Aside from the basic pro and con argument and all the news of shootings

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

There are 2 things about gun control that most people don't talk about. First, control is a myth. We don't have murder control; people are still murdered. We don't have arson control; people and property is still deliberately burned. We don't even have speed control on the highway. Second, mostly what gun control does for us is to allow the law abiding majority to absolve themselves of any relation to any guilt. It's good to be able to say, "I didn't kill the guy." It's good to be able to say, "I didn't order the guy killed." It's good to be able to say, "I didn't sell the killer the weapon." Best of all, we can feel morally superior by saying, "I supported a law that was aimed at preventing criminals from getting guns that they could use to kill."

I'm not saying gun control has no effect. Clearly, at least by logical argument, there are meaningful and effective laws on the books and there is more to be done.

We are now all part of the experiment known as gun control. It's a bit disheartening that we'll never really know for absolute sure if gun control works and how much. There is no socio-political proxy server type log file to check for what actions connect to what laws. I'm not suggesting we dismantle and drop all those laws and database checks but if you consider the spectrum of souls from near the angelic to the vicious sociopaths that would eat their own children, for which of those do we have some measures in place that offer good assurance that they can't get a gun and kill?

And a great philosophical question to ask is: How should we measure success?

[SheilaT]

1. Look at countries that don't have

the insane number of guns we do?

[yeoman6987]

2. It would sure help if the places in America with the strictest

Gun laws didn't see a huge spike in gun deaths. Maryland for example. Very hard to say gun control is in the best interest in America when we see a huge increase in gun killings in the most gun controlled state in the U.S. Fix that and we will see gun control in all 50 states.

[SheilaT]

4. Alas, even supposedly strict gun laws

don't get rid of guns, because they're state by state and badly enforced. Meanwhile, we continue to have an insane number of guns.

And in reality, the states with strict gun laws actually have fewer gun deaths.

Take away the guns, as they did in Australia, that night help.

[branford]

5. Look at the gun death rates by city and county, rather than statewide,

Last edited Mon Aug 3, 2015, 05:20 PM - Edit history (5)

and the results are far more disturbing, and unfortunately raise very uncomfortable issues about race, class, urbanization, Democratic governance strategies, legislative priorities and approaches to crime, etc.

Of course, rates of violence are more complicated that simple reliance on gun laws and correlation is not causation. Similarly, American culture is not Australian culture, and the latter had far fewer guns and gun crimes before its ban, and the numbers did not change much afterward.

http://www.citylab.com/politics/2013/01/gun-violence-us-cities-compared-deadliest-nations-world/4412/

**A Google search reveals a politically devastating map comparing gun violence rates to district voting patterns in 2012. Since the map was unsurprisingly distributed on conservative new sources and Facebook, I have removed the links from my post. However, it does not change the reality that blue districts, largely urban with its implications, suffer gun violence at much higher rates.

[gejohnston]

6. they took away some guns

it didn't help. The murder rate didn't change. Some of those registered guns confiscated from licensed gun owners were not being used to commit crimes. However, cops and contractors did sell some of them on the black market. Meanwhile, West Sydney has drive by shootings. Biker gangs still make their own machine guns or smuggle handguns and kill each other. The Australian Federal Police doesn't have the slightest clue how many illegal guns there were. Venezuela and Jamaica took away all the guns. Mexico took away all the guns. They wish they had a murder rate like ours, or even Detroit's.

While they did take way some guns, they have been replaced.

[SheilaT]

7. When I look on line I find that the murder and

homicide rate in Australia did decline precipitously after the guns were taken away.

[branford]

8. Not really, and the data is inconclusive if any decline was the result of the gun laws.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/02/did-gun-control-work-in-australia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia

Note that correlation is not causation. For instance, gun ownership and concealed and open carry laws have vastly expanded in the USA over the last few decades while murder and violent crimes rates have similarly declined. I doubt you would conclude that all we need to do to further reduce violent crime is eliminate more firearm restrictions? Similarly, gun crime is generally highest in Congressional districts that voted for Obama is 2012. Are Democrats more prone to gun violence? Beware the slippery slope of confirmation bias and interpreting too much with limited data.

[benEzra]

9. No, it didn't.

The gun ban/confiscation went into effect 1995-1996. Australia's overall murder rate was low before the confiscations, and remained low after the confiscations, but did not "decline precipitiously".

You might also find the homicide rate of New Zealand interesting, since NZ allows civilian ownership of AR-15's and whatnot, yet has a slightly lower homicide rate than Australia.

[gejohnston]

10. Chances are the sources are

former right wing PM John Howard who this happened under, gun control advocacy groups and their allies in the media, bloggers and editorial writers who either don't care or too lazy to check their facts.

You will not find that coming from any criminologist that I have ever heard of.

[SecularMotion]

11. The NRA has been attacking Australia's gun laws since President Obama's speech after Charleston

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1172171370

[branford]

12. Do the NRA's unsurprising opinions concerning Australia's gun laws

affect the actual, publicly available crime statistics in Australia or anywhere else?

The NRA is not some magical boogeyman, and mentioning them does not shut down otherwise substantive discussion nor substitute for actual political or legal analysis.

However, no politician, including the president. can claim he or she has no intention of banning firearms, and then use Australia (or Europe, Canada, etc.) as a model for gun control legislation, without expecting withering and wholly justified criticism.

[pablo_marmol]

14. See post #13. NT

[Lurks Often]

3. The US murder rate is 108th out of 218 countries

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_country (You can sort by murder rate)

And why is it you are only outraged about murders committed with a gun? Why is someone murdered with a knife, blunt object, poison, bare hands or some other method not worth your attention?

[pablo_marmol]

13. International comparisons are worthless.

So says Pablo and the NRA? NO. So says award-winning liberal criminologist Dr. Gary Kleck in the less technical rewrite of the book that won him the Michael Hindelang Award -- Targeting Guns.

But of course if you're "media educated" on "gun control" you'd not be aware of that.

[pablo_marmol]

15. The effectiveness of "gun control" has only become more questionable since 1983.

It was during that year that Jimmy Carter commissioned liberal criminologists James Wright and Peter Rossi to study the effects of gun restriction policy -- fully expecting to find positive results.

Jimmy ended up being let down. Even the criminologists fully expected to find positive results from "gun control" legislation at the outset of their study. But in the final analysis they were compelled to announce that there was no meaningful empirical evidence that gun crime had been affected at all by gun laws. Their book, which (in somewhat dry fashion) layed out their research only revealed their personal opinions re. gun restriction at the end -- and they did not support the "less guns = less gun crime" "argument". Like another liberal criminologist -- Gary Kleck -- they have suggested that the only way to get at the roots of the gun violence problem is to attack opportunity inequality and poverty.

http://www.amazon.com/Under-Gun-Weapons-Violence-America/dp/0202303063/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1438649926&sr=1-1&keywords=james+wright+under+the+gun

The news for gun restriction has only become worse since then, as the national violence rate began to plunge in 1993 even as the number of guns in the nation has risen - sometimes dramatically --- and a number of surveys...including one by pro-restriction advocates Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig have revealed high numbers of defensive gun uses. Then the Wright/Rossi prison survey - detailed in their book Armed and Dangerous - revealed a great deal about criminal use and acquisition of guns.....once again revealing the worthless approach we've been taking on gun violence.

If you favor gun restriction, ask yourself this question: Why are the names James Wright and Peter Rossi completely foreign to me? Education by media is worse than worthless. A frightening number of Democrats are not just ill-informed on gun violence -- they are misinformed. We (some of us!) lambaste the Fox Noise viewer, while simultaneously trusting pridefully ignorant, advocacy driven talking heads who lead us to wrong conclusions at a HUGE political price -- as "we" remain in complete denial that we are engaging in culture war. Good motives don't lead automatically to good legislation. My fellow Dems really make me shake my head when they behave in such a manner which demonstrates that they can't grasp this felony-simple concept.