guns dont affect crime

As to the UK's crime numbers, depends on the type of crime, and also, one needs to take into account that a lot of assaults just aren't reported, period.

It's a common "hobby" there for a gang of young thugs to walk around and hit a random person in the head, then knock them around a bit while one of them films it. The victim often doesn't report it. It's not like anything will be done about it.

So amount of crime is relative. I suspect that assault rates per capita there are likely much higher.
 
Compared to where? CNN reported some time ago that itis more dangerous to walk in London, than anywhere in the USA.

Here's a report for you.

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Looks bad for one-gun-a-lifetime South Africa. Jamaiaca, where posession of a single round of ammo gets long sentances, is worse than the US. brazil heavily restricts firearms ownership, and almost voted to ban them completely. They top US.
Mexico restricts firearms ownership very hard, but thecountry is practicallyrun by the cartels, and the Chiapas rebels were armed with full auto AKs. Not stolen - the "military" uses M-16A1s.
Perhaps you would prefer Russia? They had that terrorist attcks that slaughtered over 300 people in that school, Breslau, wasn't it...gun control worked well, didn't it.
Switzerland...hmmm, morefirearms per square mile than any country in the world, full auto weapons ISSUED to homes. Look at them...
Nah, more legal guns equals less illegal activity.
 
Another thought, America has I believe more guns then anywhere else in the world. If guns make us safer, why is America not the safest country in the world?
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Because a lot more things factor into crime rates than just gun ownership (or a lack thereof). Other socioeconomic factors play a huge role as well. Which is why even comparing two similarly-sized cities in two distinctly different nations (or even within a nation) is not always useful. You have to take into account poverty levels, disparity of income, social programs to deal with poverty, drug use (and how it's treated), along with a host of other random factors that vary wildly from nation to nation. Even basic cultural differences (which even seemingly "similar" nations like the US, UK, and Australia still have) need to be considered.

So they question isn't why the crime rate in the US isn't lower...it's whether the crime rate here would be even higher without the kind of gun ownership we have.

Not getting that conclusion based on gun related homicides, though, right?
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Please don't get me started on "gun-related." Every time I've talked to an Aussie, and most times I've talked to folks from England, about gun control they go on and on about "gun-related" crime. As though it's "better" to have somebody get stabbed or beaten to death with a baseball bat than shot.

Though from everything I've seen gun bans do seem to reduce homicides...not always by a huge amount, but still a noticeable reduction. I suspect that you instead end up with at least some number of aggravated assaults that would otherwise have been homicides, had a more effective weapon been available. Still, it seems like any effect on overall crime is negligible...and that it may actually increase some forms of violent crime (such as "hot" burglaries mentioned earlier).
 
Armoredman, I am not saying less guns equal less crime. But I would like to point out that your graph supports what I was saying. the countries with the 4 lowest crime rates on your graph have tough gun control laws, America with our guns, has more crime. Bad things seem to happen independently of gun ownership, from terrorism to petty crime.
 
you are a burgler. there are two houses that look nice to break into, you see a nra sticker on cars and a window of one house and nothing in the other household. deterrent?
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Possibly or also possibly advertising the presence of what I want most
The right to self defense is a natural right possessed by all peoples even if some of their governments should unjustly abridge that right.
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But Martha ain't there raisin hell, she's here. If she has her way we will be like those other people who say they have this right but have no way of actually exercising it
The 2nd Amendment did not create the right to keep and bear arms, it only codified a preexisting right within the Constitution, and the repeal of the 2nd Amendment can not possible deprive a free people of their natural right.
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But it can certainly deprive them the ability to exercise that right.
To think otherwise is to believe that our unalienable rights can be created or destroy by the actions of men, that our unalienable right are not unalienable at all, that they can be enlarged or reduced, that they are malleable and subject to the momentary winds of political fashion. This is the antithesis of the conceptual framework that justified the American revolution as expressed so eloquently in our Declaration of Independence.
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All the flowery speeches in the world does not amount to a fart in a windstorm once the government has decided that you no longer have that right. You can shout to the hilltops that you have the right but unless you are willing to vote from the roof tops when the time comes all you get is a sore throat
The repeal of the 2nd Amendment can no more dispossess the American people of their right to keep and bear arms than the repeal of the 1st Amendment can deprive them of their liberty of conscience, their right to worship, or not to worship, God as they desire.
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Think so. Try exercising those rights in prison, which is where you will be if those amendments are nullified and you still insist that God gave you the rights

I got your primary point NewsShooter, but then I wasn't trying not to
 
Sorry MDman, but it is clear that when taken out of context, that things like statistics prove concealed carry and guns lower crimes rates, like threegun said,

MDman, Statistics proved that, at least here in Florida, violent crime fell after and has fallen steadily since the passage of Florida's CWP law.
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If fact, in 2006 in Texas Commissioner Jerry Patterson published a nice article talking about how Texas CHL's lowered the crime rate in Texas. He was, after all, the senior author on the bill and it had been a decade of dropping crime rates in Texas since CHL went into effect in 1996. Cool, right? Stats prove it works.

What the Commissioner failed to tell people was that the Texas crime rate was also in a downward trend BEFORE the CHL went into effect. Apparently the notion of the bill was so powerful, crime in Texas started dropping in the previous decade, wavering back and forth a bit, then started its downward fall in 1992. But this just proves that pro-gun legislation and activities now can have such a powerful effect as to affect crime levels backward through time!!!!

But wait MDman, there is more. Clear evidence that Texas CHLs reduce crime was so effective that when it went into effect in 1996, not only did the crime rate drop in Texas, but there was a national ripple effect that carried over to MA, CA, NY, and ME for several years(from Uniform FBI Crime Reports found online for each state). That is right, sir, statistics have proven that since the implementation of Texas CHL, the crime rates dropped in decidedly anti-gun states as well.
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Let's be a bit more realistic for a minute. First of all, statistics don't prove anything. They are simply numbers that we interpret. The interpretations are not proof without a proper understanding of context. Nobody should believe that since the passage of Texas CHL that the crime rate dropped not only in Texas at that time as as result of the passage, but dropped in other distant stats and was so effective as to being retroactive in time. There is simply a correlation that occurred where crime rates were already falling as part of a national trend that was occurring in most states when legislation was passed in many states allowing concealed carry.

So sure, crime rates dropped after concealed carry has been introduced in many states, but then again, rates were already falling. Does that mean concealed carry laws are effective in fighting crime? No. It doesn't mean they are not effective either. What such stats fail to do is to account for the actual context of the crimes.

If you want to put it into context, what does having a gun or having concealed carry-friendly laws do for crime? At the individual level, if you are a person with a gun, such as a concealed carry person, it gives you a remarkable (but not only) ability to combat crime being committed against you that you otherwise would not have. That is the only statistic that matters.

When a crime is committed against a gun owner/carrier who fights back with the firearm, by the way, the crime rate does not go down. The crime against that person still occurs and ends up being reported as a crime, even if it is simply reported as being attempted, it is still a crime statistic. In such cases, the statistic often NOT reported is that such crimes often are NOT successful in their goals - those goals being to burgle, rob, rape, or kill the intended victims.
 
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If you think guns are causing the crime look at what is really happening in the U.S. and other countries look at the total murder rates.

When you look at the total number of murders per capita in the U.S. you'll see about two-thirds to three quarters of them are gun related. That means if you completely exclude the murders involving firearms (as if some number of these murders wouldn't have been carried out anyway) you still have a murder rate that eclipses the rates in the U.K., Switzerland or most any other developed nation. That means Americans are killing more people per capita with blunt instruments, edged weapons, hands, feet, cars, etc. than any other society in the "civilized" world does including their gun related homicides.

So I think you have to conclude that there is something else in the U.S. that is causing people to kill people. I don't think you can get around that. It's not the guns. It's that Americans want to kill each other for some reason.

Is it our culture- that we teach kids that our nation is great and was born out of a bloody revolution, and thus, that good can come from killing? Is it because we glamorize violence in movies, music, and television? Is it a breakdown in the familiy structure? Is it a breakdown in religious belief? Is it the war on drugs? Greed and poverty?

I don't know, maybe it's one of those reasons; maybe it's all of those reasons to one extent or another. But I do know that the guns aren't doing the killing, people are.
 
On a related note, this is why I carry a gun. I don't know for sure if guns deter crime in genereal or not. I'd guess criminals who prey upon the helpless are deterred from attacking those with guns, and when they find an armed victim, probably move on to another helpless victim. So it may not deter crime in general, though some statistics tend to support that.

I do know that having a gun, knowing how to use it, and being aware of my surroundings makes me safer even if society as a whole is unaffected. I'm just not good prey; I'm not a good victim. And I think I, MDman, my family or even Ted Kennedy deserves this right, deserves this option open to them if they are willing to shoulder the responsibility.
 
MDman said earlier that the crime rate in the U.S. has declined overall, making the drop in Florida or texas irrelevant.

MDman, are you aware that the majority of states in the U.S. allow concealed carry today, as opposed to a select few allowing concealed carry, usually on a discretionary basis, twenty or thirty years ago?

That would seem to support the argument that concealed carry is working to deter crime.
 
The more ice cream people eat the more violent crimes are committed. I am serious, this is a true thing. However they aren’t committing crimes because they are eating more ice cream, they are eating more ice cream and committing more violent crimes because....its hot. I forgot the word for what this relation is called, but I think you get my point, and how this relates to guns and crime.



If you think guns are causing the crime
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I do not hold that belief and have not said so, I think guns are independent from crime.
 
I read years ago (forget where of course) that in 1972 20% of all the armed
robberies in the U.S. took place in New York City with less than 5% of the
nation's population.
 
Statistical considerations of this sort miss the point. It would be nice if the fact that I pack heat reduced the overall crime rate, but that's hard to know. It does however enormously reduce the violent crime rate within about a 20 foot radius of my location. Or, rather, it reduces the probability that violent crimes could be carried out to a conclusion satisfactory to the criminal. That's good enough for me. If it helps society at large too, well that's an additional benefit.
 
Armoredman, I am not saying less guns equal less crime. But I would like to point out that your graph supports what I was saying. the countries with the 4 lowest crime rates on your graph have tough gun control laws, America with our guns, has more crime. Bad things seem to happen independently of gun ownership, from terrorism to petty crime.
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Actually, that's not correct. We do NOT see the overall crime rates. What we see are GUN homicide rates. Other crimes are not included, let alone other types of crimes committed with guns. Further, we do NOT see what the gun ownership rates are for any country, so we can't even say that the countries at the top of the list have higher rates of gun ownership than the ones at the bottom, or vice-versa.
 
joeb,

The fact that some nations, including these United States from time to time, act tyrannically and abuse our rights, does not have any bearing at all on whether or not those rights exist. In fact, it is far more common for governments to do exactly that than it is for governments to act to secure the unalienable rights of the people.

In the end, at least from a Lockeian perspective, if the government fails to carry into effect its most basic responsibility of preserving our liberty and instead becomes the abuser of the same, then it is the right, it is the duty, of a free people to dispose of that government and instantiate one that will adhere more closely to that purpose.

When the law becomes a tyrant, then good men do not obey the law.

I think it very unlikely that I will ever spend a day in prison for I fancy myself a good man, however immodest such a view might be, and I will either have justice for myself, my children and my countrymen or I will perish.

Best Regards,
Richard

P.S. I would wager any sum that far more people, having died from violence, have been killed by their own governments then by any private means. A man might murder another, and this is a tragic injustice, but it takes a government to exterminate a people and however many deaths might be attributed to the use of a gun by one man to murder another, that number is a paltry sum in comparison to the vast carnage accrued to governments acting against their own populations.
 
Widespread gun ownership by law-abiding citizens adds the potential of instant and lethal consequences for getting caught committing a crime. That is why guns affect crime.

Criminals are usually rational and act in such a manner as to reduce the risk to themselves, even if they are much better armed than a potential victim. Take mass shootings as an example: They almost never happen in neighborhoods because people store their guns at home. Thus, if a mass murderer starts kicking down doors in a neighborhood he will run into armed resistance very quickly. So a mass murderer will instead target an area like a school, mall, restaurant, church, etc. where the victims are less likely to fight back with guns. So even though mass murderers have utterly irrational goals they will still use rational thinking to attain them.

The problems with statistical analyses of gun ownership and crime rates are many. For instance, other factors such as income, cost of living, race, culture, education, etc. have to be accounted for properly. Then you must account for the biases of the authors of the study. That's really important; I've seen a professor of stats screw up a hypothesis test because she was biased. Literally, she did the math on the board in class, looked at the numbers, didn't like what she saw, and acted accordingly. When someone pointed out that test result indicated otherwise she had to look at the board again, think for a minute, and see that she was wrong. Then she turned around and said to the class "That's an example of bias!" Imagine what someone with an axe to grind and the time to alter the modeling process can do to a study of guns and crime, and suddenly statistical studies don't mean as much.
 
MDman, Since its impossible to tell simply by using statistics whether more or less guns equals more or less crime you must use common sense combined with some data to back it up. If you ask the criminal and he says that guns do affect his activity then guns do affect crime. We can look at the reduction in violent crime in Florida (greater than the national trend BTW) after the right to carry was implemented as data that backs up what the criminal said about guns affecting crime. Lots of things effect crime including guns. One thing is for sure gun bans do nothing to reduce crime. Bans may not equal an increase in criminal activity but it doesn't reduce it.

Tough punishment of criminals using guns in crime also works. Here in Florida we have 10-20-life. Pull a gun in a crime and you get a MANDATORY 10 years minimum sentence (even a liberal judge must give the mandatory sentence). Fire the gun you get 20 years mandatory. If someone is injured as a result of your shot.....LIFE.........MANDATORY. Gun crime has fallen in Florida.

I was righting a loan (pawn) for a guys "grill" (gold slip on teeth yuk) when his partner began talking about our 10-20-life sign displayed at the counter. He said that another of their friends had gotten rid of his gun fearful of mandatory time.......and yes we deal with some scumbags. It seems that tough punishment affects crime also.

Though the crime rate has dropped for nine years, Bush highlighted some of the decreases that occurred since 1998 -- when he was elected.

Over the past two years, according the state, the rate of violent, gun-related crimes decreased by nearly 22 percent. Last year alone, that decrease was 6 percent.
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10-20-life was made law in 99.
 
MDman, you didn't look close enough. Switzerland is listed with a FAR lower crime rate. Thier rate of firearms ownership is HIGHER than the US. South Africa, which has very, very strict disarmament laws, ranks above the US, as well as Jamaica. C'mon, the only country with tougher gun control laws than Jamaica is Taiwan, where possession of a firearm is punishable by death.
And just today, in the gun free paradise of the Phillipenes, (remember the hostages taken by communist rebels with full auto firearms down there in the PI jungle?), a man went amok, killing 9 with a "long knife"...better ban long knives.

Here's a question, of all the countries with incredibly strict gun laws, how many have seen a dip in crime, notably violent assault, rape, AFTER enacting said laws? Wanna bet none? I don't see anyone "happy slapping" in Houston. I don't see any armed rebels holed up in Helena. While I did see one armed lunatic, (who could have been stopped by the disarmed CCW permit holder in the same building), kill 32 helpless people at Virginia Tech, I DON'T see a large band of men holding a school hostage with automatic weapons, and slaughtering hundreds.
Freedom comes with a price, called personal responsability. You accept freedom, you accept responsability. If you cannot handle that, then you come live at my jobsite.
 
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