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pokoko on 20 December 2012
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SamuelRSmith said:
Of course not. But you often see people making the claim that a) banning guns will reduce murder rates, and b) banning guns will reduce suicide, and Japan is frequently used as an example of a low-gun-society.

The fact is that the USA has a higher rate of violence without guns, and Japan still has a very high suicide rate without guns.

As for the edit: well, I wasn't sure. Seems as if you're only jumping to random pages (that, or you're reading the whole thing, and so far have only found two issues worth pointing out, and using to dismiss the whole document). People will read through this thread without clicking the link. They see you write "compare to poverty stricken countries" and think that you're talking about the whole document... when it's like, what, one graph and 10 words out of 100 pages?

I only skimmed it and immediately found sections that I did not like.  My point is that we're talking about a complex issue; little "fact" sheets, from either side, leave out context and large amounts of important information, as well as any information that does not fit their agenda.  That makes this kind of thing nearly useless.  Many of the tricks are well known, such comparing crime in the US to Russia or Mexico, where conditions are much different.

It's like people who point to Texas and say that crime went down after they allowed people to carry concealed weapons.  They present this as proof that more guns means less violence.  What they fail to say, however, is that crime went down all over the country during that same period because there was a push for much tougher laws and longer prison terms.  The murder rate went down in places that DID NOT loosen gun laws.  Do you see my point?  Tidbits of information, especially tailored information, are useless for drawing intelligent conclusions.  Comparing and contrasting other countries without examining all factors makes no sense.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that mass gun bans aren't feasible in the United States but I still hate to see strawman arguments and bad logic used as propaganda.