First off EVERYONE WHO BELIEVES IN THE RIGHT TO BARE ARMS SHOULD QUOTE THIS POST BEFORE TYPING TO MAKE SURE THAT THE TRUTH GETS SPREAD THROUGHOUT THIS TOPIC.

There seems to be a lot of back and forth arguing going on in this thread, and not much proof to back it up.
-Some are arguing that guns are needed because it allows law abiding citizens to protect themselves from the criminals.
-Some are arguing that banning guns all together will cause crime rates to drop and prevent this from happening.

After digging through all of this though, it appears most of the people arguing against guns have very little experience with them, are afraid of them, haven't had to deal with them, and are very ill-informed. So I'm going to do something that hasn't been done yet and post some real FACTS.

-Some are arguing that banning guns, making more strict gun laws, better background checks/registry, etc, will help curb gun crime, murders, massacres.. blah blah. FALSE.

1. Statistics everywhere show that the states with the most strict of gun laws have the highest crime rates. DC is a good example. In order to own a gun, it must be registered with the Police, and you must also submit for a background check, give fingerprints, and photos of yourself to the police while registering. You must then take a gun safety course, and pass a written test on the District's current gun laws. Also, for every gun registered, the police keep a spent shell from the firearm for ballistics fingerprinting so they can match any bullet used in a violent crime to the weapon it was fired from. Residents must also give a written description of why the gun is being purchased and exactly where it will be kept/stored.These are some of the most strict gun laws in the entire country, and I think most anti-gun advocates would be pleased with the amount of restrictions put in place here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_District_of_Columbia.

Now lets take a look at crime rates in DC: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/10/gun-crime-us-state
Oh no, DC has the highest number of firearm murders per 100,000 residents, infact twice as much as any other state per poplulation. More than 5 times the national average. DC also ranks 3rd in the country for firearm assaults per 100,000 residents. Infact, DC used to have a total BAN on firearms. Not just restrictions, but a complete BAN... something many of the anti-gun advocates in this thread are saying would curb gun crime. Wanna know how that went?

* During the years in which the D.C. handgun ban and trigger lock law was in effect, the Washington, D.C. murder rate averaged 73% higher than it was at the outset of the law, while the U.S. murder rate averaged 11% lower.

Since then, there have been hundreds if not thousands of articles saying that the ban didn't help, it just made it worse. Articles like this: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/02/learning-from-the-dc-handgun-ban/
Chicago also tried to ban guns. Lets see how that went:

* Since the outset of the Chicago handgun ban, the percentage of Chicago murders committed with handguns has averaged about 40% higher than it was before the law took effect.

Case in point, bans won't work. Automatic weapons and explosives are banned for civilians in the US unless you file for an extremely expensive permit, go through rigorous background checks, evaluations etc. Even then, the ATF constantly hounds you to see your Class 3 weapons/explosives, wants matching serial numbers on everything, and even the slightest deviation gets you a 10-year mandatory prison sentence. Even if you qualify, most automatics weapons cost tens of thousands of dollars and months worth of paperwork to legally own. On top of that, a lot of states have banned them completely regardless of circumstance. Guess what? A LARGE number of all large-scale robberies and heists are conducted with fully automatic weapons. If criminals want them, they will get them. If someone wants to go out in a blaze of glory, there isn't going to be much stopping them from getting an illegal weapon, let alone any weapon.

Besides, statistics show there are ROUGHLY AS MANY FIREARMS IN THE U.S. AS THERE ARE CITIZENS. Ban? Good luck.

2. Arguing that guns only use is to kill is a reason to ban them. This also means we would have to ban:
-Crossbows
-Compound Bows
-Cigarettes
-Cyanide (Rat Poisons)
-Chlorine
-Pesticides
-Birth
-Religion
-Chuck Norris
-blah blah, I think you see where this is going. Besides, guns and the first two items on this list are used in various sports, competitions (including the olympics), means of gathering food, etc. You can argue the validity of Cigarettes but in the long run their only outcome is to kill you. Cyanide is only used as a poison to kill and can be bought in most supermarkets. Chlorine's sole use in water is to kill, and breathing it in a gas form will kill you also. Pesticides are meant to kill, Birth ultimately results in death, Religion only causes wars, Chuck Norris kills anything with a heartbeat.. blah blah. The moral of this story, arguing that they should be banned simply because they kill is as pointless as most of the things I decided to list here.

3. Concealed carry permits have PROVEN to stop violent crimes. Criminals FEAR law abiding citizens with concealed carry permits. Proof?

Notice the downturn in Crime in 1994. Arizona began allowing concealed carry in 1994.

Here's some other trends that followed along with concealed carry laws:
-After passing their concealed carry law, Florida’s homicide rate fell from 36% above the national average to 4% below, and remains below the national average.
- In Texas, murder rates fell 50% faster than the national average in the year after their concealed carry law passed. Rape rates fell 93% faster in the first year after enactment, and 500% faster in the second. Assaults fell 250% faster in the second year.
- States that disallow concealed carry have violent crime rates 11% higher than national averages.
-Deaths and injuries from mass public shootings fall dramatically after right-to-carry concealed handgun laws are enacted. Between 1977 and 1995, the average death rate from mass shootings plummeted by up to 91% after such laws went into effect, and injuries dropped by over 80%.
http://hawaiiccw.com/gun-myths/concealed-carry-myths/concealed-carry-laws-increase-crime/

Also, Vermont allows all citizens to carry a concealed weapon WITHOUT a permit once they reach the age of 18. Lets look at Vermont's gun crime rates: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/10/gun-crime-us-state.
Thats right, Vermont has the fewest amount of gun murders not only per 100,000 residents but also an average of 1 handgun murder per year for the entire state. ONLY ONE. DC alone averages 32 handgun murders per year even though they have some of the most strict weapon laws in the country.

Also, people who have concealed carry permits make up, on average, only .02% of all people who use a handgun for a crime.

Another very very very noticeable effect that concealed carry weapons have:
-Stores that post "No Firearms Allowed" signs on their doors are 8-10 times more likely to be robbed, as the criminals have no fear of a law abiding citizen who may be carrying a weapon.

Most store owners are as ignorant as everyone else and actually think that people who legally carry a firearm are the ones going to rob their store and post these signs.

4. To the guy who said "Show me one massacre that was prevented by someone with a concealed carry permit", you're an idiot. You contradicted yourself in that very sentence. If the shooting was stopped, there was no massacre. Do you want me to link you to about 500 news reports where a robbery/assault/violent crime was stopped by someone with a concealed weapon? Something tells me, at least a few of them could have easily turned into multiple innocent people being killed.

5. Simple fact: you cannot reasonably ban weapons. There are > 9.9 guns per 10 people in this country. Banning them is not logical. If all guns were gone, would crime inevitably go down? YES. I'm not disagreeing with you there. Its just a plain and simple fact that you have to deal with the fact that they will always be here, always be around, and theres no law or ban that will prevent CRIMINALS from getting their hands on them. Allowing citizens the right to bare arms is the only thing helping to keep gun crimes in check. Concealed carry permits takes it a step farther and makes all criminals fear immediate and possibly fatal consequences to using their gun in public. If there was no such thing as a gun, people would still be killing eachother. No, it wouldn't be as easy, but it would still happen. Since guns will always be around and there honestly isn't anything that can be reasonably done about it, taking them from citizens only wanting to protect themselves will only cause the murder rates to go up.

/End

Well, certain types of people are going to get there hands on guns, no matter what the laws are... And, certain types of people will open fire on people when they know they're outgunned... If only for the trill...

If crazy people are the only ones with guns, you don't need me to tell you things will get worse.

Lets focus on the point of DC crime rates. Crime rates tend to be higher in urban areas, and the district of columbia is, of course, disproportionately urban, thereby invalidating it unless we ran on a city vs city basis.

I'd like to see somoeone trying to argue with this

pretty easy if you would try. everyone can use numbers for his purposes. i could use his arizona diagramm and compare it with whole usa http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Violent_Crime_Rates_in_the_United_States.svg

just to show that the decline was just an average decline for whole usa and if you look at worldwide numbers of developed countries it will be the same.

or i could ask how he just got the idea to compare dc with vermont which makes absolutely no sense.

like my prof once said, everyone can show statistics to prove himself right. someone could even argue that cancer is good if he would just try hard enough (that was an exaggeration)

Easy. Point 1 is dismantled by the fact that DC is effectively a city-state, and so is going to have higher crime per capita because they are more urban as a whole.

Point 2 is reducto ad absurdum, a pure logical fallacy not worth addressing

For point 3, read crissindahouse's response

Point 4 is a bit more complex, part of the overarching argument across this entire thread that a nationwide anti-gun environment would make it more difficult for regular criminals to acquire such weapons and thus reduce the need for citizens to have them, aside from the fact that a massacre is going to be a massacre whether someone with a concealed carry weapon is present or not (a la gabrielle Giffords)

Point 5: Is another example of skewing the statistics. 9.9 guns for 10 people outlays the fact that those guns are concentrated in a comparatively small portion of the population, and that ownership of these guns should be registered with some sort of authority. The processes for gun acquisition would be relatively simple in proposals i outlined earlier in the thread.

Banning guns at this point in American's history would only put the general population in more danger. Banning liqueur didn't stop drinking. The ban of drugs doesn't stop illegal drug use. Drunk driving is illegal but people are killed nearly every day by a drunk driver. Hell, you're not supposed to speed, but you probably do anyway.

It's an old point and people who want to ban guns like to argue it doesn't matter. But I believe that if you ban guns, criminals will still have them and law abiding citizens will be defenseless. Will a ban on gun ownership reduce home gun accidents? Yes it will, but it will also reduce home defense. Criminals break the law, they will continue to break the law. What criminals do with guns today breaks the law. If the law bans guns those same criminals will break that law too. Most criminals are probably breaking a law by owning or carrying a gun anyway, but they just go and break the law anyway.

The Aurora Colorado shooter broke many laws when he opened fire on those innocent victims. To break those laws he plans for months and collected an armory of ammo and firearms. If guns were outlawed he would have found alternative methods to build his arsenal. He may have even used an alternative weapon like a pipe bomb. A gun ban would not have stopped him or even delay him. But you know what could have stopped him. Maybe, just maybe if we all carried guns and he knew that he theater would be filled with armed law abiding citizens, maybe he wouldn't have done it. Maybe he would have figured it wasn't worth the risk, knowing that as soon as he opened fire he would be gunned down by those he threatened. Maybe if more people took gun safety classes and earned conceal carry permits we would all be safer in public.

You can argue all day about what this country would be like if guns had been banned generations ago. But no such law was passed and it's too late. Guns are everywhere. The problem is they are in the wrong hands. More responsible citizens should carry than criminals. It's backwards. Why do so many people look to others for safety instead of protecting themselves? Why do they complain about criminals yet do nothing practical?

Last time I checked guns are a tool, a tool that can not harm anyone without human action. If a zoo keeper takes a monkey's ball away because the monkey keeps throwing the ball at his face. The monkey will just throw shit, maybe even just in spite. With guns and criminals, you can't even take the "ball" away, but passing a ban law would surely cause a shit storm.

Couldn't the same be said of owning something as dangerous as a car? What about having children? Seems like any idiot can get behind the wheel of a 2 ton killing machine or fail to properly raise a batch of future welfare cases.

The average people you deem too stupid to own a gun, probably don't point that gun at random people or fire it blindly into a crowd. But there sure are a lot of stupid people who cause car accidents and kill thousands on the road. The people committing violent crimes with guns aren't average stupid citizens. They are criminals and criminals don't abide by the law, not even laws banning guns.

I haven't read anything in here, but I've been reading on FB all day, "if colorado allowed concealed firearms this wouldn't have happened"

What a bunch of bullshit. I don't want to regulate guns because of this incident, but let's not allow less control because of it. That's the complete opposite.

When you pull a knife, someone will pull a gun. That's how it works. This time (barring the fact that he went in there PREPARED for a duel) he had an automatic, when people have guns, it will then become bombs, or sarin gas, or mustard gas, etc. Then what should those people carry? It's an endless cycle to nukes lol.

Someone posted a picture of a protester with a sign saying "gun laws killed my nephew"... or something, and a erson with a sign saying "my spoon made me fat". Hilarious, I imagine. But the major analogy to look at is that me having a spoon doesn't prevent you from using a spoon.

We license people to drive, don't we?

And I fully believe people should have to get a license to have kids too.