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nuckles87 on 22 December 2012
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Indeed. Gun control does not and should never mean banning guns. Such a thing is idealistic fantasy and unconstitutional. There is nothing wrong with a pistol with a ten bullet clip for self defense. There is nothing wrong with hunting with a rifle. No matter what we do, acts of violence will still occur. We just need to look into ways to REDUCE the violence. Forcing someone to reload every ten bullets instead of every 30 would be a nice start, and would have actually saved lives at Tuscon where the gunman was taken down while he was reloading. No gun control is fool proof, every law will have its holes and flaws. But one need only look at a country like Australia to see that it can have real, long term benefits.

 

Aielyn said:
Whenever you get the old chestnut of "Guns don't kill people, people kill people", respond with this:

"Guns don't save people from gun violence, people save people from gun violence."

And if any American who likes guns tries to point to Finland, or Israel, or another country like that as "proof" that more guns make it better, just point to Australia - in many ways, Australian culture mirrors American culture. Indeed, prior to 1996, Australia's gun crime rate was very similar to America's gun crime rate. Then there was a gun massacre, the worst in history (at least at the time), and even the most conservative politicians decided that gun control was essential.

The prime minister at the time, who was a right-wing conservative leader, established a gun buyback scheme and laws to control gun violence. Since then, our gun violence has dropped dramatically, making us a country that sees far less gun crime than America. Here's a graph showing the change in firearm homicide rates (and non-firearm homicide rates, to show that that rate didn't increase to compensate):


According to an article I posted, Australia's fire arm homicide rate hit .1 % in 2009, 33 times lower then America's.

http://www.sheboyganpress.com/article/20121221/SHE06/312210143/Editorial-Australian-gun-control-holds-lessons-U-S-?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|p

As for countries like Israel and Finland, there is one critical difference between us and them: every military age male is conscripted into the military  in these countries. With that comes a psych evaluation and lots of fire arm training and everything else that comes with military service. Its essentially gun control in its own right, just a different kind. If you want to use those countries as an example, fine. I just hope you also support universal conscription ;). Lord knows it would probably help us get into fewer wars. These countries also more socialist and leftist then the United States with things like government funded universal healthcare, which I'm sure helps with their standard of living and thus reduces violent crimes. So by all means, lets be more like Israel and Finland ;).