GUN CONTROL BATTLE
- Thread starter Veritas
- Start date
Let me get this straight. So gun control is going to stop criminals, who by definition disobey the law, from getting guns?
I totally agree on Canada and Switzerland low crime rates. Well, Canadians are great people in general (and almost everyone having a weapon should also be taken into consideration). As for Switzerland - everybody serves in the army, from the last clerk to the Prime Minister, and EVERYBODY legally owns a gun and EVERYBODY comes to boot camps for a couple of weeks each year, so they know how to shoot and hit the target. I really think only a complete idiot would try to rob a household in Switzerland, when inhabitants are home. Or rob someone in the street. Or rape a girl with a Beretta in her hand. Thus such low crime rates.
As for Moldova - I definitely understand this country is by far not the heaven on Earth. Yet introduction of legal gun ownage reduced street crime rates significantly and there can be no doubt about it. Because potential criminals know their potential victims are armed and can shoot attackers dead.
I also agree that the main reason for rising crime levels is not gun control, but bad socioeconomical conditions. If a man has a job and earns enough money to pay the bills - he is least likely to try to rob his neighbors. He might still need a gun to protect his family - after all "A kind word and a gun weights more than only a kind word"
vice versa, when there is literally no chance for you to get a job and earn for a living, becoming a criminal can be the only way to survive. Thus said, the best way to lower crime rates in my opinion is creating more jobs, not increasing pressure or strictening gun control laws. Criminals do not follow them anyways.
It's around 700 a year are killed and justified, the numbers aren't added since they're not murders but justifiable homicide. Half of the number are by police, the other half by civilians (Roughly)
I don't know where you get the idea that almost everyone in Canada owns a weapon (Bowling for Columbine maybe?). Guns per capita is about 1/3rd of that of the US and the majority are owned by people who live in rural communities who use them for sustenance hunting and for protection against the likes of bears and mountain lions, and who also tend to own more than one gun. The average city dweller does not own a gun in Canada. It's almost unheard of.
Again, I don't know where you're getting your info from. Despite what some people think, everyone doesn't own a gun in Switzerland. The sale and possession of ammunition is tightly controlled and there are strict rules in place for transporting weapons. 29% of households contain a firearm of some sort, compared to 43% in the US. Women therefore aren't packing Berettas around in their purses (only 10% of households actually contain handguns for that matter compared to 18% in the US).
So gun ownership is much higher in the US, yet the crime rates remain much higher too. So the correlation between gun ownership and low crime rates doesn't pan out like you say it does. The Canadians and the Swiss have low crime rates because they don't suffer from the same social and economical issues the US suffers from.
Yet from most data available in the US, gun ownership varies from a low of about 30% per person to a high of around 50% on a state-by-state basis. Yet states vary from <1 to 10 murders per 100k citizens.
If ownership rates are much more uniform, then how on earth could rates vary by such a significant amount?
The answer is - The guns and legalities aren't what's making the difference.
Yeah, because laws are awesome at keeping people from Fucking.
What are you, new at this human thing?
Well in America you're already fucked really because there are so many guns about, banning them now wouldn't really solve anything.
It definitely works in Europe though.
It is very difficult to acquire a firearm here, criminal or not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland
Just the first paragraph. Read the rest if you wish. Everybody serves in the army, everybody knows how to shoot, everybody trains each year and they can buy guns legitimately. It does not matter if a girl has a Beretta in her purse or not - she has a legal right to do so and may shoot you dead if you try to abuse her. Will you take a risk?
As for Canada - sorry if I did not state it clearly enough. Of course I do not think every Canadian city dweller has a gun, I meant trappers and farmers, jsut as you described.
I also completely agree that the main reason for lower crime rate is not everybody having a gun - it's everybody having a job, as my post clearly stated.
