heywood on 24/1/2018 at 13:52

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I don't think it's a cop out. The point I was trying to make is that most American's don't see UK-style gun regulation as a desirable end goal. The reason is cultural.

heywood on 24/1/2018 at 16:57

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We've had endless gun control polls here. Americans are well aware that the 2nd Amendment is relatively unique and gun control is much tighter elsewhere. I don't think that going over the specifics of gun regulation in the UK or other countries is going to change any poll results. You'll just be preaching to the choir of people who already want to repeal the 2nd Amendment.

N'Al on 24/1/2018 at 19:20

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Personally, I don't see "It's the culture!" to be much different from "It's not me, it's all the other guys!"

Leaving that aside though...

Would you not agree that reducing the numbers in ffox's chart is a desirable end goal? Do you think Americans would agree that reducing the numbers in ffox's chart is a desirable end goal?*

Would it therefore not make sense to attempt to adopt a system closer to that of other developed nations who - for all intents and purposes - have proven it is possible to achieve lower per capita death rates? Even if the system wasn't adopted wholesale, and even if the rate of reduction was lower than it otherwise would be in other countries, it would still guarantee a reduction, I'm certain of it.

* Quite frankly, if not American gun culture'd be even more fucked up than I thought.

Starker on 24/1/2018 at 21:17

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They way it seems to me, gun control is a paradox in the US, like health care. Most people support the individual measures of gun control, but not gun control.

(http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/23/bipartisan-support-for-some-gun-proposals-stark-partisan-divisions-on-many-others/) http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2017/06/22133322/FT_17.06.21_gunsParty.png

There certainly is a huge cultural difference. To me, gun control seems just common sense. I think it's a good idea to require people to go through weapons training and background checks before they are allowed to have a gun. It may seem like tyranny to a lot of Americans, but it also helps concentrate guns into the hands of responsible owners.

catbarf on 24/1/2018 at 21:27

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Let me just throw something out there:

ffox's chart compares just gun murders. If you look at overall homicide rates, the US has 4.88 homicides per 100,000 people. The UK has 0.92. Australia has 0.98. Germany has 0.85. Per the FBI's stats for 2014, 68% of homicides in the US are committed with firearms. That gives a 3.3 gun homicides per 100,000 people, pretty close to ffox's chart showing 3.2. But that also means that our non-firearm homicide rate is about 1.6 per 100,000 people.

Suppose all of our guns suddenly disappeared, and no murder that would have been committed with a gun would happen. Absolutely no substitution with other methods or weapons whatsoever, those murders just never happen. Well, our homicide rate would still be double that of other first-world countries. In a best-case-scenario hypothesis, 100% perfect gun control with the absurd premise that nobody who would default to a gun would instead use other methods, we'd still have the rest of the first-world looking at us and wondering what's wrong with our country.

If we accept the reality that some percentage of those firearm homicides would instead be carried out through other methods, that number would be higher. Definitely not as high as it is with firearms all over the place, but higher than the thought experiment. Then if we accept that our enforcement of prohibition-type measures has never been very effective, especially where guns are concerned, the realistic homicide rate would be higher still.

Suppose we could cut our gun murders in half, with no associated rise in other methods. I'd call that a pretty amazing accomplishment in gun control. We'd still have a murder rate of 3.2 per 100,000, still between three times and four times the rate of first-world countries.

I'm not saying this to make the claim that strong legislation would have no impact at all, or regurgitate that 'criminals will always find a way' soundbite, which I consider tediously dumb and demonstrably false. I'm sure adopting UK-style or Australian-style gun control would have some impact over a long enough period of time. But it would be outright impossible for it to have anywhere near enough impact to result in what we would call 'fixing the problem'.

That's not even touching on secondary effects, like how the war on drugs has empowered cartels, or what might happen to crime after the 200k-3mil (depending on whose stats you trust) defensive gun uses per year are vastly diminished. Both the UK and Australia saw rises in violent crime following their major firearm bans, and I imagine the impact on us would be greater still. And call me pessimistic, but in terms of social conditions I can't help but feel like the UK and Australia are less apt as comparisons than Jamaica or Mexico, both of which have suffered out-of-control homicide rates in spite of extraordinarily strict firearm regulation.

Now throw in a culture extremely emotionally invested in the idea of armed self-defense (not wholly irrationally- this is a country where police response times are as high as 8 hours in some cities, and courts have declared that the police have no obligation to protect you), and as heywood says it just seems like a non-starter. Barring some very weird demographic changes in the US it wouldn't have any real public support, and if it were enacted I would be dubious as to its efficacy as a means of curbing crime.

Doing something to address the underlying causes of suicides, gang violence, and spree shootings, plus taking measures to address the gaps in our current laws that arm criminals to begin with, both seem more palatable to the public and more likely to result in the social effects we want. I would gladly pay additional taxes to go towards combating the decay of our urban populations and empowering federal agencies to enforce the gun laws on the books, but it seems like one side only cares about banning guns and the other side wants to do nothing whatsoever.