D.C. Gun Ban Ruled Unconstitutional!

gue_barium wrote:

I understand what per capita means. That doesn't change the fact that some regions/countries/cities are have more/less crime, per capita, than others. I don't believe that guns have a direct correlation to most of those stats. The anti-gun crowd uses "gun crimes" in their stats, the pro-gun crowd uses arguments like yours.
I'm pro choice, but I think the NRA and the "anti-gun" groups are both off full of shit for the most part. They both miss the bigger picture entirely when they ply their stats. Bowling for Columbine has a good example of this, when Moore cites the relative peace (and relative lack of "gun crime") in that country depsite the fact that a very large segment of the Canadian population owns guns.

thankyougrandma wrote:

No it doesn't completely deter crime and that's the same for every country in the world (you imply "your (canada) law" only), but our current set of laws allow us to live in a place where crime rates is far lower than it is, just 6 hours drive south from here.

Even with as many gun owners per capita than the USA, many country on this planet have far lower crime rate and prison populations than the USA, therefore it'S in your culture of gun ownership that most of the problem takes places, the fact that gun ownership is encourage by the most important paper in the country after the Bible, is a problem. You don't need to own a gun, as oppose to your need to have a roof, or you need to be fed, the list of those rights that are not written black on white in your constitution could be very long, but guns are in the protected items list, strangely. If you wanna make one items a right, it must be something you need for your human survival, therefore your Constitution makes gun a necessary survival items, and the argument is because you need to protect yourself against other gun owners who are actually evil doers or any other bad person. You won't reduce crimes as long as this amendment is effective.

Again make gun ownership legal under some requirement (hunt, collector, cops, army), not a right over everything elses humans need to survive.

dunkman wrote:

more people own cars than they do guns... it harks back to your per capita thing...

dunkman wrote:

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/1996/in3.pdf

also

In 1994, 44 million Americans owned 192 million firearms, 65
million of which were handguns. Although there were enough guns
to have provided every U.S. adult with one, only 25 percent of adults
actually owned firearms; 74 percent of gun owners possessed two
or more.


looks like on average each american has 3-ish handguns... but the total number of vehicles is about the same but there will be less cars per person... so more road users...

your more likely to be killed by a car purely and simply because there are more of them VISIBLE... thats why its not a good argument... more people were killed by the Boxing Day Tsunami than were killed by guns in america last year... should we ban tsunamis :rolleyes:

just as an aside to highlight the US problem:-

The latest gun crime figures from Scotland show a total of 970 offences in which a firearm was alleged to have been used in 2003, a reduction of over 9% from 2002. A large proportion of the offences (43 percent) involved air weapons, and 37 percent were committed with unidentified weapons (the latter figure has increased significantly in recent years since Strathclyde (after 2001) and Lothian and Borders (after 2002) stopped making assumptions about what type of weapon was used even if it had not been identified - it was usually assumed that this was an air weapon for statistical returns and this is still likely to be the case). Handguns were involved in 29 offences, the lowest number since 1990. No handgun was used in any offence which caused injury or death.