The Big Gun Control Rant

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NOG, often intimate homicide is left off criminal data because it tends to skew statistical interpretation of the results (domestic violence does not always follow the same trends as other violence). It is also possible intimate homicides are included in martaug's data -- in which case, I stand corrected.

 

Joaquin, one thing we all need to keep in mind is that North American societies are quite different than Western European societies. While immigration is increasing worldwide, most European countries are still relatively homogeneous in terms of their population stats. Canada and the US in particular are vast countries with many different cultural groups mashed together with few clear majorities. Plus, we are young countries without the vast weight of history that pervades many European nations.

We don't have a culture that self-corrects -- we threw out mores and other subtle societal sanctions quite a while ago. They don't apply here, more's the pity.

But when it comes to serious crime, what often seems to happen is that the criminal gets a slap on the wrist and then can take off to someplace 1000 km away and act as though it never happened. That's not as likely in a smaller Nordic country.

In any event, we are having a debate right now about the entire "revolving door" concept where violent or serious repeat offenders are picked up and released on bail on a regular basis. This "catch and release" program is annoying the cops and annoying the law abiding citizens, and the precious resources we have are sucked by a few severe deviants. If we actually DEALT with them, maybe even using a gentler European model of rehabilitation, things might improve, but as it is we are so busy worrying about the rights of the criminals that we take NO action, be it brutal or rehabilitative. That gets my goat.

ESPECIALLY when it comes to gun crime. I don't know what would happen to a teen in Sweden who brought a gun to his high school, but I'm pretty sure the authorities would do something that would be effective. Here we wring our hands for a few weeks, then a slick lawyer twists it around so that it's everyone's fault but the actual perpetrator. Then they seek to confiscate the guns of some guy who lives 100 miles away who doesn't even know the kid and never did anything wrong to boot. It's mind boggling, truly it is.

 

Now, I wouldn't exactly say that our population stats are homogeneous. At least not in the Netherlands. If you go to either of our two biggest cities - Amsterdam and Rotterdam - you'll find that being an indigenous Dutch will actually put you in a minority, and if you're looking for the directions you'd better bring along a turkish or moroccan translator.

I know that there are certain parts were this is also the case in the US, but this is just to point out that the homogenity that you seem to think prevalent here isn't quite that present in reality.

I don't know about that. Guns aren't so much part of normal life here, so he'd probably get roasted by school and parents, and might actually listen to it as well, but I wouldn't count on the courts to be overly effective.

As an example of the effectiveness of our courts, a couple of years back, some guy got beaten to death while on a night out in town (it happens more often, but the particulars of this case stuck with me). A group of three people was known to have done it, but in the end they couldn't prove who had given the victim the kick to the head that actually killed them, and the threesome got off with some community duty. Moral of the story: When you kill someone, make sure you do it in a group and in a way that makes it uncertain which of you has dealt the final blow and you'll get off very easy.

On the subject of gun control: Take away the guns and gun related incidents will go down. The only shootings we get in the Netherlands generally stem from organised crime and are blissfully few. I do think, however, that in a country where guns have been legal for the large majority of the people to own, prohibiting guns, or at least making it much more difficult to get one, would do little to nothing in the first years or even decades to reduce gun related incidents. It will take quite a while for the memory that everyone should be able to own a gun to pass from general memory, and I'd think that illegal arms dealing would become quite normal in such cases.

 

Here in the states henkie, IFAIK,all 3 of those guys would have been charged with murder, since they were accomplices of the overt act (the assault & murder), they are all guilty. I'm sure one of the lawyers here can clarify.

Joacqin, all i can use are stats from the US however from 1960-1980 per capita imprisonment fell from 738 to 227. In the same time period violent crime rates tripled.

T2bruno, i was gonna include suicide rates but nationmaster.com has them broken down into 5 age catagories & i wasn't sure that just adding them up was going to give an accurate number
As far as the murder rate they have 3 tables, firearm, non-firearm & total

I know among the 15-24 range the top 5 are New Zealand, Finland, Switzerland, Canada & Austria http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_sui_rat_in_age_15_24-suicide-rates-ages-15-24

25-34 range is Finland, New Zealand, France, Austria & Belguim
35-44, 45-54, 55-64 finland is #1 & #7 in 65-74
Lotta depressed people in finland

 

Interesting thread. I agree that rehabilitation works better than harsh punishment. It's not a question of whether they deserve a second chance, but what will give the best results. I often work as a doorman in buildings where some of these criminals live under supervision. They can be disfunctionally antisocial, and I often wish they'd just choke on the food I have to bring them. But an atmosphere of "Ooh, do get better, crazy person." will work better than "Haha, we're punishing you!". In the end, their willingness to change is the strongest rehabilitating factor. Harsh punishment doesn't appeal to that, it just incites those on parole to get some payback before the trial. It seems we all agree that at least some kind of action must be taken, because inaction is the worst of all. henkie's example makes me think that maybe lawyers are more harmful than firearms?

 

I have 2 guns, as you can see from my pics here on SP, and I plan on getting more. They are legal, and you'll have to pry them from my cold dead hands if you try to force anti-guns laws on me!

One final note, if you take away the guns...all the guns...kinfe crimes will skyrocket.

 

Well, I'm not a lawyer, but at the very least they are all going to be given "accessory to murder" charges as they are all clearly complicit in the act. I don't know they could actually be charged with murder, but they're all getting locked away for a long time.

Actually, since they'd all be charged the same, the two that didn't do it likely would rat out the third person in a deal to get their own setences reduced.

 

HAHAHAHA! No argument from me on that one! Lawyers of the dishonest / snake-belly variety ruin more lives than guns ever will.

I'll caveat this -- none of the lawyers here on SP are snake-bellies

 

Outside of the country (for pest control) and law enforcement, I don't see a need for people in Australia to own anything larger than a basic handgun. Frankly, I don't even see why most people would want or need even that. That's coming from a guy who works in law enforcement and lives in a city that had an 'underworld war' with criminals regularly killing each other in public places for half of the last decade. I'm pretty happy with the state of gun control in Australia - if I felt I needed a gun for me or my family to be safe, I don't think I ever would feel safe even if I did have one.

Putting it bluntly, guns scare me. They aren't part of most households in Australia (except in the country, where rifles are common for fairly obvious reasons) and there's no sense of firearms ownership as an entitlement. The idea that people would actually want to own guns outside of shooting pests/dangerous animals or law enforcement scares me, and I don't personally know any police who like the idea of having to draw their weapon. We've had one shooting at a university in Victoria, where the shooter was subdued by unarmed students (which was pretty damn gutsy, if you ask me). After the Port Arthur shootings, there was a national buyback of semi-automatic weapons, and even the states that were opposed to gun control supported law reform to limit what firearms could legally be privately owned.

As for suicide and familial killings, I'm not familiar with the statistics (and am too lazy to look some Australian stats up right now - there are some here). However, it's hard to argue that firearms don't facilitate suicides and familial killings (especially for male perpetrators) where the intention already exists, but other means may not be available.

Amen to that, joacqin. If someone is never given another chance, what are the odds that they'll spontaneously reform and become model citizens?

Reminds me of a Flight of the Conchords song called 'The Humans Are Dead'... "The future is very different to the present. For example, there are no more elephants. Also, there is no more cruelty to elephants. The world is a much better place!"

 

Once they've committed a cold-blooded murder, rape, or assault that leaves another citizen a vegetable, I say that they have forfeited their right to that second chance.

In any event, taking away the guns of people who DIDN'T commit a crime is hardly going to make the fellow who ACTUALLY committed the crime spontaneously reform either, now is it?

 

True enough. That's what life sentences are for - the ones who have no remorse and no conception of what they have actually done. My point was that the vengeful impulse feels good, and fulfils a social and psychological desire, but is not likely to do anything to prevent it from happening again. Unless you're carrying a firearm at all times, though, the protective argument doesn't carry as well - and I doubt that anyone who feels a need to carry a firearm at all times is ever likely to feel completely safe.

Of course, the number of people who commit cold-blooded crimes of that nature against total strangers is quite low. Statistically, you're much more likely to know the person who does one of these things to you, and it's much more likely to be in hot blood than cold.

However, I am getting - this thread is about gun control, not crime control or sentencing policy...

As for the last point - if you don't have a high rate of gun ownership in the first place, you don't have the same politics to deal with. People never want to surrender something once they have it, unless they're scared of something even worse happening if they don't. Even if I accept the self-defence argument, I just don't see why anyone would need to own more than one working handgun.

 

Yep thats why Australia is #1 per capita in burglaries & car thefts(the robbers don't have to wory about armed citizens stopping their criminal activity)

And what with all of these horrible guns in the US we still have a higher perception of safety from burglary: US(#4) Australia(#11) & walking in the dark: US(#3) Australia(#14)

Also Australia is #1 in the percentage of crime victims(30.1% of the population will be victimised) wheras the US is at #15(21.1%)

Property crimes? Australia #2(again, the criminal has less chance of being shoot by an armed citizen) US #7

As for suicide rates:
Age 15-24: Aus #6 US #7
Age 25-34: Aus #7 US #10
Age 35-44: Aus #10 US #12
Age 45-54: Aus #11 US #13
Age 55-64: Aus #12 US #13
Doesn't seem to bear out your idea that less guns = less suicides. In fact their was a study done in canada that showed that when handguns weren't available most suicidal men jumped to their deaths to compensate.

Please feel free to verify my stats at nationmaster.com

PS Oh also in 2001(latest figures i can find) 57% of all murders were committed by strangers & only 14% by family members. So the old liberal line of "you are more likely to be killed by a family member" is bogus. It was true in the '60s but not now.

As for owning more than 1 handgun, each has a different use. My .22's & .38's are great little plinkers. The 9mm's, .40's, 10mm's & .45's are good carry guns. The .357, .41, .44 mags & .500S&W are great to blow stuff up with The .38-40,.44-40, .45schofield, .45LC, .45-70 &. 50-70 are all for cowboy action shoots.

Same with the shotguns, the O/U are strictly bird guns, the pump's are good utility guns for all-around usefullness.
The bolt action rifled barrel slugguns are for deer & other medium size game.
The semi-auto's are primarily defensive arms.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1541699/Britain-tops-European-crime-league.html

Here's another source of statistics. You had Finland third in a list I just saw there but which I suppose you deleted. In any case this survey seems to show that Finland would have one of the lowest crime rates in Europe. Contradicting a bit with the fact that Finland would have the third most crime per capita. (Which I believe I just saw on the list)

EDIT: Sorry I posted this in the wrong thread. Your statistics were obviously in the other thread. I'll repost this there but I'll also leave it here for possible future references.

 

But what if the judges in your country are a bunch of bleeding hearts that won't impose such a sentence? I remember from another thread, Finland won't impose a sentence longer than 12 years! What good is that? And what's wrong with executing someone you never want to return to society again?

Of course, just give the family of the victim a gun and you probably won't have to worry about that...

 

@ martaug,

Good points on different uses for different firearms - I hadn't really been thinking about that, but clearly you use different weapons for different things. My comment applied to my circumstances (i.e. city dweller) more than anything.

I find it intriguing that you elected to leave out homicide statistics from the same site. It's reasonably more complex than just attributing property crime to gun ownership (or non-ownership) - I don't think you can imply a causal relationship without data or a situation that explicitly incorporates firearms. So homicides involving firearms andoverall homicide statistics may be a better measure of the relevance of firearms ownership to violence.

Heck, you don't need a weapon to commit burglary - you only need to be able to get into someone's house with the intention of doing something illegal, and it's easier if you do that when they're not home. I wouldn't mind seeing the aggravated burglary stats... but then, since burglaries generally have a low solving rate anyway (unless someone is home at the time), it's difficult to accurately gauge what that rate actually is.

There's the following little caveat at the bottom of several stats pages (my emphasis):

And this disclaimer, in relation to your "Australia is #1 in the percentage of crime victims" claim:

Hmmmm... nothing in there about firearms. A strong bias towards crimes against property (which are much more common but often don't place the victim anywhere near the scene of an event). Nothing about identifying or controlling for multiple victimisation. Nothing else about methodology, either. Nothing in there about gradations in assaults or threats. "Theft" is defined as only relating to personal property. Vandalism is only about your car getting damaged. I can't claim that the methodological flaws prove me correct and you wrong - but to take such data and claim that it shows firearm ownership = lower crime is misleading at best.

Perception =/= reality. Again, unless you are carrying a weapon at all times, it's impossible to infer that the 'walking in the dark' response is attributable to gun ownership. Feeling 'safe from burglary' really only means that you think no-one will break into your home (assuming the respondent doesn't assume that the question has 'when you're at home' tacked onto it). The only way to get such subjective data is by direct questioning, which raises a host of other issues including sample size, demographics and the areas in which surveys were conducted. Inferring that gun ownership = feeling safer, based on these figures, is premature without additional data.

I never said less guns = less suicides. I said "it's hard to argue that firearms don't facilitate suicides and familial killings (especially for male perpetrators) where the intention already exists, but other means may not be available". It's not a question of guns = suicides; it's a question of whether having guns around will make it easier to commit suicide. I managed to locate some data on lethality and trends in suicide methods. When read together, one can only infer from these articles that suicide is a problem not strongly related to access to firearms (indeed, more people try to poison themselves). However, the first article concludes that access to firearms increases the likelihood of 'successful' suicide.

Suicide is a complex issue, and I have more experience with it than I would like. As is the case with most things, if someone really wants to do something, you will generally not be able to stop them without completely controlling their actions. I'd like to see that Canadian study you referred to - IMO, "most suicidal men" is a term with a lot of scope.

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@ Gnarff,

Maybe I have a different view of things, but IMO killing someone as an act of vengeance is still murder - and where it is still accepted as a defence, provocation only reduces that to manslaughter. The death penalty is the ultimate in cold-blooded killing. How is it any different from you pulling the trigger if the state does it for you? How would that make you any different or any better than the person you just executed? To me, those are questions worth asking - I can accept that not everyone will view it the same way.

Again, though... - gun policy, not justice policy.

 

But the question is why should a cold blooded criminal (like the one in teh example) have more rights than their law abiding victims? AS long as that injustice is allowed to flourish, you will never see an end to the gun control debate.

 

Soryy for the delay in answering Nonsequitur, had to go out of town yesterday(Freakin' RL work on the weekends!! Bah!)

I have used some of their homicide rates but not all of them.
In the US we can show a correlation between gun ownership & less crime but that doesn't hold for every country.
Mexico has a low(legal) availability of firearms & a high crime rate yet switzerland has a high gun ownership rate & a low crime rate while japan has both low ownership & a low crime rate(well their suicide rate is fairly high but otherwise)
Actually, the rate of home invasions in britian is up overall about 65% since the virtual ban on handguns in that country
The total crime rate is for all crimes in those 11 categories, it doesn't matter whether they were commited with a firearm or strongarm(threat of violence).
I wasn't trying to prove that more guns would = less crime in australia i was just demonstrating that, by their own stats, less guns did NOT = less crimes. There is a difference, i do apologise if i wasn't clear enough on that point.

If i'm not mistaken the canadian study is here: http://www.cfc-cafc.gc.ca/pol-leg/res-eval/publications/1990-95/suici_rpt_e.asp but is a large document

We hold opposite views on the death penalty, i would rather not pay to keep myrderers alive. We need to streamline the system & send them to their just deserts within 3 years after they are sentenced, no more of this 20 years on death row crud.

 

These are pretty good reports:
http://www.garymauser.net/pdf/Kates-Mauser.pdf
Examines the relationship between firearms & murder/suicide

As far as registries go, a classic example is canada's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_gun_registry

Initially was supposed to cost $119 million of which taxpayers were only supposed to supply $2 million & licensing fees would make up the rest. Well, it has now cost over $3 Billion with only $140 million in fee's brought in.
So the taxpayers got hosed for over 2.75 Billion dollars.

As for it effectiveness

from the wiki article

Please note that the murder rate in the US is approximately what it was in 1910 even though the # of handguns has increase by at least 10-fold.
Please note that in that same time-frame the population onlly increased by a factor of 3.5(91 million to 296 million)
Note that in 1970 the murder rate was 8.4/100,000 pop. with 150 handguns/1,000 pop., now it is 4.2/100,000 pop. with 375 handguns/1,000 pop.
Hmmm, the murder rate is half of what it was while the number of handguns is 2.5 times greater than they were. (all figures from the fbi uniform crime reports,cdc wisqars site)

So . . . just were is this correletion that more guns means more dead people?

 

Why do you own the guns by the way? Are you a collector, or you find it funny to shoot with them (i.e. they are like toys of the child)?

I think the statement that the lack of guns may increase knife crimes doesn't really support the argument against gun restrictions, because the efficiency and effectiveness of knifes cannot be compared to firearms, guns. So this is rather an advantage than a drawback, or do you think knifes are (effectively) more dangerous than guns? If you mean that the crimes now commited with a gun will be commited with a knife instead, it's not such simple actually, for the above reason, i.e. it's harder to commit a (possibly deadly) crime with a knife than with a gun. (Of course, all this doesn't mean I support the complete banning of guns.)