tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post5405313921709440568..comments2024-03-14T11:50:14.761-04:00Comments on DarwinCatholic: Assault Weapons Part 2: Assault Rifles vs. "Assault Weapons"Darwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-57557130959744124682015-10-30T02:53:35.091-04:002015-10-30T02:53:35.091-04:00Thanks for the post. US has a gun culture for deca...Thanks for the post. US has a gun culture for decades, people has the craze to have a gun. It is simple out there to get a gun, simply join a <a href="http://www.bostonfirearms.com" rel="nofollow">Firearms safety training classes</a> and get the license then you are eligible to get the gun of your choice for which you had been trained or licensed. Guns are easily available and at a lower price then any other Asian nation. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12455779831351440576noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-29211191659100890002013-01-10T05:59:58.397-05:002013-01-10T05:59:58.397-05:00If you really want to kill or hurt someone, you...If you really want to kill or hurt someone, you're going to do it whether you have a gun or not. A gun does make it easier to do so with less risk to yourself, I suppose. <br /><br />Interesting article - I wonder how the police-recorded crimes line up with actual crimes. With regards to the burglary thing here, almost everyone has homeowners insurance, nobody has alarms, and a lot of people who live in apartments have a "smack lock" (direct translation there) which is a spring-loaded lock that locks automatically when you shut the door - and nothing else. We also have a bolt lock, for example. But the "smack locks" are not exactly going to keep someone out who means it. (Why insurance companies don't insist that people get bolt locks, too, I don't know.) <br /><br />And then of course there's the bicycles. I've been here 10 years and I'm on my 8th bicycle. <br /><br />Looking forward to the next post!Rebekkahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13536021238594385545noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-54883683818834761252013-01-08T09:55:14.279-05:002013-01-08T09:55:14.279-05:00Rebekka,
I would say that's a fairly tough qu...Rebekka,<br /><br />I would say that's a fairly tough question, since in general madmen and criminals are harder to control than ordinary law abiding members of society. I'll dive into the details of gun control a bit in the next post, but I think the really short version is: Most "moderate" approaches to gun control have virtually no impact. Countries that have succeeded in almost totally eliminating guns do have lower murder rates than the US, and I think it's pretty clear that if the US could make all its guns magically disappear, the number of murders would go down significantly. However, given that there are already 300 million legally owned guns in the US, making them go away isn't a very realistic possibility. <br /><br />Also, one has to weigh the different types of cost. The US notoriously has a murder rate higher than most other developed nations (5 annual murders per 100,000 residents in the US while England and Wales have a murder rate of only 1.1 and Denmark of 0.9) however some other kinds of violent crime are much higher in other countries. For instance, England and Wales report 730 annual cases of police recorded assault per 100,000 in population while the US has 262. (Scotland tops the charts with 1487 followed, surprisingly, by Sweden at 927.) These kind of stats tend to lead to very different conclusions from different people: Some point out that not having guns around results in assaults being less likely to result in death, others suggest that the widespread presence of guns in the hands of law abiding citizens makes assault less likely.<br /><br />Here's the report I'm looking at listing different types of crime rates by country:<br /><br />http://www.civitas.org.uk/crime/crime_stats_oecdjan2012.pdf <br /><br />(Denmark appears to be a very, very low crime place in every respect except burglary, where for some reason it tops the charts.)<br /><br />I would not tend to support any additional bans on types of guns, increased background checks, etc. However, I think it would probably help a lot with everyday crime (rampages and massacres are so rare and so individual it's arguably a lot harder to control those) if how crime is punished in the US was changed to focus primarily on violence and weapons. Right now a lot of people are serving long sentences for drug related crimes. I'm not sure that locking up junkies for long periods is necessarily very helpful to society. However, I think it probably is helpful to punish violent crimes much more heavily than non-violent crimes, and perhaps also to slap additional penalties on criminals who are found to possess a weapon when arrested for some other crime. (Thus, a burglar carrying a gun while burgling should perhaps be punished much more severely than an unarmed one, even if the gun is not used in the burglary.) I think that kind of approach might have some real effect on violence while not taking away means of self defense and recreation from law abiding citizens.Darwinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-81535917715896135832013-01-08T07:40:39.784-05:002013-01-08T07:40:39.784-05:00Nice posts - I know so, so little about this area....Nice posts - I know so, so little about this area. <br /><br />I now live in a place where I don't even know the level of gun control, but where handguns and assault thingies are mostly in the hands of the police and military and I don't know anybody at all who has a gun here. Obviously this doesn't stop blazing lunatics from going on a rampage, as we saw in Norway a little while back. But just the report of shots fired somewhere they're not supposed to be (such as a street) is news in Denmark. (Let alone someone actually getting hit.) <br /><br />I get that you are against blanket gun control, but I'll jump out on a ledge here and assume that you are against idiots using guns to do bad things. Since you actually know something about guns and are a reflecting person, what do you think would be some good, feasible ways to prevent rampages and massacres?Rebekkahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13536021238594385545noreply@blogger.com