"A new study suggests the use of handguns in crime rose by 40% in the two years after the weapons were banned."
BBC News, 2001
Some interesting debate on this subject, triggered by a comment I saw posted online. Basically the view advocating gun ownership goes as such.
Crime, is an inherently risky profession. Take for example mugging (which I have been a victim of). If on average 5% of citizens carry a gun and are willing to use deadly force in self defense, statistically a mugger will only go for a few months before either being killed or becoming a murderer and hunted by the state. Plainly put, mugging and violent crime does not pay when your victims can fight back.
Disarming the population by not allowing them to own guns, turns mugging from a risky, dangerous act into harvesting.
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A common situation : it's a dark, lonely footpath. You suddenly notice several people coming along from the other direction. You have 3 seconds before they reach you. Automatically you step far off the pathway to give yourself a larger clearance : to your dismay, they leave the path as well and walk briskly towards you.
You freeze. Now for sure you know they have hostile intentions. In one second, they will be close enough that you cannot use your gun.
If you draw your gun and shout a warning for them not to come nearer, the hesitation before shooting would be enough for them to easily overpower and disarm you, being outnumbered, even if one of their number is shot.
If you draw the gun and instantly fire on them, well... that would be kind of difficult when it turns out they were going to ask for directions.
If you choose not to fire, they overpower you at close range. They steal everything, find a gun, maybe kill you with it.
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Or even in what I experienced : 4 vs 1, cornered in on all sides with no way to escape. They basically overpowered me, restrained me and took a few swings at me then pushed me to the ground, took what they wanted, and ran. No visible weapons I noticed, except wooden club. Maybe they had weapons in case I decided to resist.
I doubt shooting them in the back as they ran away would have been very justifiable, much as I would have liked to. Shooting before they overpowered me wouldn't have been justifiable, either. There is absolutely no way having a weapon would have helped me.
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But maybe that's not the point. Maybe the point is, those criminals would not be alive to rob other people. Maybe their deaths would have deterred every other criminal friend they had from commiting crime, if they knew that more and more, civillians are prepared to retaliate, even if they go to jail themselves.
It's surprisingly difficult to conclusively say which situation is better. On one hand we could have a society where there are civillians armed and prepared to defend themselves, so the assumption is that 90% of criminals are deterred from commiting crime in the first place. On the other hand we could have a completely disarmed society where mugging becomes "harvesting" - no one gets hurt, the criminals just pick up the wallets and everyone goes their seperate ways.
4 comments:
hmmm... it is only a problem when you try to withdraw the firearms.
See if you introduce the firearms people obtain it. Then you try to take it away, and people still have it. And problem is most of it is in the wrong hands.
Yes, having guns around make criminals beware. But then I wonder if you could measure the balance of hurt with and without firearms in a society.
Well, it's not ONLY a problem when you try to withdraw the firearms.
You've heard of those incidents where children bring guns to school and kill thirteen other kids and two teachers. Guns are always a problem.
As for the statistic up the top that "A new study suggests the use of handguns in crime rose by 40% in the two years after the weapons were banned." The most obvious reason there are more handgun related crimes after the guns are banned is that once they're banned possesing the weapon itself is now a crime. That doesn't actually mean that more violent crimes are being committed with handguns because they've been banned.
statistically, i'm almost 100% sure that is taken into account : possession of a handgun, is clearly different from not "using a handgun in crime"
might want to check out :
http://www.reason.com/0211/fe.jm.gun.shtml
some interesting statistics and discussion on reported vs actual crime rates, and case studies you might have heard about. and different gun laws in uk vs us.
Successful suicides and domestic murders rise in proportion to gun ownership. I think that's a good enough reason to disallow guns in the general populace.
Do you really want to live in a gun culture like America's? Their crime rates are INSANE compared to Australia's. Just remember that as civilians are more able to get guns, so are potential criminals.
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