The instances of guns being used in proper self defense are far outweighed by their illegal use in crimes and accidental use at home.
The illegal use in crime will continue even if they are banned. As for deaths from gun accidents they are not greater then cases where guns are used in self defence.
Removing guns from society would take a large effort but would be well worth the cost in the added security and resulting DROP in crime and murders.
How large of effort are you prepared to make? A huge effort against drugs has had no success. And drugs need to be constantly replaced. One gun can be used by a criminal for many years. Also there is evidence that greater restrictions on guns (at least greater restrictions that fall short of an effective total ban, which is unconstitutional and close to impossible) might increase many types of crimes. I suggest you read "More Guns, Less Crime" by John Lott.
So, your argument is that automatic weapons are heavily regulated, and cause almost no deaths. So, your position is the regulation of automatic guns WORKS, but regulation of handguns WON'T WORK. Hmm, seems to be a rather convenient set of logic there.
Regulation of automatic weapons works mostly because there is little need of them for most criminal activities. Criminals usually want small reasponably cheap and concielable weapons. If they want heavy close in destruction then they usually go for a shotgun. Since one type of gun is harder to get an another type fits the criminals desires just as well if not better the 2nd type (not fully automatic) of weapon is used.
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press.uchicago.edu
"The total number of accidental gun deaths each year is about 1,300 and each year such accidents take the lives of 200 children 14 years of age and under. However, these regrettable numbers of lives lost need to be put into some perspective with the other risks children face. Despite over 200 million guns owned by between 76 to 85 million people, the children killed is much smaller than the number lost through bicycle accidents, drowning, and fires. Children are 14.5 times more likely to die from car accidents than from accidents involving guns."
time.com
"John Lott: First, there is a very close relationship between the number of
permits issued in a state and the decline in violent crime rates. Those states
that issue the most permits have had the largest drops in violent crime, and
over time as more permits are issued there is a continued drop in violent
crime. As to Mr. Weil's second point, I have provided my data to
researchers at 36 different universities. I believe that the vast majority
would support the findings that I have provided, but if Mr. Weil has specific
criticisms, I would be happy to address them. This is by far the largest study
that has been done on crime, and I have tried to control for as many
variables as it has been possible to control for.
Alliezach_98 asks: Mr. Lott, If more guns bring less crime, how come
virtually every other nation has less guns and less violent crime, and have
taken steps to reduce guns?
Lott: In fact, there's no relationship internationally between gun ownership
and murder rates. There are many countries with gun ownership rates
similar to or higher than what we have in the US, and they have very low
murder rates. The reverse is also true. There are many countries like
Finland, Switzerland, and New Zealand that have virtually identical gun
ownership rates to what we have in the US, and their murder rates are
significantly lower than those of surrounding countries. Israel, with one of
the highest gun ownership rates in the world, has a murder rate 40% below
Canada's. In my book, I find that the states that have had the highest
growth in gun ownership have in fact had the biggest drops in violent crime
rates."
papers.ssrn.com
Safe Storage Gun Laws: Accidental Deaths, Suicides, and Crime
JOHN R. LOTT, JR.
Yale Law School
JOHN E. WHITLEY
University of Chicago
March 29, 2000
Yale Law School, Law & Economics Working Paper No. 237
Abstract:
It is frequently assumed that safe storage gun laws reduce accidental gun deaths and
total suicides, while the possible impact on crime rates are ignored. However, given
existing work on the adverse impact of other safety laws, such as safety caps for storing
medicine, even the very plausible assumption of reduced accidental gun deaths cannot be
taken for granted. Our paper analyzes both state and county data spanning nearly twenty
years, and we find no support that safe storage laws reduce either juvenile accidental
gun deaths or suicides. Instead, these storage requirements appear to impair people’s
ability to use guns defensively. Because accidental shooters also tend to be the ones
most likely to violate the new law, safe storage laws increase violent and property
crimes against low risk citizens with no observable offsetting benefit in terms of reduced
accidents or suicides. During the first five full years after the passage of the safe
storage laws, the group of fifteen states that adopted these laws faced an annual
average increase of over 300 more murders, 3,860 more rapes, 24,650 more robberies,
and over 25,000 more aggravated assaults. On average, the annual costs borne by
victims averaged over $2.6 billion as a result of lost productivity, out-of-pocket expenses,
medical bills, and property losses.
tsra.com
Gun Control Advocates Purvey Deadly Myths
tsra.com
A lot of people's perceptions about guns come from news media. Constantly hearing about the bad uses of guns must have a big impact on people's
perceptions of the risks of guns. Yet, we rarely hear about tragic events avoided through gun use. When was the last time you heard news about
someone who'd used a gun to save a life? In 1997, for example, while people used guns to commit crimes about 430,000 times (more than 9,000 of
those being murders), studies by respected institutions estimate that guns were used defensively about 2 million times. Simply brandishing a gun was
sufficient 98 percent of the time to cause a criminal to break off an attack.
Yet many dramatic cases of guns saving lives go unreported. Consider the school shooting in Pearl, Miss. A Lexis-Nexis search for the month after
the October 1997 attack shows about 700 news stories on the shooting. Only 19 of them mention the school's assistant principal, and just 13 mention
he had something to do with stopping the attack. No national evening news broadcast mentioned his heroic efforts.
What actually happened? He was able to stop the shooting by brandishing a gun. He obeyed the federal law, which prohibits guns within school
boundaries. He'd locked the gun in his car and parked it more than a quarter-mile away. When the attack occurred, he ran to his car, got the gun,
came back, pointed the gun at the attacker, and ordered him to the ground. He held him there for more than five minutes before police arrived.
Everyone remembers the day-trader shooting in Atlanta last year, but few know that in the following 10 days there were three cases where citizens
used guns to stop similar attacks. Possibly because no one was killed or injured in those cases, they weren't considered newsworthy. |
