This was supposed to be a light-hearted and fun joke post, but fine. Let’s do this.
There is no valid logical rational reason why any normal US citizen should own a machine literally designed for no other purpose than to kill human beings.
I own several guns and have shot literally thousands of rounds over the last couple of years, yet I haven’t killed or even harmed a single living creature. Huh… I guess my guns must be broken since they can’t even fulfill their “only purpose”.
A disgustingly huge amount of people are DYING to these things every month, just trying to go about their normal lives. That trumps your ill-chosen hobby.
Many anti-gun advocates will point out that there were 33,000 people killed by guns in 2013. While this is a terrible number, we must also put this number into perspective against the grand scheme of things. There are an estimated 340-370+ MILLION legally owned guns in America, not even including illegal black markets that we cannot effectively track. This means that, even if we use conservative estimations, literally over 99.99% of the guns in America didn’t kill a single person in 2013.
When we look at the big picture, your chances of being harmed by a gun are actually very low.
Chances of being shot or killed based on firearm deaths and population count:
Death by gun, suicide excluded:
0.0032%
Death by gun, suicide included:
0.0095%
Death in a mass shooting alone:
0.000032%
Injury by gun, no death:
0.024%
Death of injury by gun including suicide:
0.033%
Gun deaths and injuries etc based off general stats used by anti gun people, rather than exact numbers from each year because its faster and easier to do. Going by exact yearly figures would result in very little change to the average numbers used above.
Guns compared to other ways you can die:
Unintentional fall deaths:
Deaths per 100,000 population: 8.4
Motor vehicle traffic deaths:
Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.9
Unintentional poisoning deaths:
Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.7
Deaths per 100,000 population: 13.9
All Drug poisoning deaths:
Deaths per 100,000 population: 12.4 (2010)
All firearm deaths (suicide included):
Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.3
All firearms deaths (suicide excluded):
Deaths per 100,000 population: 3.6
Firearm deaths broken down completely:
3.6 for homicide
6.3 for suicide
0.30 for unintentional
0.10 undetermined
10.3 for deaths total in general of 3.6 for homicide only. You are more likely to trip and die than be killed by a gun. Cars kill more than guns but are not even protected by the constitution and isn’t a right, and are less regulated than guns!
[Sources are FBI and CDC]
Many people will also cite mass shootings as a reason that guns are evil and should be banned, but this assertion also falls flat and looks ridiculous when put into perspective. While these stories draw media attention and are absolutely horrible, you seem to have casually and conveniently left out the part where these attacks account for less than even one quarter of 1% of America’s overall murder rate. About 0.2% to be more exact.
Now, let’s compare this, how often guns are used to harm innocent lives, to how often guns are used to protect innocent lives.
Guns help protect innocent lives FAR MORE OFTEN than they help to harm innocent lives. There are literally hundreds of thousands of defensive gun uses in this country alone every single year.
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/category/defensivegunuseoftheday/
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/cdc-study-use-firearms-self-defense-important-crime-deterrent
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/cdc-study-use-firearms-self-defense-important-crime-deterrent
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/defensive-gun-ownership-gary-kleck-response-115082.html#.VcYed_lRK1w
Quite simply put, guns save innocent lives. And they do so far more often than they hurt them. When guns are harming more innocent lives than they are protecting, it could be argued that it might make sense to further limit guns.
But for now, it’s not even close. Moving on…
There is no solution better than the one that several European countries and the Australians have proven works, anything else is a less-effective compromise so that you, again, can get off on owning a literal killing machine.
Sorry, but strict gun control has been an absolute failure in both Australia, The UK, and everywhere else it has tried. It has done nothing to effectively reduce murder, violent crime, suicide, or even gun violence rates. It has done nothing to achieve its desired goal of creating a safer society. It is, and always will be, a complete failure.
[this segment brought to you by lee-enfeel]
People die Australia as a result of firearms violence at almost the same rate they did prior to the firearms act, and some sources state that more than a quarter million illicit firearms exist in Australia currently.
The total firearms death rate in 1995 - the year before the massacre and the laws introduced - was 2.6 per 100,000 people. The total firearms murder rate that year was 0.3/100,000. From 1980-1995, Australian firearms deaths dropped from 4.9/100,000-2.6/100,000 without the implementation of firearms laws. This is a rate of decline that has remained fairly constant; Looking at 1996-2014, in which the rate has dropped from 2.6-0.86, it shows that the decline has been slower in a longer period of time since the law’s passing. Likewise, homicides declined more quickly in the 15 years prior to the firearms laws (0.8-0.3) than in the 18 years since it (0.3-0.1). This just indicates that firearms deaths haven’t been noticeably affected by the legislation you’ve claimed has done so much to decrease gun crime.
It should also be noted that around the same time, New Zealand experienced a similar mass shooting, but did not change their existing firearms laws, which remain fairly lax; even moreso than some American states like California, New York, or Connecticut. Despite this, their firearms crime rate has declined fairly steadily as well, and they haven’t experienced a mass shooting since.
The “australia banned guns and now they’re fine” argument is really old and really poorly put together. Gun control is little more than a pink band-aid on the sucking chest wound that is America’s social and economic problems. It’s a ‘quick fix’ issue used by politicians to skirt around solving the roots of the violence problem in the United States, which are primarily poverty, lack of opportunities, and lack of education.
You could ban guns tomorrow nationwide and gun violence and overall violent crime would not be reduced at all.
[this segment brought to you by cerebralzero]
In 2005 the head of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn,[37] noted that the level of legal gun ownership in NSW increased in recent years, and that the 1996 legislation had had little to no effect on violence
In 2006, the lack of a measurable effect from the 1996 firearms legislation was reported in the British Journal of Criminology. Using ARIMA analysis, Dr Jeanine Baker and Dr Samara McPhedran found no evidence for an impact of the laws on homicide.[40]
A study coauthored by Simon Chapman found declines in firearm‐related deaths before the law reforms accelerated after the reforms for total firearm deaths (p=0.04), firearm suicides (p=0.007) and firearm homicides (p=0.15), but not for the smallest category of unintentional firearm deaths, which increased.[43]
Subsequently, a study by McPhedran and Baker compared the incidence of mass shootings in Australia and New Zealand. Data were standardised to a rate per 100,000 people, to control for differences in population size between the countries and mass shootings before and after 1996/1997 were compared between countries. That study found that in the period 1980–1996, both countries experienced mass shootings. The rate did not differ significantly between countries. Since 1996-1997, neither country has experienced a mass shooting event despite the continued availability of semi-automatic longarms in New Zealand. The authors conclude that “the hypothesis that Australia’s prohibition of certain types of firearms explains the absence of mass shootings in that country since 1996 does not appear to be supported… if civilian access to certain types of firearms explained the occurrence of mass shootings in Australia (and conversely, if prohibiting such firearms explains the absence of mass shootings), then New Zealand (a country that still allows the ownership of such firearms) would have continued to experience mass shooting events.”[44]
We see the same trend in The UK.
And on and on and on… Gun control simply does not create a safer society and often times actually has the opposite effect.
At this point I should also probably point out that Australia’s gun laws have not even reduced gun ownership in Australia. In fact, gun ownership in Australia is actually higher now than in 1996.
All of these inconvenient facts aside, we haven’t even touched on the cost of implementing Australian style gun control in America.
I keep hearing people say that the US should adopt Australia’s gun control policy and I don’t think they have really thought about the big picture of that plan.
Australia had far less guns per person and people in their country did not live in a society that was brought up respecting The 2nd Amendment. The culture of Australia is very different than that of the culture of America when it comes to gun ownership and self defense.
Because of this, the Australian government was able to buy back 631,000 guns at the estimated price of about $500,000,000. You read that correctly, 500 MILLION.
And even after all of that, it still did nothing to prevent violent crime and criminals in Australia still have access to illegal guns, despite being an island country that isn’t bordered by other countries with high violent crime rates and rampant with illegal drug cartels.
There are over 360,000,000 legally owned firearms in America. If we go by Australia’s numbers ($792.39 per gun), these guns would cost our government $285,261,489,698.89 to buy back. Almost 300 BILLION dollars, assuming that every gun owner voluntarily turns in their guns… Which is a very slim to nothing chance.
Who’s going to pay for that? Anti-gunners? I think not.
So, in closing, you want America to put in place gun legislation that will cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars AND has already been proven time and time again to be completely ineffective at protecting innocent lives or creating a safer society?
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