Does stricter gun control prevent gun violence?

According to the Australians, it does.

I do not think so, in America anyway, they’re everywhere and very easily available, and we don’t always care what the law says when it comes to our freedoms, like old Thomas Jefferson used to say. “I’m a cowboy, baby” (Kid Rock)

Yes. International statistics are clear on that.
Not in the US though. That country is already completely saturated with guns. Hopeless. That is why state-to-state comparisons are useless, as well, because there is no interstate border control. Nothing is preventing someone from driving to another state to get their guns.

@ragingloli We agree on SOMETHING, woo hoo, finally! Except you say it like it’s a negative?! :)

The people who abuse the power of guns don’t follow laws.

@ragingloli nothing except federal law. If you are out of state and purchase a firearm, it has to be shipped to an FFL holder in your state of record before you can acquire it. You can go pick it up in person, but you have to be able to legally purchase the firearm in both the state you buy it and the state you live.

From the ATF:

A person may only acquire a firearm within the person’s own State, except that he or she may purchase or otherwise acquire a rifle or shotgun, in person, at a licensee’s premises in any State, provided the sale complies with State laws applicable in the State of sale and the State where the purchaser resides. A person may borrow or rent a firearm in any State for temporary use for lawful sporting purposes.

You have to play the ball where it lies. In Australia, the government used a massive gun buyback to drastically reduce the number of firearms in that country. It worked. But there’s the 2nd Amendment here, which should make it illegal to compel anyone to participate in a buy-back if they legally obtained their weapon/s and didn’t want to sell them to the government.

We could make headway on reducing gun violence over time with true universal background checks including all private sales, and with harsh penalties for straw sales. We definitely should outlaw ultra-high-capacity clips. Will those steps eliminate all gun crime? Of course not. But outlawing crystal meth can’t rid our streets entirely of that poison. Still, I don’t favor legalizing crystal meth because the law can’t stop all meth labs from operating. It stops enough to be worthwhile.

The maximum federal penalty for participating in a straw purchase is a 10-year prison term. Sounds more like an enforcement problem to me than lax laws. If the law was enforced as it should be, there would be far fewer people willing to make straw purchases. But if they know they will not be prosecuted because it is considered a nuisance by prosecutors people will continue to do the deed.

@glacial Drawing comparisons across cultures here is a Straw Man. How violent are Aussies anyways? Taking guns away from people who have no desire for them proves nothing.

@WestRiverrat That doesn’t seem to square with the facts. Most straw purchases are not a federal crime at all, and in many states, it’s a misdemeanor. I do know that they prosecute people for participating in straw purchases, though, and that the crime usually gets little more than a slap on the wrist.

@jerv Australia moved to limit guns on their streets after a particularly egregious mass murder pushed public opinion to do it. For the two decades before that crime, they had a mass shooting just about ever year. Since 1996 when they made that move, they have not had another mass shooting.

It’s not easy to compare two separate cultures, but one can certainly look at changes to laws within a given culture, and see what effect they had.

@jerv Right, I forgot: the Australian situation is nothing like the situation in America.

@ETpro My information came from the BATF-E, if you have an issue with its veracity take it up with them.

@ETpro You seem to ignore that gun violence in Australia overall was already more than an order of magnitude lower than the US before 1996, that rates were on the decline before 1996 anyways, and enough other details that are enough to make me maintain my characteristic skepticism.
Also, I looked at the historical crime rates in Australia and the UK and the numbers don’t really support the argument that gun bans reduce violent crime. In fact, if anything, the opposite appears more true. Weighing the evidence on both sides has not convinced me either way as to the effectiveness of gun bans. The data I’ve seen shows little difference made by such bans beyond a continuation of existing trends. I want to believe that the solution could be as simple as a single piece of legislation, but numbers don’t lie; things don’t work that way.
History, however, has taught me that banning something that is still in demand never works well; the best way to get rid of something is to reduce/eliminate demand. Pass all the laws you want but people won’t change unless they want to.

@glacial I’m not denying some similarities, but there are also some rather huge differences that cannot be ignored.

@WestRiverrat I posted the link I did because it details why prosecutors can almost never use the Federal Straw Sales law to win a conviction. They must not just prove that a straw sale occurred, and that the person making the sale new the ultimate purchaser had no right to make such a purchase, they must somehow get the jury inside the defendant’s head and prove beyond a shadow of doubt that the person making the straw purchase knew of the criminal plans of the person they were selling to beforehand. It’s a law with enough gaping loopholes a nuclear aircraft carrier could sail straight through it without ever touching the net.

@jerv After roughly 1 mass murder a year for 17 years, 17 years without one mass murder. Deaths from gun violence way down. Suicides with guns way down. But if your confirmation bias is strong enough, there is no fact you will accept other than ones that support your premise.

Actually, I listed 3 pieces of legislation, not one. And I stated that would help reduce gun violence over time, not instantly. It would reduce it, not eliminate it.

I do not think that most Americans would defy the laws I proposed regarding guns. Universal background checks leaves all who rightfully should be able to have guns free to get them. No need to defy the law, just comply with it.

The only people who would need to break such laws to arm themselves are criminals, terrorists and the insane. And if simply having a gun were a crime for them, then we might take a few of them off the streets for breaking that law instead of having to wait for them to maim and kill before we act. That’s a very different equation than looking at cities like Washington, DC where the only people who can’t have a gun are the law abiding citizens. I am no advocate of anything as bone headed as that.

I’m not saying we should do the same as Australia, or that we would get the same results. All I am saying is that gun violence can be reduced. It is not an impossible challenge. There is no prime law of the Universe that says it has to remain exactly as bad as it is or get worse. And if Australia proves anything, it is that it’s quite possible to be safe without massive arsenals of firearms in the hands of everyone.

This debate is over. Settled by the worlds first gun created on a 3D printer.

Regulation? Fuggedaboudit! Unless you also want to outlaw 3D printers, which will soon be available for $200.

The jig is up on legislating violence. Pandora’s box just exploded. The questions of gun violence will soon be exchanged for questions of what color glock to print.

@ETpro The suicides and mass shootings, yes. The violence… not convinced given what I know of trend analysis. Simply put, when a curve doesn’t change shape, it’s hard to determine if any changes had any actual effect or whether it’s merely confusing correlation with causation. Sure, fewer people got shot, but I wouldn’t consider 15 people being stabbed/beaten to death an improvement over 10 people being shot.

Don’t get me wrong; I wholeheartedly support background checks.I also feel that mandatory competency testing/training should be part of the price of gun ownership, just as it is for getting a drivers license. I find it a little disheartening that so many oppose those measures simply because the Democrats support them especially in light of the fact that Reagan was more anti-gun than Obama.

The main issue here really is that you are making the same mistake @Jaxk chronically does; underestimating my cynicism.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies 3D printers are for those too lazy to learn how to use a milling machine and lathe :p

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies There is something especially compelling about offing a ultra-macho male with a shocking pink 50 cal.

@jerv Do you have the curve for murders of all types, and murders with a firearm over the last 34 years in Australia? If so, I’d love to see a link. If not, I would say that very, very little can be gleaned from data you do not possess.

@ETpro Let us start here

Of note:
“The percentage of homicides committed with a firearm continued a declining trend which began in 1969.”

I fail to see a “bump” or “bend” around 1996.

@jerv ”...a milling machine and lathe…”

I might just have to print one of those out and discover for myself.

@jerv Those charts only cover 3 years when the new laws were not in force. You need to graph the period from 1980 to 2012 to state your conclusion that the slope of change has been constant.

@ETpro Really? Those charts do not all cover the same time period.

The second chart starts in 1990; 1996 – 1990 = 6, and 6 > 3. Maybe not enough to be conclusive, but more than enough to prove that either you were quick to dismiss evidence contrary to your opinion, or just didn’t read it carefully enough to notice the date ranges.

More relevantly, the third one starts in 1915; 1996 – 1915 = 81, and 81 > 3, which is more than enough data to establish a trend.

Of course it does. It is just that the NRA have their heads too far up their own backsides to see it. It worked here in Australia, and it could work in the US if people stopped treating the second amendment (or whatever it is) as more important than human life.

It is kind of funny. The people that harp on about how the second amendment is sacred are the same people that want to change/repeal the 14th amendment because they hate “anchor babies”.

@ragingloli Not always. Well, I would say yes they are the same people, but I also know many people who want much stricter gun legislation and hate the gun mentality in the country and still want the 14th amendment repealed. Not because they have a problem with immigration, they only have a problem with jus soli. I’m pretty sure your country doesn’t practice it. Correct me if I am wrong about that.

Well, until 2000, we did indeed not.
In 2000 however, we introduced an optional model for 2nd generation immigrants (children of immigrants). They grow up with dual citizenship and then have to choose either German Citizenship, or those of its parents, once he/she turns 18.
Granted, that does not apply to illegal immigrants, though I would not object if it did.

Interesting, I did not know the law had changed recently in Germany. America has grappled with the issue for many years, in fact the Americas in general are more likely to have laws of Jus Soli than Europe and Asia. I’m sure partly because the countries of the Americas were receiving so many immigrants. The 14th amendment was created for the black slaves in our country. Almost a way to make the paperwork easier I think. Well, aside from it seemed like the right thing to do since they were brought here out of force. The whole phenomenom of people crossing the border illegally and giving birth was kind of a side effect of the 14th amendment. Since there are no longer slaves being forced to come to our country, it stands to reason maybe we should look at least to amending the amendment. Maybe similar to Germany, where it would not apply to illegal immigrants.

There are shootings in Australia every day. There are gun shops in every city. What John Howard said was interesting, suicide by gun has decreased and homicide by gun has decreased since he had the big gun buy back, but does that mean suicide and homicide in general have decreased? I’m not sure if the decreases are relevant unless we know the whole story.
That said, I keep changing sides on this question. I don’t know what is going to make the problem disappear. I don’t think Australia is safe from mass shootings because of its gun legislation, I think it just hasn’t happened for a while. I think people who are hell bent on killing people will get a gun no matter how difficult. Last week there was a standoff with guns involved in Darwin. I know a lot of people I don’t consider stable who have guns. And if you make it more difficult to buy guns, what will happen when some immigrant in the USA wants to buy a gun but doesn’t have proper id, then the ACLU or someone will be screaming about the discrimination. Most don’t think it fair to demand proof of identity for voting because it would be too difficult for many immigrants to obtain?? Or if you can’t get the gun, you build a bomb, put it in your bookbag and sit it under a table in the school lunch room??? I don’t know the solution and I don’t know that the options on the table are going to make a difference.

Well, there is this to be said for extraordinary lax gun laws.

@ETpro There are many things about the South that make me ashamed to be an American, and things like that make me wish they would secede again so that I won’t share a nationality with that sort of idiot.

Laws are most necessary when people are jackasses. NH has pretty lenient gun laws and yet gets away with it while maintaining a low crime rate. SC has more crime, so that indicates that the laxity of laws has less bearing on crime rates that the jackass-itude of the population.

If we’re going to quote the onion, I think this poses more danger to more people!

@jerv, “Drawing comparisons across cultures here is a Straw Man….”

@jerv, “There are many things about the South that make me ashamed to be an American, and things like that make me wish they would secede again so that I won’t share a nationality with that sort of idiot.”

@bkcunningham Contrasts good, comparisons bad? :)

@bkcunningham I’m afraid @glacial is right. False equivalency.

@rooeytoo There is nothing like quoting The Onion to derail any serious discussion. BTW, loved that link. :-)

@ETpro The sad part about The Onion (and similar faux-news comedy sources) is that satire is often less outrageous/ridiculous than reality these days. It used to be that you could tell comedic exaggeration from current events when it came to politics, but those days are gone.

@jerv Truer words were never spoken. There is little more frightening than an elephant gone wildly insane.

It’s part of the solution. Cultural change is required too.