Doesn't this lead to a scenario where defending yourself in your home against an intruder is nearly impossible? Do you really want to have to defend yourself with a thirty-aught-six?

How often does this actually happen though ? Even in this country, where gun ownership is very low and handguns are vanishingly rare, most breakins occur when the occupant is not at home and violent home invasions by would-be rapists and the like are incredibly uncommon. I see no reason to suppose that things would be any different in the US. Most countries in the world have some form of gun control legislation but they're not plagued by home invasions.

Fact is that crime rates in the West have been in sharp decline since the 1990s. Nobody knows exactly why this might be, there are a number of explanations (I read an interesting theory recentl;y that it was down to the banning of leaded fuel in cars), but the fact is that crime rates are plummetting. You're far safer today than you would have been 20 years ago and the trend seems to be for things to get even better. The rationale for needing to own a lethal weapon to defend against a largely bogus threat is declining all the time.

I read articles about that lead thing. It's an interesting correlation - basically the observation is that lead levels rose and declined in a similar way to crime, but about 15-20 years earlier, which would be consistent with an effect from childhood exposure. We already know that lead damages the brain as part of it's poisonous effects.

It's right that we don't really know why crime has fallen. Some point to tougher law enforcement, but the trend has been observed much more widely. It could be a change in drug use/abuse.

What I see is a lot of concern about crime, and a common assumption that it's getting worse and more violent. The reality is that is not really the case, and in general we in the West are very safe, whether we live in a country with widespread gun ownership or not.

Doctor Fate wrote:

geojanes wrote:What's more likely: you have a gun in your home and you use it against an intruder successfully. Or you have a gun in your house for self-defense (at the ready/loaded) and someone is hurt with that gun in a way you never intended?

I would argue that the latter scenario is far, far more likely.

Depends. Is the gunowner's IQ above or below 85?

Is the gun owner the only person in the house? Are you proposing IQ tests before allowing people to obtain guns? Is IQ really a good way to measure such things anyway - clumsiness is not related to intelligence, after all?

Or was it just a throwaway comment designed to avoid thinking about GJ's actual question?

Here's the problem,
I am no gun nut, I hate guns! I do not own one, do not plan on owning one, do not feel the need to own one.
But I also know people who do feel the need to own one and they feel that need because they live in bad areas where the "bad guys" do own them and do use them, they feel a need to be able to protect themselves from that element.

Sass mentioned two important issues, he not being from the US is using his UK logic and is applying it to the US.

Even in this country, where gun ownership is very low and handguns are vanishingly rare...

exactly!
Handguns are rare where you are, I WISH they were rare here as well but alas they are not and banning them simply means only criminals would own them. Simple fact is they do own them and to compare your area to ours is simply not comparing apples to apples.

The rationale for needing to own a lethal weapon to defend against a largely bogus threat is declining all the time.

I agree with you for most Americans who live in safe areas such as myself and at that, I live in a suburb right along the city border, I am closer that I like to a very rough area, but I feel safe enough. But what about those who do live in those areas that are rough? What about my neighbors who feel we are too close for comfort and want that extra protection? Can we allow only those who live in inner city neighborhoods to own a gun? (of course not). The threat is very real, a person I work with had his house shot several times (the last time being back in July) he has had break ins and he can't afford to move, you want to tell him he can't own a gun? The statement that this is a bogus threat is simply not true in US inner cities or neighboring areas, you are using your limited experience and applying it to another area, that statement is simply false.

What I was getting at is that even in areas like mine where anybody with a mind to break into somebody's home with a view to violent assault, rape etc could be pretty certain not to run into anybody with a gun, those kind of crimes are still pretty uncommon. I do take your point that some parts of America are fairly dangerous but I'm willing to bet that the same applies there too, and also that those crimes are growing less prevalent in line with global trends. I mentioned it in specific reference to DF's comment about how a handgun is the only gun that's useful for defending your home. I personally don't really believe that home invasion is a common occurrence in America.

But yes, you have hit upon the main stumbling block to serious gun reform in America. In a country where there are more guns than citizens it's probably too late to start on seriously trying to ban them because law-abiding citizens won't want to give their guns up when they know how easy it is for criminals to obtain them. I do realise how much of a problem this is of course. Personally I tend to think that given enough time the problem would eventually disappear (new guns would be harder to get, old ones that were poorly maintained would be harder to repair, ammo would grow increasingly difficult to obtain, criminals would gradually see less need to bother carrying guns etc), but this process would take many years and politically it doesn't strike me as being very feasible. I'm not saying there's the slightest chance that you will ban handguns, just that you ought to.

sass

Fact is that crime rates in the West have been in sharp decline since the 1990s. Nobody knows exactly why this might be, there are a number of explanations

The explanation is largely demographic. Older people tend to commit violent crime a lot less often.
The Boom Bust Echo pattern of population in western countries, caused by the baby boom of the 50's and 60's and the echo boom 20 years later has a disproportionate bulge in the population curve now reaching retirement age. And the echo kids are hitting 40+.
In western countries the age groups prone to violent crime are 15-34.. And particularly 18-24. Impulse control is a large part of this...
If you could only own a firearm after the age of 40, there wouldn't be all that many firearms wounding or deaths.

Sass and I are more alike than most might think. I believe we are thinking very similarly only we see things from a slightly different point?

I have heard a few reports from the gun nuts who point this out. I have no idea if it is correct, It is also old info (10 years old) so it may have gotten better (or worse?) since then, I am a bit gun shy on posting it (pun intended) but here we go.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... rs-35.html

the link is from the UK back in January 2003
They tell of how handgun crime has been soaring every year since handguns were made illegal.
It did seem to start to improve but it took 5 years of massive rise in gun crimes to start to see any decline. Things could only be worse here where we have even more hand guns to start with coupled with a gun culture that simply never existed across the pond. This is a big fear for many Americans!

Another story written to the New York Governor by a co-workers brother is kind of funny and fits well here, Yes it is tongue in cheek humor but really, it hits at several issues in doing so...

He wrote asking the Governor to make "race cars" illegal, he suggested any car that had 2 "race car" characteristics would qualify that car as such (stick shift, spoiler, speedometer that went over the speed limit, etc). These types of cars are responsible for reckless driving deaths. Since we can't seem to control the drivers behavior through strict laws and fines then we must save lives by doing away with such vehicles. Quite a funny story and well written, I have to try and find it for you.

Doctor Fate wrote:

geojanes wrote:What's more likely: you have a gun in your home and you use it against an intruder successfully. Or you have a gun in your house for self-defense (at the ready/loaded) and someone is hurt with that gun in a way you never intended?

I would argue that the latter scenario is far, far more likely.

Depends. Is the gunowner's IQ above or below 85?

And who lives with the gun owner and their ages, no? Oh yeah. Kids. Damn.

I actually do own two guns. I haven't seen them in 20 years or so, as they've been stashed away out of state, but I'd never keep guns in a house where there are kids, especially not guns for protection, where you keep them ready to be used, because what's more likely: someone breaking into your place while you're home, or kids being kids?

GMTom wrote:I have heard a few reports from the gun nuts who point this out. I have no idea if it is correct, It is also old info (10 years old) so it may have gotten better (or worse?) since then, I am a bit gun shy on posting it (pun intended) but here we go.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... rs-35.html

the link is from the UK back in January 2003
They tell of how handgun crime has been soaring every year since handguns were made illegal.
It did seem to start to improve but it took 5 years of massive rise in gun crimes to start to see any decline. Things could only be worse here where we have even more hand guns to start with coupled with a gun culture that simply never existed across the pond. This is a big fear for many Americans!

I understand that. However, the article itself points out why the shock 35% is not really what happened - the means used to count crimes in the UK changed in that year, so comparing the two years on raw figures is like comparing apples and oranges.

From the article itself:

Unadjusted figures showed overall recorded crime in the 12 months to last September rose 9.3%, but the Home Office stressed that new procedures had skewed the figures.

With new recording procedures taken into account the actual overall rise was just 2%, the Home Office said.

Those changes also affected how gun crimes were counted.

Also, 'gun crime' includes crimes breaching the new gun legislation, such as owning an illegal weapon, inadequate storage etc. You would expect if the law has been significantly tightened, and also if enforcement by police and civil authorities was improved (which was another issue that came out of Dunblane - the guy should have been flagged up as a risk already), that more crimes would be detected for a while.

Anyway, as you provided something slightly... biased... and ten years old, here are more recent England & Wales crime stats for you.

First of all, the ten years from 2001/2 to 2011/12, with several graphs for your edification (notice the general trends?): Guardian Data Blog - Crime in England & Wales

Secondly, the latest crime figures as published only today has a section on gun crimes. Here's a link to the excel spreadsheet and you'll find it in Figure 6 - Trends in recorded crimes involving firearms other than air weapons, 2002/03 to 2011/12

The figures show a shallow increase until around 2005/6 and then a steep decline, to about half that now.

So, the current trend in the UK on gun crime (England and Wales is the vast majority of the UK) is that it is falling.

Tom, the rise in gun crime during that brief period is almost certainly unrelated to the handgun ban. Very few people owned handguns before the ban anyway so it's not like there was much if any deterrent effect. Also, even those handguns which were legal at the time were subject to much more stringent licensing requirements, and the majority of owners kept them securely locked away and used them for recreational shooting. Certainly you never saw ordinary citizens carrying them around on their person. What happened at the turn of the century was that in certain major cities there was a rise in gang activity, particularly involving gangs from Jamaica, but there were others, and they brought with them an incipient gun culture. At the time I was living in one of the worst parts of the country for gun crime and I remember it well (not that I ever actually saw anybody carrying a gun, it was still incredibly rare even back then). Since then the police have done a good job of cracking down on it and the prevalence of gun crime has declined, but in any case it should be noted that the numbers involved were very low. A 35% rise seems like a lot but it was only an extra 2000 crimes, most of which wouldn't have even involved a weapon being fired.

It's understandable that people with no knowledge of the circumstances might read more into it than it deserves, but I can assure you this was not a product of the ban.

The idea that guns are useful in defence of house and home makes sense... Until one actually looks at what happens in practice.

Study after study has been conducted on the health risks associated with guns in the home. One of the latest was a meta-review published in 2011 by David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. He examined all the scientific literature to date on the health risks and benefits of gun ownership
The main reason people give for having a handgun in the home is protection, typically against stranger violence,” he writes. “However, it is important to recognize that the home is a relatively safe place, especially from strangers. For example, fewer than 30% of burglaries in the United States (2003-2007) occur when someone is at home. In the 7% of burglaries when violence does occur, the burglar is more likely to be an intimate (current or former) and also more likely to be a relative or known acquaintance than a stranger. Although people typically spend most of their time at home, only 5% of all the crimes of violence perpetrated by strangers occur at home.”
In fact, adds Hemenway, research shows that most self-defense use of guns is not socially desirable. He describes one study in which “criminal court judges from across the United States read the 35 descriptions of the reported self-defense firearm uses from 2 national surveys and found that, even if description of the event was accurate, in most of the cases, the self-defense gun use was probably illegal. Many were arguments that escalated into gun use.”

AS the link below describes... There are increased risk of accidents and suicides in homes with guns. And a very elevated risk of homicide occuring in a home with a gun. If one looks at the actual risk/benefit of gun ownership objectivly .... ownership is a loser.

http://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/ ... g-gun-home

bbauska wrote:Doc, that isn't fair. Accidents happen to smart people, too. They occur more frequently to the ignorant, but brains do not inoculate people against misfortune.

Presuming you're serious, please keep Geojanes' original note in mind:

What's more likely: you have a gun in your home and you use it against an intruder successfully. Or you have a gun in your house for self-defense (at the ready/loaded) and someone is hurt with that gun in a way you never intended?

I don't know too many people who have a brain and leave unsecured, loaded weapons about.

"Oops! Hey Junior! Daddy should not have left his .45 loaded on the table, please put it down . . . please put it . . ."

Mercy.

Sassenach wrote:

Doesn't this lead to a scenario where defending yourself in your home against an intruder is nearly impossible? Do you really want to have to defend yourself with a thirty-aught-six?

How often does this actually happen though ? Even in this country, where gun ownership is very low and handguns are vanishingly rare, most breakins occur when the occupant is not at home and violent home invasions by would-be rapists and the like are incredibly uncommon. I see no reason to suppose that things would be any different in the US. Most countries in the world have some form of gun control legislation but they're not plagued by home invasions.

This is such an odd argument. How often does it have to happen to justify handguns?

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.1188229

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.1234400

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/05/26/ye ... e-invader/

Here, have a google search:

https://www.google.com/search?q=chicago ... 60&bih=853

geojanes wrote:I actually do own two guns. I haven't seen them in 20 years or so, as they've been stashed away out of state, but I'd never keep guns in a house where there are kids, especially not guns for protection, where you keep them ready to be used, because what's more likely: someone breaking into your place while you're home, or kids being kids?

Well, as someone whose kids survived 21 years of having a gun in the home . . . a safe? It's either on me or . . . in a thumb-print reading safe?