| theprof00 said: @mods can you erase the posts that are invisible? @gnizmo Like I said before, this is just a forum and not a science lab. The facts are this, The brady act was passed in 1994 and since then gun crime has been dropping rapidly. Please don't hassle me with the correlation vs causality. I don't have access to the all the numbers, but across the board, more gun control = less crime (up to a point). This is using every country as a sample. Furthermore, you are asking for something that cannot be done, because it is ethically reprehensible to change laws to test a theory, especially one that potentially deals with murder rates. Even if such test have been conducted, you can be sure that they are secret government tests. Unfortunately, the best we can do is look at the correlations.
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It is definitely strong evidence for gun control laws helping, I won't deny that. But your assertion that there is some kind of proof is absurd. As I understand it, Canada has a higher percentage of people with guns than us, and yet far fewer gun related injuries and deaths. This is an extremely complex situation that makes correlations only so useful (although still very powerful). Of course if you are not willing to defend and explain your view then there is no real point in talking about it at all now is there?
Bradford Hill really isn't applicable to this situation either. The only way you could try is by making a cross country examination of gun laws and effects, but that would require substantial knowledge of potential black markets for guns, and how many are already in the society (it would do a fat lot of good to ban guns in a country where nearly every person has one and then say gun control doesn't help when it fails to lower gun violence significantly).
