Comment by chimprich
2 days ago
The empirical evidence from the US does not bear that out. Compare murder rates between the US and any peer country with more gun control.
2 days ago
The empirical evidence from the US does not bear that out. Compare murder rates between the US and any peer country with more gun control.
Most of the murders (homicides) in the USA are committed using illegal weapons. Banning legal weapons wouldn't reduce crime, it would just make it harder for victims to defend themselves.
Besides, USA is not a good example. According to Wikipedia [1], high murder rate statistics in the USA are skewed due to the overrepresentation of one specific part of the population, which is not that common in comparable countries. If that population were to be removed from the statistics, the murder rate in the USA would drop significantly.
> According to the FBI 2019 Uniform Crime Report, African-Americans accounted for 55.9% of all homicide offenders in 2019, with whites 41.1%, and "Other" 3% in cases where the race was known. Including homicide offenders where the race was unknown, African-Americans accounted for 39.6% of all homicide offenders in 2019, with whites 29.1%, "Other" 2.1%, and "Unknown" 29.3%[48]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S...
> Most of the murders (homicides) in the USA are committed using illegal weapons
Hardly relevant. If you control guns better, you get fewer illegal weapons as well. Most of the murders in Europe are committed by illegal weapons as well.
> Banning legal weapons wouldn't reduce crime
Of course it would - see the reduction in gun violence in countries where this has been implemented.
> Besides, USA is not a good example. According to Wikipedia [1], high murder rate statistics in the USA are skewed due to the overrepresentation of one specific part of the population
Oh. You're one of those.
It's a peculiarly American thing to try first to look to race to try to understand something, when there are more salient correlations.
Presumably since Black Americans are overrepresented as victims of gun violence, you'd like to see a significantly higher proportion carrying guns?
> Hardly relevant. If you control guns better, you get fewer illegal weapons as well. Most of the murders in Europe are committed by illegal weapons as well.
Since you bring up Europe, I can give you a counterexample of Switzerland, which is armed to the teeth and still has a significantly lower homicide rate than the USA. The same applies to Canada. Even some countries with prevalent illegal guns are not even close to the USA. Heck, there's a war in Ukraine, guns are everywhere, and still, there's a very low homicide rate.
> Oh. You're one of those.
One of which? Say it or shut up. Or are you one of these? ;)
> It's a peculiarly American thing to try first to look to race to try to understand something, when there are more salient correlations.
I'm not even an American. But given the above counterexamples, it's clear that the availability of legal guns is not the only, and probably not the biggest deciding factor for high homicide rates.
Want to understand the cause? Open a Wikipedia page, look at the stats, and identify the fact that most of the homicides in the USA can be tracked down to some specific population. That's not racist, since facts can't be racist. You won't reduce the homicide rate by ignoring the facts.
> Presumably since Black Americans are overrepresented as victims of gun violence, you'd like to see a significantly higher proportion carrying guns?
Can you explain that logic? First, if you look at the stats again, most of the Black Americans are killed by the members of their race, probably due to higher exposure to threats.
So yes, Black Americans need legal guns to protect themselves even more than White Americans, since they are more endangered.