Guns Dont Make You Safer?

[mrstickball]

pastro243 said:

ironman said:
XD, that study is fail. They forgot to factor in the whole assaults are less likely to happen when more people carry guns because if you are a bad guy, and you don't know how many people may be packing heat, or who, you may rethink your assault. This is why conceal and carry is such a beautiful thing.

I find it hard to believe that a society with more guns is safer than the ones with less, for me, only the military and policemen should carry them, people should be allowed to use them if they have passed psicological exams and actually know how to use them. Yeah, delincuents may have them, but if their are hard to get, they will surely have less guns that if you can get them in supermarkets, and there is always the police to fight them, not civilians.

Anyway, I think that more people carrying guns is a sign of a bad made society rather than a healthy one, the need to carry them shows insecurity in the people, an insecurity that taken to limits may be harmful.

I did a study using open-source statistics on violent assaults and firearm proliferation a few months ago for these types of debates. The results were rather conclusive when taking the top 20 most-armed countries in the world, and the top 20 most violent: the more armed the country is, the fewer the violent assaults. Countries with major crime problems are some of the least-armed societies in the world. Criminals will always find a way to perpitrate their crimes with or without the aid of weapons. Furthermore, without a populace having a way to defend themselves, they become victim to more and more crime. By the way: If you want to stop crime, close the GINI coefficient. It's far more conclusive concerning crime than guns are.

The issue is this: If a crime is being comitted by a criminal, how fast are the police going to show up? 5 minutes? 10 minutes? 15 minutes? The fact is that in an armed society, you have the ability to stop the criminal immediately. Firearms are a force multiplier: You do not need to be a 300lb linebacker to wield one. This allows the most defenseless to defend themselves.

How do guns = bad society? If you live in a civil society, should it matter? Do you look at Switzerland with contempt due to their arms laws? If anything, I think it's the inverse: A society that can't cope with crime has to ban weapons for fear that their populace is so uncivilized in wielding an arm for defense may be a society that is built on fear of responsibility.

Guns are a lot like drugs. Legalizing them in the hands of a responsible society produces no ill effects: If people are responsible, they will use them with caution, and for the benefit of society (hunting, self-defense from criminal elements). If they are illegal, then criminals typically use and distribute, causing more problems than if they were illegal.