!!11!1!!!eleventy!! Just like how the E-ville guns warp and possess the minds of their owners, and how “gun death” victims are 4,289 times more dead than stabbing victims.
Gun control is their
cultreligion. Nothing we say or do will make them change their beliefs. We can only help them drive themselves into political irrelevance (separation of church and state notwithstanding).Europe and Canada would have high murder rates too if they had as many ghetto hood rats as we do.
So they are saying Canada, England, and Australia used to have our current rate of “gun violence” before they enacted thier gun control laws? Otherwise, how could you “certainly predict” that our rates would drop?
Don’t be too hard on them; they did accidentally tell the truth when they said, “That’s as certain a prediction as any that the social sciences can provide.”
The social “sciences” aren’t.
Some time ago, I read that prior to England’s passage of their first gun control act(s), around maybe 1920, their gun laws were similar to ours: IE, about none. Yet, they had a far lower gun murder rate than ours, so it wasn’t the laws that did the job.
Basically, that’s what TS is saying above.
Yup. Last I looked we have even -narrowed- the gap even as our laws have remained “lax” and theirs have been cranked up to eleventy.