Perhaps U.S. civilians should be allowed to keep guns for self-defense, if only because the market for firearms is so large to begin with. But there is a study that shows that a gun is used very rarely in defense in response to an offender committing a violent crime (assault, rape, robbery etc.), only less than 1% of the time. So even if all guns theoretically disappeared from the hands of law-abiding citizens, only a very small minority of crime instances would be affected. The argument that guns help in self-defense, judging from the observations in this study, is irrelevant compared to whatever benefits would occur from banning legal access to guns.
The study here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1615397/pdf/amjph00463-0112.pdf
Also, the one of the main ideas of the article concerning Chicago was never addressed - and it's a really good one. Laws don't mean anything without enforcement. So even if Chicago has the toughest laws, it's highly misleading to say that tough laws have nothing to do with violent crime. I'm sure China has really tough laws against violent crimes, and you know what? Offenders actually get executed.
And the whole argument that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is overused and abused. By that logic bombs don't kill people, but people kill people - and bombs are still pretty darn banned. Like Scarf said: guns facilitate violence, much like bystanders facilitate bullying. Yes, in strict logic, we wouldn't say guns kill people, nor bystanders bully people. But they enable the act to happen, and by removing the enablers, we remove an incentive for that act to happen. It's irresponsible to use that phrase to kill discussion because ideas should be represented clearly, and arguing from the logical "correctness" of a statement is irrelevant compared to the issue at hand and I wouldn't stop at "a bit disrespectful", but go as far as to call it an obstruction of logic.
I feel that human behaviour can be guided, if the right incentives are used. If the death penalty was executed swiftly and harshly for violent crime, crime rates /will/ go down. Career criminals are rational actors in the sense that if they have a realistic chance of being offed by the state, they're not going to get paid. And I don't think criminals do what they do because of the excitement. Let's say there was a law that penalizes the possession of a gun outside of military/law enforcement context with death. It feels more likely to me that criminals would all rather rot (safely) in the ghetto together, instead of killing each other and getting killed by the justice system at the same time. I laugh at the thought of drug dealers attempting to do drive-by-and-strangle-each-others, or knife duel like they do in counter strike if their guns were taken away from them. It will be much harder to kill when the tool that makes it so easy is taken away. The school shootings will occur every now and then, but you could never defend against those anyways. A mass shooting is scary, but gun violence occurs every day and not only on the front pages of a newspaper.
It's clear that guns have no place in a civil society, and ideally, they would disappear from the hands of civilians in a snap. The problem is one of practicality as you can't simply make the theory of "take the guns off our streets" into real-life action. Although, and I'm citing the study above, implementing a gun ban wouldn't really affect the victim's ability to defend against gun crime, if the victim's gun is only used 1% of the time. Gun crime just happens, and most of the time you can't stop it as it's happening, with a gun or not, whether you like it or not. It's a disheartening conclusion, but it just might be something we have to suck up and accept as a reality.
The study here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1615397/pdf/amjph00463-0112.pdf
Also, the one of the main ideas of the article concerning Chicago was never addressed - and it's a really good one. Laws don't mean anything without enforcement. So even if Chicago has the toughest laws, it's highly misleading to say that tough laws have nothing to do with violent crime. I'm sure China has really tough laws against violent crimes, and you know what? Offenders actually get executed.
And the whole argument that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is overused and abused. By that logic bombs don't kill people, but people kill people - and bombs are still pretty darn banned. Like Scarf said: guns facilitate violence, much like bystanders facilitate bullying. Yes, in strict logic, we wouldn't say guns kill people, nor bystanders bully people. But they enable the act to happen, and by removing the enablers, we remove an incentive for that act to happen. It's irresponsible to use that phrase to kill discussion because ideas should be represented clearly, and arguing from the logical "correctness" of a statement is irrelevant compared to the issue at hand and I wouldn't stop at "a bit disrespectful", but go as far as to call it an obstruction of logic.
I feel that human behaviour can be guided, if the right incentives are used. If the death penalty was executed swiftly and harshly for violent crime, crime rates /will/ go down. Career criminals are rational actors in the sense that if they have a realistic chance of being offed by the state, they're not going to get paid. And I don't think criminals do what they do because of the excitement. Let's say there was a law that penalizes the possession of a gun outside of military/law enforcement context with death. It feels more likely to me that criminals would all rather rot (safely) in the ghetto together, instead of killing each other and getting killed by the justice system at the same time. I laugh at the thought of drug dealers attempting to do drive-by-and-strangle-each-others, or knife duel like they do in counter strike if their guns were taken away from them. It will be much harder to kill when the tool that makes it so easy is taken away. The school shootings will occur every now and then, but you could never defend against those anyways. A mass shooting is scary, but gun violence occurs every day and not only on the front pages of a newspaper.
It's clear that guns have no place in a civil society, and ideally, they would disappear from the hands of civilians in a snap. The problem is one of practicality as you can't simply make the theory of "take the guns off our streets" into real-life action. Although, and I'm citing the study above, implementing a gun ban wouldn't really affect the victim's ability to defend against gun crime, if the victim's gun is only used 1% of the time. Gun crime just happens, and most of the time you can't stop it as it's happening, with a gun or not, whether you like it or not. It's a disheartening conclusion, but it just might be something we have to suck up and accept as a reality.
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