Shooting at Batman Premiere - 12 dead / Your opinions on gun laws

[Mr Khan]

insomniac17 said:

Mr Khan said:

What ifs tend to be rather slippery. Organized crime tends to be fairly benign about gun violence, unless they're waging a war of their own like in Mexico currently, their victims tend to be one another, or police or such. It's not like street gangs, who would be less able on the matters of acquisition, but more likely to use the guns in petty disputes. While it would not be perfect, I would say it would be preferable to the status quo.

They can be. But that doesn't make it less true that there is a chance of it happening.

I disagree; I do not think that it would be better to ban guns. I have not seen evidence compelling enough to convince me that it is better to ban them, because I don't see massive spikes in crime where guns are allowed. And to me, it makes sense that I don't see that, because the vast majority of people who buy a gun are not doing it to kill someone. They do it for protection, or for sport (shooting ranges/hunting).

It's not about reducing crime, it's about reducing death from crime or death from people trying to prevent crime (or who think they're trying to prevent crime, a la Treyvon Martin). If you get hit over the head with a baseball bat in a mugging, that's a tragedy, but you're much less likely to die than if someone shoots you in the head. And if you have to mace or tase or otherwise disable someone who is attacking you, at least you haven't killed them.