Gender: Male Location: ATL\PASADENA\BATTLECREEK\CHICAGO
proposed gun control (in brief)
Remember the movie Tombstone (with Kurt Russel)? Do any of you think they had the right idea concerning gun control? I will have to agree with their approach but my idea would not be as broad but in some ways more restrictive as to where you would be allowed to keep
your weapons.
In the movie ( and perhaps historically correct) The Earps band all guns within city limits. You still had every right to own your firearms, but you were not allowed to bring them into the city limits, or to surrender them.
I propose something similar. Within city limits you would be allowed to keep hand guns and shot guns (rifles would not be permitted).
The major change in my policy would be that "assault" weapons would not be permitted within 50 miles of cities or 100 miles of metropolitan areas exceeding a determined population. Again you would not be restricted from OWNING such weapons aside from your ability to store them accordingly.
Furthermore: to purchase these weapons would require
1) Federal registration
2) You are subject to at will questioning and search when you enter a city of the determined population by federal/state/local authorities.
I kept this as brief as possible...not short enough for some I'm sure
Not that this should be seen as a specific endorsement of Canadian gun laws, just that, it appears the system we have in place does have a positive impact.
Yeah, but I think the biggest thing is the mentality of Canada vs. the U.S. Generally more laid back up there, plus you guys don't have fear-mongering reporters and politicians trying to scare all of you daily into being afraid everytime you walk out your front door. I watched CNN's little Sunday gathering where all the main reporters have discussions and they were chuckling to themselves about how they don't like non-devisive stories. The American media sucks donkey balls and is without question part of the problem.
Saying "no guns here" isn't very effective. If you want to stop gun violence either you cut off the supply so its harder to get them or you up the penalties for having or using a gun. Britain has crazy harsh gun laws and consequently there is not much gun violence since it just isn't worth getting a gun. That didn't drop murder to zero though, they have incredible levels of knife crime.
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In my country they offered money for guns. The stockpile was huge. (Australia)
Still drug runner suppliers, gangs, survivalists and gun enthusiasts still keep the crimes up to a degree. But nowhere near the insane numbers the US has.
We have rare occurrences of drive-bys and robberies. But nothing compared to the casualties your country has.
I heard that gun crime is increasing in places like Toronto, though. Is there any truth to that?
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There has been a number of recent high profile incidents, but last I saw, the numbers were still consistent with the last few years, and crime in general is at it lowest in 40 years.
Not really. High levels in some areas, perhaps, but nothing close to 'incredible', and don't confuse crime and murder. There is no real pattern by which knives are making up for a shortfall of guns in murders, and the US proportion of murders done without guns is higher than the UK's (obviously the amount with guns is much, much higher in the US), so knife murders are actually a bigger problem out there despite the prevalence of guns. I think this speaks against the idea that banning guns simply transfers murders to knives to any significant degree.
It is also unusual for more people to be killed with guns in a country than without them, and extremely rare in the first world. The US is one such country where this happens, and by a considerable margin (almost twice as many murdered by guns than by other means). I feel this points to a pattern.
It is, of course, impossible to make a direct link between gun control and lower murder/crime rates because we'd need to look into a parallel universe to compare two countries like for like, with and without. Nonetheless, I'm pretty confident that taking guns out the equation makes for a safer society here in the UK (more precisely in Britain, as the terrorism angle in Northern Ireland skews the stats history there), and it is still a point of pride that our policemen are, by default, not armed with guns.
On a straight statistical comparison, the US gun death rate is horrifying (those numbers truly do qualify as 'incredible')- but people who throw those numbers around aren't always aware that they relate to gun deaths from all causes, not just crime. Still, it doesn't have to be incredible to be a real issue and the whole world knows that the US has got to get on top of the guns issue.
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Last edited by Ushgarak on Jul 25th, 2012 at 03:44 PM
Just to give some additional context, CBC talks about the issue:
Winnipeg is labeled, there, as the worst city (if Regina or Saskatoon were included on the list, Winnipeg might not be at the top). I live in Winnipeg, and we recently just had our 19th murder this year (knives seem to be the most common cause, 12 of the 19 murders were with knives, only 3 were shootings). The population is only 700 000, so by Canadian terms, that is a lot, but even for being the "worst in Canada", those numbers are small compared to most equally sized American cities.
What you said sounds legit based on research I had to do in one of my classes.
I did some fact finding to prove yours and my assumptions:
"The BCS suggests the number of violent incidents involving knives in 2005/2006 was, at 169,000. The BCS suggests the number of violent incidents involving knives in 2005/2006 was, at 169,000, around half the level of 340,000 in 1995, though it had increased on 2004 - 2005 and had been rising since the previous year The proportion of overall violent incidents involving knives was eight per cent in 1995 and seven per cent in 2005 - 2006."
That's 6 year old old data and they report in the same article that violent knife crime was on an upward trend but overall knife crime was....down (I thought all knife crime was considered "violent")?
Population of the UK in 2006: 60,409,000.
The knife crime per 100,000 people in the UK in 2006: 377.56
For the US, there were 473.6 violent crimes per 100,000 people.
The chart at the bottom splits up gun crime (it's STILL an apples to oranges comparison) into 3 categories: Murders, Robberies, Assaults:
If we add those up, we get the total.
That's 89.29 gun crimes per 100,000 people. That's much much lower than the 377.56 per 100,000 knife crimes reported in the UK.
Why is that an Apples to Oranges comparison? The 377.56 UK knife crime figure is based off of REPORTED crime from individuals and the 89.29 US gun crime figure is based off of crime logged with local law enforcement (many crimes go unreported to local law enforcement and the FBI pulls that data annually for analysis, IIRC).
This means that yours and my assumption is still probably correct and this is also why Symmetric Chaos may still be correct: we are all right.
But I will note that SC's perception may not be fairly representing the picture. Do those stats show that the knife crime rate in the UK is "incredible"? Why, yes, it does: it's 4.22 times higher than our gun crime in the US. Is that a fair comparison? Probably not.
Comments? Criticisms? You know, I could totally be wrong and that is a legit comparison. Does anyone have a chart like the one presented by the UK Guardian for the UK instead of the US? If so, that would do MUCH better to give us a legit comparison. I could not find one and the report cited by the UK Telegraph was the best I could find under short notice.
It is interesting that you note the population as well. The most crime-ridden U.S. cities have a much higher population than Winnipeg, though realistically population density in both areas is likely similar. Regardless, I think it's the mentality of the population and government as a whole that contributes to the atmosphere of crime that is pervasive in most large U.S. cities. Probably doesn't help either that when John and Jane Poverty light up a doobie to forget their troubles for a while they're going to end up in lock up here in the U.S. Kind of a tangential point, but it does speak to the situation.
I don't think there's a useful comparison unless you can compare US knife crime to UK. I also don't think general knife crime is anywhere near as high as you say there; the London rate in 2006 was 164 per 100000, and London is one of the higher areas.
Regardless, the topic at hand was murders, not crime in general. SC's comment was about deaths, which is why I mentioned not to confuse the two.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Jul 25th, 2012 at 09:41 PM
Oh, for sure, I'm not trying to put Winnipeg on the same level as major US crime centers, more pointing out that similar sized cities are still worse in America, whereas Winnipeg is the literal worst in Canada. Regina and Saskatoon are also really bad, so maybe saying Winnipeg is "among" the worst is more accurate.
maybe not. Just as sort of a trivial point, Winnipeg is a very spread out city with low density. lol
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oh, for sure, culture plays a major role, such as in places like Switzerland where it is mandatory to own a gun but crime is so low they don't even keep statistics on gun violence.
Still, I think control would have a positive impact on America, if nothing else, it may be a way to start that cultural change.
Hah, I know, but fines work out a whole lot better than jail time for minor possession.
Agreed though, until the mentality of this country changes something needs to happen with the weapon situation. Maybe some highly-enlightened alien overlords will come soon, take care of all that, and leave us a better place. Of course, I've seen Earth: Final Conflict, so maybe not. =p
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Jul 24th, 2012 01:18 PM
