TheRealMafoo said:
My argument is guns are a means to an end. No one sees a gun and say’s “cool, I can now kill someone”. It’s a tool. There are aspects of this country that increase the murder rate (poverty, poor education, drug trade, etc…). If you removed guns and do not fix these issues, people would murder just as much, they would just find a different tool to accomplish it with. |
I agree with this to a point. Just removing guns is not alone going to fix the problem. I would argue that it is a part of the problem, but agree that it's not THE problem. However, if you are going to say poverty, poor education and the drug trade are contributors to a high murder rate, couldn't you also concede that ease of access to guns is also possibly part of it?
The question is, would the amount that it helps be worth taking away people's "right to bear arms"?, which is, admittedly, a frightfully hard question to answer.
Having said that, whoever pulled the stat earlier comparing the homicide rate in the USA with Europe (instead of North America versus Europe or America versus another country) did their argument an injustice. A quick glance at the stats would show you that the only reason Europe's average is comparitively high is because of the exhorbitently high murder rates in Russia and relatively high murder rates in the former soviet states. If you look a the homicide rate in central and western Europe it is less than a 1/3 of the US's rate. Maybe i'm wrong, but surely it's can't be considered a good thing that the US has to compare itself to Eastern Europe and Russia for a favourable comparison, it wouldn't be done in any other argument so why here.
