Firearms

[Camus The Dark Knight]

If you think it would be possible for Anders Breivik to murder, what was it, 60+ people with a hammer or a steak knife, you are an idiot. Moreover, steak knives and hammers have important functions such as hammering nails and cutting steaks. I cannot think of any function for an assault rifle other than killing people. While I acknowledge the argument that some people view firearms as having intrinsic beauty and want to collect them, there are many beautiful things that can't be used to kill people. Try stamps.

My point wasn't that Anders Breivik couldn't of killed 60+ people without a gun, my point is that *anything* could be used to kill someone and that it's stupid to ban something just because it was *used* to kill people. Perhaps this might better make my point. An airplane is used by countless people every day, but some air planes were once used to kill roughly 3000 people. The fact he killed X number of people is irrelevant as that was not my point.

Then why is crime so high in America, which has some of the most liberal gun laws in the world? If guns reduce gun crime, you would expect America to have a lot less gun crime.

I am *not* accusing you of lying, but I would like to at least know what statistics you are using, if you are going by number alone, then of course the US will have more crime then most other countries, because the US is the 3rd most populated country on earth. Or are you using a per-capita statistic? Per-capita for example, Russia beats the US in homicides by roughly five times, among other countries that are more or less.

America in particular has a history of bloody mass shootings such as Columbine, and more recently, the James Holmes killings.And I've said before that simply having a federal law against guns would probably be ineffective in America because it's saturated with firearms. That being said, Americans should acknowledge that one of the reasons they have high rates of violent gun crime is because of the prevalence of legal firearms. In theory, the mere legality of firearms isn't really a problem: it's that so many Americans own one, that they're so cheap and easy to purchase, and that even extremely high-powered firearms are available to the public. If it were a niche item, with only farmers and hunters owning single or double gauge shotguns and maybe a handful of collectors with other weapons, there would be no issue, but as it is, any nutjob can go into a store in America and load up on assault rifles, automatic shotguns, semi-automatic handguns, and ammunition to kill a thousand people. As James Holmes did. You should count yourselves lucky that he didn't kill more people, since he clearly had the means and the motive. I'd also like to point out that despite these liberal gun laws that you champion, it wasn't some brave armed civilian that disarmed James Holmes but the police.

One could argue that none of the civilians had guns to stop him (As I know at least one stated). Regardless I'm not arguing anymore as trying to change core belief of someone is futile. Also, after looking through roughly 30 maps and graphs about gun law strictness, and homicide per-capita by firearms, I failed to see how strict gun laws have helped states any (California has the strictest yet one of the highest death rates per-capita), another interesting (But unsurprising) one is Mexican boarder states (Another debate for another time) have a lot of death as well, I'm not sure if it was US citizens killing US citizens or if it was just a death rate in total (Citizen or not), so I can't really speak for there. Out of states that had strict gun laws that also had low firearm homicide rate, these were only two that showed any significant amount of change, New York and Illinois. Take that as you will.

Anyway, any more debating is futile as we are both obviously set on what we believe and are not inclined to change our minds anytime soon. It makes about as much sense as firing blanks at each other (harhar). Until next topic.

[Esau of Isaac]

I don't know: guns aren't always wielded with the intent to kill. Low caliber handguns are unlikely to kill someone in one shot. However, they can still be more deadly than a knife if wielded with the intent to kill. How could you distinguish between crimes in which the criminal had intent to kill and crimes in which they did not?

Is that really relevant when looking at total fatalities from both in application in crime?

Though I suppose you could sift through them by (somewhat inaccurately) separating based on evidence after the fact.

In the case of Breivik, acquiring the weapons was more inconvenient than making the bomb because he had to travel to Czechslovakia and smuggle guns through Norwegian customs.

Right, but I am more referring to a situation where we assume that getting a gun in his case is functionally beyond his reach.

So a controlled experiment comparing firearms to alternatives? Impossible.

No, of course not. I am not asking for a performed experiment but a gathering of data from both knife and gun crime.

And how could such data be acquired?

Finding out which tools are used in the construction of basic parts of a rifle (stock, barrel, bolt, etc.), the average costs of them, the overall time it would take to train another to operate them proficiently, and the average time it takes to piece one together.

I don't of course expect these to all be hardline data. I more mean some data that gives a good general idea of what each of these entails.