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by jacquesm
4975 days ago
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In a dysfunctional society, one where there is no law and where you have to take matters into your own hands to get a modicum of safety guns have their place. That was America a few centuries ago. If you still feel that unsafe than you have another problem than the one you're trying to solve with your guns. Try living in a country with gun control laws for a bit and see where you feel safer. And be sure to ask the women there too if they feel safe or not. Fear is an incredibly powerful motor behind a lot of stupidity, if you're so afraid that you can't walk around for fear of being robbed or raped if you're not 'packing heat' then why don't you do something about that problem, rather than to go around and compound it by escalation? And yes, I read those studies, and quite few besides. The consensus is very clear (outside the NRA and their stooges, that is): guns in large numbers in society make that society a more dangerous place. Period. So you can talk until the cows come home, the facts simply don't support your conclusions. |
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You mean like the UK? The UK has a horrendous violent crime rate - four times that of the US. So if people were "afraid" in proportion to actual risk, they should be more afraid there than in the US, no?
(random news story about that: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-... )
Or do you mean like Sweden? Sweden's reported rape rate is about twice that of the US.
I actually do live in a country with gun control laws. I live in New York City. And I don't own a gun. But that doesn't mean I have to accept unfounded claims about how bad guns are.
The truth is that the statistics are ambiguous. Every time gun laws change in the US, partisans claim it'll have a huge effect but the actual effect is hard to measure. Florida didn't become "the gunshine state" when they liberalized CCWs. (Rape rates did somewhat decrease there, but it's hard to connect that reliably to the change) On the margin, neither tightening NOR loosening gun laws is a panacea.
I'm not sure whose "consensus" you're referring to, but it's not the consensus of criminologists. The gradual loosening of CCW restrictions nationwide came only after very careful study repeatedly determined there's no significant increase in violence when more people are carrying hidden guns. You're free to believe there's some sort of "threshold effect", that if we got gun ownership levels below some magic number X, that suddenly everything would be better then, but at this point that's just an article of faith - there's no math supporting it.