Reply #46: Yes, that is a great comparison...

[Caliman73]

Look at Somalia, a country that has ZERO law and order, no effective government,and some of the worst poverty in the world. You are completely correct in attributing the problems in that country with firearms ownership because other than that factor nothing else would create the condition of that country. :sarcasm:

Then you say Iraq, well yes, another paragon of stability but for the presence of guns. I mean if you can look past the fact that the region has been engaged in religious war for 1000 years, that the country was cobbled together out of groups of people with a deep animosity for each other, that it was held together by a brutal dictator for decades, that the populations poverty and illiteracy rate are extremely high, and that the country has been occupied by a foreign invader (from their perspective) for the last 6 years. If you can ignore the effects of all those factors and more, then your statement correlating guns with crime is completely accurate...:sarcasm:

I don't know if more guns equals less crime. Some statistics bear that out. Other statistics challenge that notion. I know that less guns does not necessarily mean less crimes, it just means potentially less crimes with guns. Though that may be appealing to people who are so vehemently opposed to guns, it does little to actually make a society safer. To make society safer you need to have a stable government, fairly equal and consistent economic opportunity, healthy social structures, and a connection by citizens to their fellow citizen. Perhaps the US has lost that balance on those issues and we need to address them so that we can decrease the level of violence in our society. The countries you want to use as models are in complete social and political chaos. Why not use Switzerland instead? They have a very high per capita gun ownership rate and have much less of a problem with violence than the US. What are they doing differently?