I read a quote on Casey Bisson’s blog of a quote from Andy Skelton’s blog. It went like this: “Gun control is like trying to reduce drunk driving by making it tougher for sober people to own cars.”
A more proper analog would be that gun control is like trying to make it harder for drunk people to drive cars. Or even better, gun control is like trying to make sure people can drive safely before giving them a driver’s license. Of course that doesn’t sound so crazy so it is a lot harder to make gun control seem like a bad thing.
Personally, I think that gun ownership is stupid. Guns don’t stop crime and all it takes is looking at other countries with strict gun laws to see what the result is. It isn’t defenseless families killed by maniacs, but a safer country to live in with less violent crime. If people insist on owning guns then that is their choice, but as a country everyone in the US should take a stand and say certain people should never be allowed to buy guns: over the internet, if they have any history (ever) of mental sickness, or if they have ever been arrested. These three rules alone would likely decrease violent crime. What I find most interesting about the analogy is that it hits on something I believe people should consider, and that is that gun ownership should be a privilege just like a driver’s license is.
2 Comments
If you check statistics, you would find that most (not all) firearms used in violent crimes are not bought and paid for, but rather gotten from a friend or family member or stolen. You would also find that more crimes are deterred in the United States because law abiding citizens are armed.
I believe we can also see that there are more violent crimes in countries without strict gun control laws. For example look at the EU vs the US from 1999 to 2001. In the US we had 5.56 homicides per 100,000 people while the EU had 1.59. This is according to this study. Japan, also a strict gun control country, had 1.05 homicides per 100,000 incidentally.
The fact is that if there are less guns total then there are less guns to be stole or given to a family members. And less guns to be shot with.
Also, I noticed that you cite statistics, but neglected to point to any. Where are you getting this information from?
Want to guess which countries did we beat by the way? South Africa, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. So we can posit one of two things, either Americans are by nature more murderous than most other people or our gun control laws are not working to protect us.