I wonder

[bladespark]

I was reading an article about gun laws that mentioned 30,000 people killed in the USA by guns each year.

Firstly I have to eye that number, as I suspect it's been somehow inflated. Then I have to ask... has that number actually been broken down and analyzed? Has anybody actually looked at what would change if we banned gun ownership?

For example, how many of those are criminals killed in police shoot outs? We can't remove guns from the police, so whatever percentage of that number represents policemen acting in the line of duty wouldn't go away. (It might go down a bit if criminals can't get guns, so there are fewer shoot outs, but see below for why I'm not going to bet on it.)

Then, how many of those will killed by guns that were already illegal? If you ban legal gun ownership, it may cut down a bit on the number of guns floating about, but criminals already illegally own guns, so making it illegal to own guns at all isn't exactly going to stop them, they're already breaking the laws we have. So there's another chunk of that number that wouldn't change if we banned guns.

And what percentage of that number is defensive killings, people who own guns using them to save their own lives? That number would go away, to be replaced by a new number, the number of people killed, raped, assaulted, etc. who could have defended themselves if they'd owned a gun.

I wonder, counting up all that, how many of those gun deaths are left? I suspect it's not very many.

Anybody know if there's a place where I can find out?

Comments

[beetlecat.livejournal.com]

this might help. I noticed a slight breakdown in statistics: http://www.ichv.org/Statistics.htm

I didn't feel like reading the entire thing, but Wikipedia is usually pretty good:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I hadn't considered suicides. For some reason I'd thought that more people committed suicide by other means than by guns. I wonder what effect a change in gun laws would have on suicide statistics?

[beetlecat.livejournal.com]

The effect of gun control was forcibly brought to me recently when a nonphysician colleague asked me to provide psychopharmacologic consultation for a young man whose engagement to be married had been abruptly terminated. He had thought of killing himself the previous week and had gone to a sporting goods store to buy a gun. I asked whether he had purchased one. He looked at me disappointedly and said, "No—in New York State it takes six months to get a license... a lot of good that does!" That man is alive today, getting treatment, and doing better because some members of the community cared enough to legislate to limit access to firearms.
http://psychservices.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/52/8/999

Suicide with a gun (assuming you have one lying around) is very easy and quick. Most other methods take enough time that the person has lost the strong impulse to kill themselves or they are simply unsuccessful. I'd imagine that slicing your own wrists open would be much harder to do than simply pulling a trigger, and death is not as immediate so there's a chance of help being found.

I think banning of handguns (as it is in Canada, you need a special handgun license to buy one) is a good idea. Frankly, I wouldn't want to live somewhere where you *need* to have a handgun for defense and (other than target practice at a gun range) they serve no useful purpose except as a weapon of last resort for police/keepers of the peace.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

*nods* Looking through those statistics, I think I could probably get behind banning handguns. I could never support trying to ban guns entirely. I was raised around guns, all my relations on my mother's side hunt and do skeet shooting and that sort of thing. I fired my uncle's .22 when I was all of eight years old. I've seen how useful and necessary, and even fun owning a gun can be. I don't think I'd ever own one myself, but I've always felt a lot of the anti-gun people are just... well, the article I read was just raving, basically. Throwing around pejorative and negative language, talking about the "insanity" of owning guns, and frothing about how many people guns kill, without actually giving any real facts. That kind of bad rhetoric tends to annoy me, and it's really all I've ever heard from gun control people, is crazed raving about the evils of all guns. And I've NEVER heard any valid comparisons to other places that have banned guns. If banning guns really does cut down on homicide and crime, why do the people wanting to ban guns here never bring up statistics on homicide and crime from other countries? I've never heard any of them do so, and you'd think that would be the very first and most obvious argument.

The suicide thing I guess I really don't get. I have no leanings that way at all, suicide just isn't how my depression works, but if I did a gun would be the very last way I'd want to do myself in. Gah. Just thinking about it makes me want to crawl into a kevlar-lined hole and not come out again. Somehow getting shot sounds infinitely more scary to me than any other way to die. So I guess that's just my own weird psychoses talking.

[beetlecat.livejournal.com]

Same here, the idea of getting shot in the head scares the hell out of me. But then, I don't want to die.

They recently implemented a Gun Registry Program here. And all it did was piss off legitimate gun owners and throw a bunch of taxpayers' money down a black hole.

[reaverta.livejournal.com]

This depends hugely on the culture.

We don't have a gun registry per se in NZ, but the ownership and tracking of firearms is carefully regulated by the police - the guns may not have serial numbers stamped on them and ballistic samples in the lab, but you have to declare to the police when buying/selling a firearm, and they know how many you own and of what types.

This is considered normal, and a good thing.

Then again, NZ follows the british model - Guns Are Rare.

[world-wanderer.livejournal.com]

Has banning guns in other countries led to a lower rate of suicides? Japan has what's probably the strictest gun laws on the planet, but they have a considerable suicide rate. Just because fewer people are offing themselves with guns doesn't mean fewer people are offing themselves.

There's several stories a year, though few make it national, of people failing to kill themselves with guns. Generally, you hit the wrong spot, leaving you horribly mangled, or a vegetable.

[baloo-ursidae.livejournal.com]

Has anybody actually looked at what would change if we banned gun ownership?

Yes, look at the British mainland. Gun voilence continues.

[khukuri.livejournal.com]

And then look at Australia, where (the small amount of) firearm violence dropped after our gun buyback legislation (that chart there reiterates the fact that largest effect it's had seems to be on suicides. Huh.)

Bureau of stats puts gun registration here at 5-ish percent of us, for sports as well as for shooting pests and ferals. We don't really have a culture of owning firearms for home defence, and since there's not a lot of them out there, there's fewer for people to abuse. Shooting is heaps fun, and god knows we need more people to knock off feral dogs/cats, but I can't really see an issue with most of the population not having any, you know?

[baloo-ursidae.livejournal.com]

I can't really see an issue with most of the population not having any, you know?

There's a difference between most people not owning guns, like the US, and not being allowed to own guns, like England.

yeah

[aazhie.livejournal.com]

plus, muggers can still scare people with knives. just because it doesn't shoot doesn't mean it can't kill you via puntures or bludgening. Guns are just viewd as an "easier way" to die, which is not necessarily true.

[wolven-remorse.livejournal.com]

http://wolvenremorse.deviantart.com/art/BladeSPark-Gift-Badge-63772446

Gift for you. =)

-- Kiyo --

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Awww! That's cute. Thank you!

[wolven-remorse.livejournal.com]

You're very good. ^^

-- Kiyo --

[wolven-remorse.livejournal.com]

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-- Kiyo --

[draggo.livejournal.com]

You might want to visit this link.
http://www.guncite.com/

Also how would banning guns have any effect on homemade guns and ammo?
http://www.thehomegunsmith.com/

Also loading your own ammunition is easy.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

While I am ECSTATIC I live in a country where guns are VERY illegal and you can merrily go your whole life without seeing one, I doubt it would work in America - because you already have so many guns out there

gun control is tough

[aazhie.livejournal.com]

i just don't see any easy ot short term solutions to the dillemma...
I don't feel that having a gun makes anyone all that safer without intimate knowledge of gun mechanics, skills and combat. I feel more comfortable with my utlity knife because i know how to use it in self defense. if i learned how to shoot a gun i wouldn't carry it, but i guess it could make me feel a little safer knowing more about them.

the kinds of cases against gun control are usually a matter of people being idiots, like the dumbasses who imitate Jackass and blow out their entire Uro-genital system because they thought sticking a firecraker in their bum would be cool. IMO, most of the tragic cases involve some stupid parent not teaching their kids the real danger and gun can be and being too lax or totalitarian that the kid manages to get into the gun cabinent and blow his friend away. Making guns cool looking is far more harmful than owning one responsibly. I know many kids who have grown up in houses with them that never had any problems with them because their parents didn't make them accessible or completely fobidden. They knew how to shoot and that was a privilidge they respected.
I think time and money could be spent more productively by making PR on how to be safe with guns and making wait laws up to a month or so. In the case of suicides, usually if it is a moment of crisis, making them wait on it and think about what they are doing will prevent a suicide in the immediate moment. If you are so desperate for a gun, you probably SHOULDN'T HAVE IT!

If your neighbor is out to kill you or you want to kill yourself, the best solution is seeking help, not bullets. The police will protect someone who thinks they are in danger. the only reasons whay this may not work is is someone is already a criminal and w3anted for arrest or the local police are lall psycho and want to kill them, which just seems pretty unlikely.
I know most people aren't reasonable when they are depressed or afraid, but that is why society needs to be smarter and educate people on REAL self defense and signs of depression and other such matters....

Re: gun control is tough

[aazhie.livejournal.com]

yeah, that's true. :( It would be nice to have more public safety witness protection type groups.

too bad about the gun safety day, cause that would really be awesome. Probably much more effective than the anti-drug campaigns too... :P