My neighbours don't own guns..none of them are hunters or target shooters and they don't seem scared either.
You are deluded if you think none of your neighbors own guns.
My neighbours don't own guns..none of them are hunters or target shooters and they don't seem scared either.
This data?
I can easily draw an entirely different conclusion. Canada has far fewer restrictions on firearms, and while the method of homicide is representative of this fact, the overall homicide rate between our country and Australia and England is in the same ballpark. It seems to me that just as many folks there wanna kill each-other, they just use a slightly different means.
I don't see any error, and the rest of your post is basically my point. There's no "gun culture" there and their laws are extremely restrictive, but people still seem to find a way to kill each-other. Does the method matter?
The UK has 62 million people and just under 2 million legally registered firearms. Compare to Canada with half the population and 5x the number of guns. What conclusion do we draw now? There is one gun for every 3 people in this country... compared to something like 1 gun for every 30 people in the UK. Our firearms homicide rate should be orders of magnitude greater than theirs, but it's not even close to that.
Then that would be an erroneous conclusion, not necessarily supported by that data. Overall homicide rates are higher in Canada, with the majority of the difference reflected in firearms related incidents (0.36 of 0.53 when compared to Australia, and 0.48 of 0.60 when compared to Eng/Wales). Those firearms homicides are a mere fraction of the total, in all three of those cases, whereas they are the preponderance in the case of the US.
That data that shows countries that are not immediate neighbours of a gun culture country have lower rates of homicide, however slight that difference might be. Furthermore, the countries with similar gun restrictions (UK farmers have traditionally been able to have varmint guns and upper class have their skeet, and fowling) have overall homicide rates that are far closer in scale to each other, than in relation to the US. The non gun homicide rates for all four countries, however, are fairly close in scale. This would tend to indicate that if firearms are largely taken of the equation, other means do not simply substitute for those firearms.
To toss another proverbial grenade into the room Australia also has restrictions on knives, and exhibit the overall lowest homicide rate of the four nations listed. Not by much, however.
In short where there are few guns, the homicide rates per 100,000 citizens are much, much lower.
Why aren't the statistics representative of the number of available guns? Considering that Canada shares a huge border with the #1 'gun culture' country in the world, and that we have roughly 10 million of our very own guns, why isn't our firearms homicide rate 10x that of the UK?
And what do we make of homicide statistics in the lowest ranked states in the USA? Why do places like New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Utah, Idaho, etc etc etc. have so few homicides while maintaining very loose gun laws?
I don't see any error, and the rest of your post is basically my point. There's no "gun culture" there and their laws are extremely restrictive, but people still seem to find a way to kill each-other. Does the method matter?
The UK has 62 million people and just under 2 million legally registered firearms. Compare to Canada with half the population and 5x the number of guns. What conclusion do we draw now? There is one gun for every 3 people in this country... compared to something like 1 gun for every 30 people in the UK. Our firearms homicide rate should be orders of magnitude greater than theirs, but it's not even close to that.
Fair point but I think the bigger discussion among some here is that we should be adopting US style (non) restrictions and caryy concealed weapons. That's a whole different story.
And what that we will all start shooting each other? If I made you carry a gun around would you have no self control and start shooting people?
Lol...I'd be worried about everyone else, not me and I don't need to carry a gun...I'm just not scared living in this country.
See below.
You discount that those firearms are not equally distributed throughout the population, when frequently a single owner will have multiple firearms in Canada. This isn't necessarily the case in the other two countries with lower homicide rates than the US.
*EDIT* Oh, and that's for REGISTERED firearms, when it may well be that illegally owned ones are the weapons predominantly responsible for those homicides.
Unless you can present me with some evidence to state that there's a fundamental difference in the distribution of firearms between Canada and UK I'm gonna have to dismiss most of what you're saying here. I'm just using statistics, like you were earlier... but now you're arguing on guesses and theories.
Something we can all agree on: guns are infinitely easier to get in Canada than in the UK. At the very least, I can postulate that they are 10x easier to acquire, based on statistics on legal firearms in both countries. With that being said, one would expect firearms homicides to be at least 10x as frequent in Canada than in England... which just isn't so.
You are deluded if you think none of your neighbors own guns.
So you're an honest, upstanding citizen but everyone else cannot be trusted? And we're the paranoid ones? lol
And what that we will all start shooting each other? If I made you carry a gun around would you have no self control and start shooting people?
While that's a crude way of putting it, that's essentially correct IMO.
It's similar to the situation I described in the thread "have attitudes changed?" - we are a product of our environment. If our environment decides that gun ownership or C&C is a matter of personal pride, then I expect that on the whole we will adapt to view gun violence in a more lenient way. We will become more tolerant of gun violence and therefore more likely to chose to use a gun when we otherwise wouldn't.
Bluntly put, the mere loosening of gun restrictions would in effect be one step in the escalating spiral of violence even before a single shot is fired.
I know you prefer to think of yourself as a free willed independant actor on the stage of life, but that is not the complete picture. We are also cellular-like organisms who respond and adapt to pressures and tendencies in our social environment. Your view is a purely libertarian one, but the socialist force exists too. They are two equally valid political views, but they are both incomplete without the other. The libertarian versus socialist power struggle has always existed and the delicate balance between the two is what prevents us from going totally off the rocker in a "Mad Max" kind of way on hand, or a "1984" kind of way on the other hand.
Based on this view, I strongly believe that if you free up gun restrictions violence will tend to increase in society overall, and gun violence in particular. It's stronger than you or me, I'm afraid.
Nope...none of my neighbours own guns..including the one that works for the local prison.
Lol...I'd be worried about everyone else, not me and I don't need to carry a gun...I'm just not scared living in this country.
Hypothesis that more guns = more deaths is false.
http://www.wallsofthecity.net/
There are approximately 1.8M licensed gun owners and 7.5M registered guns in Canada (pre Bill C19).
The total number of gun owners in Canada is approximately 7M and total number of guns in Canada is approximately 21M.
http://www.lufa.ca/howmanyfirearmowners.asp
Reality is, only a fraction of people in Canada obey gun control laws. Others are are mostly decent & otherwise lawful people. Very few gun owners offend. Criminals circumvent controls & ignore laws when it suits them.
since the explosion of MMA and the widespread acceptance of the UFC, even allowing it to be broadcast on regular TV. And the fact that it used to be banned everywhere and not sanctioned anywhere in the US and yet is now the fastest growing sport in the world. Do we now see an increase and acceptance of public brawls, chokeouts and armbars? Your logic assumes that everyone has no ability for self control. The people scared of guns and the hysteria is just pure silliness.