Arming public reduces crime

Garcia,

I would not suggest that we legalize drugs or ban weapons. I have seen the effects of both and they are most horrifying. In Argentina (once one of the most civilized nations of the world) it is legal to have and consume drugs, but illegal to carry fire arms. Permit me to count its tragic tale. Due to the ease of access to drugs, many have developed an addiction to them. Such addictive substances steal there freedom of choice and cause them to place the need of consumption over other more wholesome needs and wants. The people become lazy and slothful. They burden society with their addiction. In the end, to pay for their vices, they resort to theft, murder and gang violence. It is now popular there to wait near atm's and when the person leaves, they drive by on their motorcyle and shoot them. Taking all the person's money and leaving them to die. They show no human compasion because the drugs have moved them beyond such feeling.

If anyone wishes to contest me on my reasoning, I wish to say that everything I have claimed is fact and substantiated by personal experience. I have seen with my own eyes such acts of violence. The people have no means of protection. The police are corrupt from the absolute power they have of being the only armed persons in the community. They steal, deal drugs, kidnap and ransom. All the people must bear such abuses because they have no means by which they may defend themselves.

 

The world is a dangerous place to live in. Not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who choose to do nothing about it.
I carry a Gun because I have lived long enough to see the evil in the world.

FACT.

 

I can fully empathize with your denunciation and quarrel with drugs, but I still support their legalization. They should be taxed, and the revenues collected should be used to for drug awareness and free recovery clinics.

I have personal experience with friends coming addicted too. I watched two of them go from heroes with more money than I'll ever see to zeroes bumming smokes in a few years. By the time they realized the drugs had a control over them, their money was gone, and the only way they could receive treatment was to get arrested on drug charges. Then they would simply have to pay lots and lots of fines they couldn't afford to receive comical treatment.

I live in America. Pot, crack, meth, heroin, and cocaine are in an uber- abundant supply. The stringent laws imposed against them have simply done what prohibition did for Al Capone and Lucky Luciano. It's made street thugs into millionaires with no compassion for decency. Just passion for more wealth.

Interesting you say that police have become corrupt with drunken power. Perhaps arming the citizens would stop that. A government should fear it's country. Not the other way around.

 

Indeed. Made more dangerous, ceteris paribus, through gun prevalence

 

Reiver is having a bit of a fun troll at the moment and might not be reading your posts. However just as a warning for the future, you should be aware that not everything from a universities website is "endorsed" as such. In particular the one site seems to be someones private page hosted at the university, the other is simply reporting on a talk.

Though the talk does refer to a study that will presumably be published at some point, and by a fellow who I believe is usually anti-gun.

Where's a study contrary to it.

Unless you mean the assertion that the gun ban did not cause a drop in crime, even gun crime. At which point the study sponsored by the UK government that I linked in that thread covers it.

Hmmmm I hadn't thought about this previously, but in my field you can't publish something that is considered obvious, doesn't contain new research, or is a fairly trivial exercise.

So for example consider the occasionally cited incident where there was a much published push to get women concealed carry permits, and then immediately afterwards the rape rate plummeted.

One could use the availible statistics to perform a panel analysis to attempt to quantify the effectis of such a campaign. However the writer would be using someone elses statistics, and the math would be a fairly trivial excercise. As a result I suspect it wouldn't meet the threshold for journal publication.

My comment wasn't meant to refute the idea that certain safety requirements related to firearm ownership could have benifits. Individual requirements may or may not have a benifit, but that would be a discussion in and of itself for each such law.

Rather I was just explaining that in America there is a history of abuse of seemingly reasonable gun control legislation in the United States. As a result such laws are evaluated against the anticipated abuses, which tends to create more opposition than you yourself might expect.

 

My Dear Garcia,

I would first like to say that I feel for your loss. While working as a paramedic I treated two good friends of mine from grade school for heroin overdoses. Both passed away. It is never easy to loose a friend.

On the subject of legalizing drugs to decrease use. In theory it may seem appealing, but in all reality it is doomed to fail. Drug awareness programs i believe are ineffective on the whole. It is the responsibility of the parent to teach their children correct principles. Unfortunately it is the sad lesson of history that even with such wonderful education that parents are able to provide, many children still fall to the enticings of drugs. It steals their freedom and ability to choose. It is a most vile of vices. Access in the American eye is acceptance, and addiction to drugs is not acceptable. The problem must be solved on both sides of the equation, not just one. We must remove to the best of our abilities the temptation, and try to teach our children resist that which we cannot sheild them from.

These will be my final comments on the subject of drugs, for this thread deals with the issue of public access to guns.

 

Reiver,

I do know that the world is a dangerous place. It is made dangerous through a loss of morality in this world. Guns themselves do not cause wrong doing. They are a tool. They only allow the wrong doer to be more effective. On the other side though it allows good people to more effectively live and prevent harm befalling them. There is the option of destroying all the guns in the world. This would make man digress. We can limit the right to carry guns, but it would only result in those that go contrary to law carrying weapons and out numbering the responsible ones. Then there is the option of making it accesible to all adults. Thereby putting them on the same capable level of defending their own. It would be a deterant.

Would there still be crime... yes of coarse there will be, but it will atleast give law abiding people a chance. There will be less crime. The safety of the community is a responsibility of all, not just the police. They cannot do it by themselves. One must be able to deter attackers, then the police will bring them to justice.

 

Not so much. Prevelance means law abiding citizens can own them just as criminals do. It is an equalizing force.

 

You deliberately ignore the evidence again. Bit of a shocker!

 

There isn't a study! That's the whole point. Pretending otherwise is inane. You've been caught out peddling nonsense, nothing more.

 

Again, this is precisely my point. Apparently you have missed the context of my discussion with sunnyside, although the fact that you removed the portion of my post that gave context to our discussion does raise questions as to that.

Out of my sense of fair play, you SHOULD have every opportunity to advance your own argument here, so if you are attempting to agree with this other member that gun ownership reduces "rape and hot burglary rates", and you wish to hold other members to the same standard of proof that he has, then be my guest and display your evidence.

 

Nope, I ignore the SPIN, there is no credible evidence. In fact even the "evidence" you tout shows that the deterrent effect is real and outweighs the negative effects in some cases.

 

Can you show this?

Why are you asking me to decide a particular case? Each case presents a different charge and plea. If a car manufacturer is negligent or unethical, our society allows for redress as is the case with all other manufacturers in our country. Except, that is for gun manufacturers. Apparently, it is impossible for this particular industry to be negligent or unethical. Odd.

Again, can you show this? It's easy to throw around proclamations, but it is also customary to substantiate them here. More difficult to do, granted, but it makes for a much more compelling argument.

I see. Then we should all pick up the tab for this crime whether or not we choose to own guns, in your opinion. I disagree. I think that those that wish to use their Constitutional right to bear arms should fully bear the financial cost of that choice.

 

Do you agree then, that it's not accurate to claim that Swiss gun ownership shows us that more guns equals less crime?

You would rather legalize drugs than require firearm training for gun purchases? Hmmmm,.....interesting argument.

 

Like it has in Switzerland, you mean?

Can you show this?

 

So to reduce murders, make it legal to shoot your neighbor?

... the irony.

 

You were "explaining" more than that as I recall, but I'm glad that you have now chosen to stay relevant to the current topic.

Now, what "abuse" of gun laws are you referring to and what "opposition" are you referring to? I found your reasoning vague on this.

 

Welcome to the thread. I appreciated your insights as to drug legalization.


I was struck, however at your somewhat naive assumptions as to gun ownership. You made a huge leap of faith in assuming that crime rates would fall if everyone were armed. Frankly, I get the impression from your post that you see an all or nothing choice that does not actually exist. The fact of the matter, is we aren't choosing between gun bans and mandatory armament. There is a LOT of real estate in between those two points, friend.

 

I think that the legalization of alcohol prohibition is a better case study than decriminalization of prostitution.

 

Why? You haven't offered an argument

 

I honestly wasn't following your dialogue with sunnyside. I just saw the one post I responded to with the burglary stats. I think gun ownership does help reduce burglaries. I have no way to conclusively or empirically substantiate that claim though. I was simply showing that with the UK's and Australia's strict gun laws (some people do still own guns, just not very many), their citizens have a much higher propensity for being burglarized.

You can accept the correlation or not. That's up to you. Just food for thought is all it was.

As far as rape goes, I originally stated, "I don't know about rape...." That meaning I do not support that notion.

 

You haven't got a correlation. You've simply got an inappropriate international comparison of raw data. The analysis into burglary effects is actually mixed. We'd expect that as guns are themselves a 'loot'

 

I'm new here. You're going to have to tell me how to do multiple quotes in a single post if you want me to respond to this.

I'll answer this question though. I shot someone by accident when I was a kid. I was sued for it. Personal example that is real. I was negligent in my behavior and nearly killed someone for it. For that reason, the person I shot got $30,000. No charges were ever filed either. It really was an accident.

 

I brought up the Swiss as a counter to the British. My argument was used to point out how silly it is to use the UK as an example of successful gun control that could be used in other nations outside of the UK, just as the it would be silly to apply the Swiss example to anywhere else. I am sick of hearing about the UK as the model for gun control, it works great for them, good for them. It’s funny no one ever brings up the strict gun control in Mexico, oh yeah because Mexico is has more gun control and is more violent. The correlations between other countries is not accurate. I simply stated for everytime the UK was brought up as a model, that the Swiss model could counter it.

You missed my point, I was not talking about regulations/restrictions. I was talking about the number of guns. The allusions you read are from you, not me.

I am not sure about that. I do not think that Swiss “free arms” (semi-auto and single shot long arms) require either a permit. They clearly have a distinction between sport/hunting arms and military arms.

 

There is certainly a strong correlation between all of the citizens having guns and knowing how to use them and a low crime rate.

Start a thread.