Ron Paul did something amazing last night

[mrstickball]

richardhutnik said:

mrstickball said:

Nik24 said:

 

To open the whole new disussion on the 2nd amendment: Yes, if I lived in the 17th, 18th century with wild animals, the possibility of Native American raids, no indpendent police force and under a corrupt regime, I would want to carry arms and defend my family. However, things have changed. People should be allowed to bear arms, I do not challenge this right. But how do background checks etc. infringe on this right? Why is it necessary to get machine guns? Do you really need your gun so bad, so that you couldn't wait until your demand has been approved? Again, I do not have a problem with people having guns for sport, hunting or in their homes but why carry it in malls, schools or on-campus? I am honestly scared by the idea that any person regardless of his or her state of mind or psychological problems, can just enter a store in Texas and by a semi-automatic weapon.

Spoken like a true person who has never been around gun culture.

Go look at our data on allowing more firearm freedoms in states vs. those which successively restrict firearm ownership. States that have very lax laws are generally safer than those with excessive laws. Even the anti-gun Brady campaign has shown it, as states with more restrictions have more murders with firearms. When states allow carrying concealed weapons (CCW), crime has consistently decreased, because criminals are afraid their lives would be taken if they attempted a robbery. Comparatively, when you have areas with heavy firearm restrictions, such as university campuses, you've had many school shootings in 'gun-free zones'.

Finally, we do have many kinds of checks that ensure that mentally unstable people cannot own firearms.

Can you show that the fact that gun laws are restrictive leads to more murders with firearms, rather than because areas have gun crimes out of control end up feeling a need to pass laws to restrict their gun usage?

And what makes you think a criminal committing a gun robbery thinks anything will go wrong?

Also needed to be studied is whether or not allowing concealed weapons increases or decreases the number of shooting deaths and incidents.

I never said that there were more murders with firearms due to presence/absence of restrictions, but more murders in aggregate are committed. One can simply correlate Brady statistics with similar lists of murders per capita. The argument would be that due to more firearm restrictions, criminals have less disincentive to commit crimes. Generally, most firearm bans were passed prior to crime getting out of hand, rather than before. One can look at when bans were passed in DC, NYC and Chicago and see that there was no decrease in crime.

Watch a few videos where journalists ask criminals if they prefer armed or unarmed victims. They will tell you that if there is a higher probability of armed resistance, they are likely to commit crimes.

Take a look at Florida's crime rates. Their CCW law passed in 1987. During that year, there were 123,000 violent crimes among 12 million people, or 0.01 violent crimes per person. In 2010, there were 18 million people and 101,000 violent crimes, or 0.0053 violent crimes per person (a 47% decrease over 23 years). Comparatively, the US average was 0.006 violent crimes per person in 1987, and 0.004 in 2010, or a drop of 33% in the same 23 years.