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ConservagameR on 14 June 2022
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sundin13 said:
ConservagameR said:

Even if you were able to get rid of the guns on a federal level, what about all the bad guys in Chicago and everywhere else who were bringing these guns in?

They won't bring them in across the northern border from Canada? They wouldn't try to get them in from Mexico?

Even if you could stop that as well, are they really going to stop killing people just because they don't have guns?

Other countries who've banned guns have growing problems with other weapons now like knives. To the point they require a background check.

Banning one thing after another doesn't seem like the best course of action if the bad guys are just going to find a way around it and continue.

First of all, I'm not advocating getting rid of guns. But beyond that, the USA is the chief supplier of guns across the whole of North America. If we were able to get a handle on our gun problem, it would significantly help both Canada and Mexico deal with their gun problems and reduce the supply to criminals across the continent. 

As for whether killings would decrease, I believe it would reduce a lot of impulsive crime in particular. It is far from uncommon to have a scenario where two guys get into a fight and one ends up pulling out a gun and killing the other. If you take the gun out of those situations, they may throw hands, but the odds of death decreases drastically. While you do see knife crime in other countries like the UK, you also see a drastically lower homicide rate in general. Even then, I would much rather someone come at me with a knife than with a gun (and there are further subdivisions regarding different calibers of ammunition). 

At the end of the day, the US is pretty good evidence by itself that more guns isn't the solution to the crime problem. 

Well if a lot of strict laws aren't working already, more stricter laws from a federal level are quite unlikely to make a difference. It may reduce those types of crimes criminals are committing, but they're more likely to change tactics or types of crime before becoming honorable citizens. So the problem would just shift.

I'd assume someone would be more likely to pull a knife than a gun. A knife is easier to carry and hide plus it's quiet. You don't have to point and shoot it either, you just stab which can be done quite inconspicuously. Shooting gives a reasonable opportunity to be missed assuming it's not point blank so they have distance and can get away easier, where as nobody is going to throw a knife at you. They're going to walk right up to you and jab you, likely a bunch of times, and are unlikely to miss. I'd rather have a gun to defend against a gun than a knife to defend against a knife. Being totally defenseless is a bad situation all around, unless you're well trained.

Less guns doesn't necessarily look to mean a great reduction either though. Like with the schools, it seems many problems need to be dealt with all at once.