"Criminals Will Always Get Guns" is a Poor Argument

[gejohnston]

60. actually I do

I'm not sure you've got your facts right with Canada. Nevertheless, since guns are only one of many factors that drive homicide and suicide rates, dedicated propagandists will always be able to cherry-pick statistics and find isolated instances where the general trend of more guns/more death doesn't hold.

compare their federal laws before 1977 with ours. Yes dedicated propagandists do cherry pick statistics, but there is no evidence gun availability drives suicide.

The US has far laxer gun control laws than the rest of the world, and as a result, we have much higher rates of homicide and gun violence. Besides that, several studies have examined the relationship and found that guns are a significant factor driving homicide rates.

Our homicide rate is not far higher than everyone elses. Funny, studies done by criminologists that don't start with the "guns are bad, let's find a way to prove it" don't quite come to the same conclusion.

One of the reasons that it is basically only right-wingers make the "criminals will always have guns" argument is that if you look outside the US, the world is full of counterexamples. In Canada, UK, Japan, etc., criminals do not in fact have easy access to guns. Sure, there are a few gun crimes, and a very dedicated criminal can get a gun if he wants one, but the fact that it is so much more difficult means that there are less armed criminals, which means less shootings and less homicides.

Actually they do. The reasons for less use has little to do with availability. Using your logic, Canada should have had more machine gun crimes before 1977 than handgun crimes, since their restrictions on those weapons was less than ours. Since you don't seem to have the slightest idea about the laws, culture, or history of any of these places.......................... your rants are often simplistic and boorish.