Proposed: A complete ban on civilian ownership of Firearms

[dmallind]

47. Well obviously impractical here, but let's hypothesize

IF you could do the following:

Repeal 2A (politically nigh impossible)
Effectively discover and destroy all existing guns (politically and technically nigh impossible, and almost certain to involve a body count worth a few years of gun deaths)
Find some way to prevent the thousands of capable gunsmiths in the US making more from widely available plans, normal steels, and modest machine shops (nigh impossible in almost every way)

THEN yes you would improve homicide rates - quite significantly. I'm perfectly fine with RKBA but it would be insane to suggest that there are not quite a few murders where substitute weapons would either not be employed or not be successful.

However it would hopefully equally obviously be insane to suggest that we would get even close to Japanese levels. We have greater wealth inequality, greater racial and social inequality and diversity, a greater drug problem, and a cultural attitude that values conformity far less.

Really the only murders even successfully banning guns would prevent would be those of passion and opportunity (find out wife is cheating, get mad and shoot her but not be willing to stab/beat her to death); those of random mayhem (mass shootings and gang war bystanders); those where the weak kill the strong who could not otherwise do so.

Most US murders are criminal on criminal violence. Most of them are likely to happen by knife or club. Yes you'd see a bit of a drop at the expense of more attempted murders, but not huge I wouldn't think. The next biggest section are arguments and emnities escalated out of hand. Here you'll see a reduction, but by no means an elimination. If I truly wanted person X dead and were willing to risk prison for it sure I would choose a gun now, but if I couldn't get one I have many other options. It would only save person X by banning guns if I didn't really want to kill him but merely got irrationally angry with a gun near at hand. Breakdown? Not a fricking clue. 30% drop in this group alone at a guess? Obviously if I'm killing him for money or considered vengeance or insanity I still have those causes without guns, and a more difficult opportunity is still an opportunity.

The only serious likely drop is in the crimes of passion. They however are not a majority of murders. Not by a long way.

What would the homicide rate be without guns from the 4.8/100k it is now? No way to know. But we'd still not have the safety net of Europe, the homogeneity of most other nations, the culture of much of Asia. My best guess is that we'd resemble a fairly stable South American nation more than the 0.4 of Japan or 1.2 of the UK. Argentina's 3.2 perhaps?