Debunked: Gun Control Laws Reduce Crime Independent Journal Review


Sorry, preaching to the choir.

No wai...

Idiots.

Bushmaster XM15-E2S AR15 .223/5.56mm Hvy Brl 223 : Semi Auto Rifles at GunBroker.com

Agreed. The Anti-Federalist Papers are also good to read since it is a reason we have the bill of rights.

American citizens should have the right to own any weapon they please if it can be carried or not. Shall not infringe is pretty simple to understand to me and the Bill of Rights are specifically individual rights.

You gotta be shitting me.

So, from reading the Connecticut assault weapon ban, it looks very similar to the Clinton-era one. It also looks like there are probably any number of ARs that could be configured to avoid there definition.

I'm only lightly familiar with ARs, but I know you can get them with a fixed stock (and obviously without a bayonet lug or grenade launcher). I am assuming you can get them without flash suppressors (or they can attach something similar but call it something different).

Am I understanding that correctly?


Also, can anyone think of a semi-automatic rifle that would be comparable to an AR or AK but does not look like a scary black rifle? Something a non-gun person would think looks like a "hunting rifle?"

An SKS without the bayonet and having the fixed mag doesn't look too bad. Hell, it even uses the same round. Unfortunately, they're very innaccurate.

How comparable? Ruger Mini-14's and Mini-30's are fairly innocuous in their wood-stocked format, but they still have high capacity magazines.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1356361801

Perfect. The Mini-14 Ranch Rifle is what I am looking for, especially because it does still accept high-capacity magazines. I'm trying to illustrate that the nature of the Clinton-era and current Connecticut AWB's are based on appeareances and not function.


Something interesting that I found recently was that Connecticut did recently try to pass a law restricting high capacity magazines (I think anything over 10 rounds), including a confiscation of existing legally owned magazines. It failed to gather enough support to go to vote.

So I have been doing a lot of research on the topic of "gun control" lately and decided to see if I could verify claims like nations with strict gun control laws have higher violent crime rates than the USA as a trade-off of fewer firearms-related homicides. Likewise, I wanted to see if the USA really did rate as a much more violent place than the "civilized" lands of Developed Europe, Japan, Canda and Australia. I added Finland as an interesting mix of Scandinavian-Russo-European with what I understand to be fairly lax firearms rules relative to the Continent.


What I found was that the UK (England & Wales) has a MUCH lower homicide rate (USA = 317% higher), a MUCH lower major assault rate (USA = 775% higher), a lower reported rape rate (USA = 18% higher) but a higher robbery rate (UK = 29% higher).

Australia is "worse" than the USA in rape, burglary and motor vehicle theft by huge margins but "better" in terms of homicide, major assault and robbery.

Japan - with the most onerous of gun ownership hurdles as far as I know - has the lowest of virtually all the reported crime rates.

On the other hand, Finland is "better" than Australia and Canada in most of the fields - but second to the USA in this group for homicides.



Comparing statistics across countries is always a challenge and I am sure the sources I cite will be challenged as inherently biased and anti-gun, but it's what I could find that was a primary statistical analysis that tried to account for the variations in dates and methodology.

The attached image is what I was able to put together in a sort of visual format. The numbers represent rates (number of crimes per 100,000 population). The temperature scale should be read as "green = low rates in that stat relative to other nations on the chart, red = relatively high rates and yellow as in between."

Sources: UNODC Global Study on Homicide 2011

The United Nations Surveys on Crime Trends and
the Operations Criminal Justice Systems - Most data used is as of 2006

United States Bureau of Justice Statistics

Cultural/societal differences are likely to play a major role in the variations between the countries. Perhaps sampling the same country's rates pre- and post-firearms bans might normalize the results for cultural variations.

Spartans were known to be of a more violent culture than Thebians.

When this is done it has been shown time and time again that at best strict gun control laws/bans have very little benefit (i.e. within the margin of error) and at worst it shows that while gun fatalities fall overall violent crime rises and gun crimes without fatalities stay the same or increase. The two countries that are used the most for comparison are the UK and Australia.

Articles: Murder by Numbers


Some quotes:
...the murder rate is historically low and is already trending downward. In fact, the murder rate in 2011 was the lowest since 1961...

And:
In over 52% of the murders in the US in 2011 in which the race of the murderer was known, the murderer was black. Over half of the victims of murder were also black. But blacks are only 13.6% of the population. Put all that together, and the murder rate in the US for non-blacks was more like 2.6 per 100,000 in 2011.

I hear this repeated as a truism but have not seen any source data to back it up. I'm certainly open to it being true, but would really like to see some data (and not just in an editorial piece).

I think culture and socio-economics has a lot to do with it. If you consider that the USA has such a diverse geographic and societal spread, you will find most of the high murder rate areas located in very small geographies. For a given city, you might have the majority of murders located in a few really bad neighborhoods.

Then again, Japan seems to have the same level of fixation with violence that the USA does in their movies, video games, etc. Their reported violent crime rate seems to be a fraction of the USA's.

Then you have Australia, a country often joked to have been colonized by a bunch of criminals and convicts. They speak English, their country is even shorter-lived than the USA, they have access to most all the same media, etc. Again, their violent crime rates seem to be significantly lower than in the USA.

However, you make a great point in asking what the rates looked like prior to and after the highly restrictive firearms-related legislation went in to place.

Figure 1 : Homicide victims, 1989-90 to 2005-06
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1356624463
Source: AIC National Homicide Monitoring Program (NHMP), 1989-90 to 2005-06 [computer file]

Figure 2 : Rates of recorded assault, 1995-2006
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1356624463
a: Age data available for 1996 to 2003 only
Note: Rate is per 100,000 relevant population
Source: ABS 1994-96 National crime statistics; ABS 1997-2007 Recorded crime: victims, Australia

So when does a scenario like this turn into the police coming to my house and investigating me because I might have been seen with an 11-rd magazine? When does the data from my background check on firearm serial number #### and the lack of an NFA registration become probably cause to search?

This is why I have trouble believing that "less gun control is always good." It may well be true, but I have not seen anything to convince me yet. Look at Chicago. It still has a major problem with gun violence despite (in the past, it's now overturned IIRC) banning handguns. Is that because gun control doesn't work, or because of the socio-economic problems? How many states/cities/counties/whatever with very lax or no gun control also have gang problems?

thenuge and hustler - Right. I will try to find the source when I have a few minutes, but I believe there is a disproportionate number* of homicides in which the perpetrator is a black male and the victim is a black male. Like I mentioned, this is often concentrated in poor/"bad" neighborhoods.

How much of the crime and violence in those neighborhoods is related to drug trafficking?

How much of the (for-profit prison) incarceration rate is related to drug trafficking?


*Relative to percentage of total population

I appreciate the time and energy you invested, but I don't really give a shit about studies and statistics when it comes to this topic. I have the right to arm myself for protection, and that right "shall not be infringed".

If the ultimate goal is to recreate a Japanese or Australian-style firearms restriction, I do not see how they can permit "grandfathering" of existing firearms. This goes back to a point I think Sam made on page one of this thread (a great page, by the way!).

Those that want to use Australia and Japan as examples must acknowledge that the ultimate goal of legislation like the 2013 Feinstein proposal must be the confiscation and outlawing of currently existing and legally owned firearms.

It would seem to me to do very little good to eliminate the sale of new firearms without addressing the (hundreds of) millions already in existence.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

A) How well regulated is the militia group you are a part of?

B) That right is already infringed in a number of ways. You can't buy an RPG, you can't walk around with a full-auto Thompson strapped on your back, you can't buy C4 explosives, etc. You can't even own a firearm if you are a convicted felon, if I recall correctly.


However, I do appreciate your honesty in saying, "No matter what the facts or reality is, I will never accept anything other than the religious-like perspective I currently hold." ;) Unlike most people, you're honest about it.

I'm suddenly remembering the Spider-Man in a tree picture...

Hustler -> :hustler: <- Jack