victor809 wrote:because you're a masochist... either way I appreciate your thought out response. It's more interesting than what I usually see here.
What percentage of gun related homicide do you think is prevented by armed law abiding gun owners? Remember, this number wouldn't "disappear" it would only be reduced by the amount the regulation reduced gun ownership.
the US produces approximately 3.5MM guns per year for sale within the US. Assuming the number of guns remains somewhat constant, there is a reduction of approximately 1% of the firearms annually (I don't know where they go)... If all gun sales were to magically stop, the number of guns in circulation will decrease by that amount annually (incidentally, that percentage will reduce as the number of guns in circulation goes down... ) so no I don't think that all guns will magically disappear. The model simply has a point where there are no guns... this is not the same as saying that this will be achieved.
This is a good point. Regulations will have a bigger impact on local production (3.5MM annually) and illegally obtained local guns, and a lower impact on illegally imported guns. Unfortunately, I cannot find any data on number of illegally imported guns into the US. All searches pull up illegally exported guns from the US to Mexico and Canada. I can't tell you what sort of numbers we are dealing with there, but I will agree that if US regulations removed all local production of guns, some percentage could be imported illegally.
I think you're over-estimating the ambition of a criminal. I don't have the numbers, but it seems to me that most armed crime isn't just betting on the victim being unarmed. When you burgle a home you don't just plan on the victim being unarmed, you plan on them being away, or remaining asleep. The goal isn't an armed conflict. Similarly, if you mug a victim you don't wait until they prove to be armed before pointing your gun at them. The only crime I can think of that the criminal knowingly takes a risk of the victims being armed is the robbery of businesses with multiple victims/witnesses on the presence (ie convenience stores/restaurants)....
The point isn't to make a realistic timeline. the point is to show the known endpoint. We know that if there are zero guns in the US, there will be zero gun homicides... (we simply have to accept this as fact... you cannot have guns homicide without guns.) We also know that at the current number of guns (approximately 300MM) we have 11K gun homicides annually. We know that a line has to go between those two points on a graph, covering the entire spectrum of guns available. The line can be linear, it can be a power function, exponential... it can have a local maxima, which I believe you are suggesting... but the line has to travel through the two known points.
That only would work as a local maxima. I would posit that the increased crime you believe you would see from the reduced number of armed citizens would never exceed the reduced number of homicides from reduced guns... especially when you consider there are the homicides committed by what are currently legally obtained guns....
You seem to be unwilling to read what I write... I have zero interest in leaving "honest, law abiding citizens" defenseless. This is not a joke. Let them arm themselves with whatever they can get under the sun. That doesn't absolve us from making an honest assessment of the numbers.
Don't assume I'm a nice guy. But I am a lot of fun. Unless you're homeless.
yes, i must be a masochist...
i appreciate your well thought out response and certainly the tone with which you delivered it. however, other than the reality that zero guns = zero gun homicides (assuming you can actually eliminate all guns, all importation both legal and illegal as well as all private manufacture to achieve "zero guns"), i feel that your assertion, although as logical as any other that can be presented, requires the elimination of multiple variables or the assumption that they will remain constant. case in point is your statement above about the number of guns produced annually and that if it is stopped the number will decrease. no, it wont. while it will not increase, barring some other outside event, it will stay the same. the same criminals can use their existing guns to continue to murder at will and hand them down to there murderous children and grandchildren who, hypothetically of course, may be emblazoned by the ease at which they can kill the unarmed and take their stuff and increase the frequency with which they do so.
case in point is mexico. not only did they make it harder for law abiding citizens to get guns but they actually, in essence, eliminated them. however, firearm murders are commonplace. the firearms exist but are funneled through lawless channels and into the hands of folks who would use them to oppress and subjugate those who do not have them. and they do this freely and without fear of rebuke.
believe me, i get what you are saying. i got it the first time you typed it. i am just suggesting that it involves a lot of assumed values and hypotheticals that are not as clear cut to me and no matter how many times you try to convince me of its simplicity i will disagree (aside from the assertion in my first paragraph above). we have no clue how many homicides are avoided through the lawful use of firearms nor do we have any clue as to what this country would look like from a homicide perspective if we confiscated every law abiding citizens' guns. maybe the bad guys would give up and we'd have utopia? maybe we would be north mexico? there is a reasonable argument to be made for both given infinite time.
i would agree with your argument if you were talking about ceasing production of bullets and their components world wide (every gun murder involves the reduction of the ability to murder with a gun) or even if you discussed realistic things such as stiffer penalties for violent criminals (heck, throw them into the middle of the atlantic for all i care). but, you seem to be focused on the object rather than the individual which fails to grasp good old human ingenuity and the fact that, since the beginning of time, bad folks set out trying to find a way to kill someone and take his/her stuff. if guns exist in the world, bad folks will find a way to get them and as soon as we start using more laser beams they will get them too.
