Supreme Court Ruling On D.C. Handgun Ban

[Bengal]

the sad thing is, and to keep in mind when your kids do get to drive. the odds of them boosting a beer or few from your fridge or booze from your bar is more likely to get them killed than having a gun in the house. you ask your kids friends parents if the own a gun, but do you ask if they have a stock bar? are there more deaths by drunks than by gun shots? i believe in the teenage years this is true.

A good point. No booze in my house but I don't ask about booze in other peoples houses.

Right now both kids think it's yucky. My wife will have an occasional beer at an event but thats it. None in the house. So they don't see it and they think of it as odd.

But you bring up a good point. One I had not thought of.

Boy am I going to piss off my kids when they get older.

[ABSOLUT CHARVEL]

also kind of interesting is the ban on Knifes in the UK. any Brits want to chime in on this? Doctors want to now ban kitchen knifes that have a point. i guess the crime rate is very high with stabbings. A ban on guns, now a ban on blades? whats next?

[VitaminG]

since no one seemed able to provide the evidence I requested showing that violent crime has increased since the '96 change to gun ownership legislation over here, I've been doing some digging of my own.

Here's a page full of statistics from the Australian Institute of Criminology: http://www.aic.gov.au/stats/

Here are some stats on homicide rates:http://www.aic.gov.au/research/homicide/stats/
as you can see, apart from a spike in '99, homicide rates continue to decline. You can also see that homicides involving firearms is also decreasing.

from the weapons stat page, you can see that more people were killed by hands/feet or "no weapon" than by firearm in '04/05. http://www.aic.gov.au/stats/crime/weapons.html
and knife/other/no weapon are preferred for robberies & abduction

If these figures from the federal govt are wrong, I'd love to see some evidence supporting the assertions I've seen all over the net from gun lobbyists who claim that violent crimes have increased here since the Port Arthur massacre

[cookiemonster2]

I do not think gun control laws work. Gun violence stems from a bigger cultural problem that I'm not sure any government can fix even if they want to.

Canada implemented stricter gun control laws after a very high profile mass murder incident that happened well before the Columbine massacre but was similar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre

Anyways, the gun control laws that Canada implemented make it somewhat more difficult for people to buy guns, but mainly make the paperwork for retailers onerous. One of the key changes requires people to take a gun safety course before getting a license. To me this is a no brainer and I do not think any responsible gun owner should object to this requirement. Some of the other registration and transportation requirements seem ineffective though.

Anyways, the time period since Canada implemented these laws has coincided with more high profile gang related shootings. I do not think the two are at all correlated, but it proves that gun control does not do much to stop violence. The real problem is all of the wannabe gangsters selling dope and driving around and shooting people in public places. This phenomenon has occurred because of a change in culture not a change in the gun laws and a gun ban just won't fix it.

[Bengal]

cookiemonster2,
So if there were no guns, what would the wannabe gansters (as you put it) be using to kill people in public?

The fact is this. No guns = no gun crime. You can't dispute that at all. No one can.

But you can dispute if it's even feasable to do that here in the states. I think it's not. No way. Guns are to deep in our society.

But it looks like gun laws might be doing something in Australia. There is some proof in the post above yours.

And if you want to post statistics, never link to wikipedia.

[Vass]

Heh. One thing to remember- I watched the kids who went to college without ever having ripped it up a bit in highschool. They were gone after 2 semesters, max.

As the man said, hold on loosely, but don't let go.

And we are wayyyyy too far down the "self defense" road. That is not the primary reason for the second amendment.

Vass

[ABSOLUT CHARVEL]

No amount of gun control is going to fix this, and it would be like alcohol prohibition, and fail miserably - If we to attempt to take away gun ownership or severely restrict it, the NRA would be right - only outlaws would have guns; they just don't disappear because they're now illegal.

[joelayres]

All I know is the guy who broke into my house about 3 weeks ago also broke into 36 other houses before he was caught.

If the homeowner of the 1st house would have shot him dead, that would have deterred 36 crimes, would it not? Here in the last few weeks there have been several instances where homeowners shot and killed intruders. Good thing is that the DA doesn't even bother convening a grand jury - no charges are filed and the perps are dead so they can't commit further crimes. We will never know how many crimes were indeed deterred, but rest assured they were.

[Bengal]

No amount of gun control is going to fix this, and it would be like alcohol prohibition, and fail miserably - If we to attempt to take away gun ownership or severely restrict it, the NRA would be right - only outlaws would have guns; they just don't disappear because they're now illegal.

I agree 100%

joel,
I'm not talking about stopping the guy. Killing a perp does not deter another criminal from crime. I'm talking about him not caring if a house was armed or not. He obviously didn't care one bit. So where is the deterance?

[Vass]

Meh, he's a SNEAK thief. Doesn't think about getting shot. Not looking for nor expecting a confrontation. Is is a possibility? Sure. Also, I'm guessing he was a drug addict?

Vass

[joelayres]

The deterrance is in the fact that for every criminal that is shot dead committing a crime - that criminal can no longer commit any more crimes. Call it deterrance, prevention, stoppage or whatever you like - the end result is what we are after, which is less crime.

[Bengal]

The deterrance is in the fact that for every criminal that is shot dead committing a crime - that criminal can no longer commit any more crimes. Call it deterrance, prevention, stoppage or whatever you like - the end result is what we are after, which is less crime.

That's not what I would define as deterrance. Someone who is scared of breaking into a house because of the possiblity of being shot, that person is detered from crime. Killing a criminal does not stop another criminal from doing what they do.

Vass,
I don't know if he was a drug addict or not. But he's pretty ballsy. Most B&E guys do it when no one is home. This guy did it when people were home asleep. He stole my nieghbors ladder and carted it across both lawns and came in through the window. Takes some guts. How did he know no one was home and up and in reach of their firearm? He didn't. He didn't care.

[ABSOLUT CHARVEL]

The Best deterrance, prevention, stoppage or whatever you like to call it is a secure home. Don't make it easy for the crook. Alarms, motion detectors, lighting, steel doors, no ladders outside, stickers / signage the house is protected, laminate glass on doors, dead bolts,etc.... and mans best friend.

[Vass]

Drugs, or just plain stupid. Lots of that, and no legislation in the world is going to stop it.

We can talk about it all night, trying to understand how someone would do that, and you and I? We'll get no closer to understanding why than when we started. But they do it, and if he had climbed those stairs, you would have had to deal with him, whether his appearance in your bedroom was rational or not. And after you creamed him with the ballbat (hopefully) you'd spend 20 minutes saying to the cops, and then a lifetime saying to yourself, "I don't know why the fuck he did that...Why? Why did he make me do that? Why didn't he just take the DVD player and GO?"


Vass

[Bengal]

It's a bleak outlook but I would almost say there is no deterance at all. Even a secure home. If someone wants it bad enough, they are going to go for it. If the possibility of sitting in jail for 20 or 30 years doesn't do it, I'm not sure what will.