Reply to post: not allowed access to firearms

not allowed access to firearms

Be glad - it's also why we dont have high levels of gun crime, lots of children shooting each other and daily mass murders...

BS! Anti-gun laws here in the US are successful in depressing levels of gun ownership but not in lowering relative incidence of their use in crime (or violent crime, for that matter). For example, Washington, DC has both some of the toughest gun laws and highest rates of violent crime. Again, there does not seem to be a correlation between gun ownership levels and gun crime levels in the US. There also does not seem to be much correlation between relative levels of prosperity and violent crime. About the only simple correlation I could find among those typically cited by people "debating" this issue is between violent crime (with or without guns involved) and population density, but it is a weak relationship at best.^*

If it is not a factor that fits someone's political agenda, it tends not to be considered in public forums. What actually seems to be going on is something more complex than a simple good/bad dichotomy. It probably has more to do with the cultures within the various jurisdictions. Rather than trying to address the issue as a matter of access because doing so demonstrably doesn't work (e.g. drugs, guns, anything having to do with a teenager), I would think that identifying and addressing the root causes of violent crime might be a little more to the point. So, if we were to borrow something from the UK, perhaps it ought to be having low-level offenders do community service in preference to incarceration.

Back to you, AC, the reason you don't have "high levels of gun crime, lots of children shooting each other and daily mass murders" is most likely not that you aren't allowed access to firearms. It is that you come from a different set of values, attitudes and circumstances.

* Sources: A quick search through Wikipedia and whatever government stats sites that Google searches returned. Look it up yourself - it might prove educational.