Certainly there's hard gun-crime, which this thread is meant to address, and against which legislation would be ineffective. Soft gun crime, however, like domestic violence that ends up utilizing a gun, could be greatly curbed, but that is for another day.

Oh, also fun report about that number...

it's only of the guns the ATF tracks. Which are guns suspected to be from the US.

So the real headline is "70% of guns suspected to have come from the US, have come from the US."

It's mentioned in the linked article... right at the top.

That wouldn't stop crimes from happening though.  Just GUN crimes.

Instead of someone getting shot, someone gets stabbed.

Or... just someone gets shot with a hunting rifle, since some sort of gun would have to be legal.

1. Legalise this stuff and get the legitimate businesses to attempt to steal marketshare from these mofos.
2. Tax the drugs.
3. Profit

Mexican activist/humanitarian are the bravest in the world I gotta compare them to the Russian activist/humanitarian during the Chechen wars. Sadly they usually get killed speaking against the drug cartels (same as the Russian activist/humanitarian during the Chechen wars). No one in the USA would speak up against the cartels like the fake Hollywood activist who said all those brainless stuff during the war in Iraq (Bush is Hitler -.-) .

IDK why protecting your border is racist as that always come up when people talk about it.Democrats, republicans, independent hell even socialist want to protect the borders but politics as usually stop that from happening. Americans won't care till American blood is spilled in the streets of the United States that's pretty sad and if that happens let the blame game begin.

Legalizing it won't solve the problem it will just make it worse. Who can use it and who can't? How much will you charge for it(maybe cheaper buying it on the streets)? If a drug dealer gets arrested will he/she be charged with selling drugs or tax evasion? Drugs are a different monster then alcohol most aren't addicted to alcohol but with drugs your hooked till you die or get help for it.

Only thing i can compare drugs to is gambling cause legalizing it will only increase the crime rate. It's sad how it is but it is one of man's hardest crime to fight.

Ha, when I read the OP I was read to write about legalization. Then I kept reading and most people are actually for it :)

Do you have the source for that?

Not quite. Many people are on pot that are not addicted. Concerning price - you can buy drugs cheaper from medical dispensaries than you can on the streets, and the quality is considerably higher. Its like comparing home-made bathtub liquors and Budweiser - there is little incentive to make crappy stuff that can kill you vs. stuff that won't.

In the case of Portugal, drug dealing was still a crime. However, incedents of arrests for drug dealing went down, as fewer and fewer people did drugs (remember what I've said - Portugal de-criminalized drugs and drug usage among all drugs dropped 30-35% over 6 years, with the harder drugs like Heroin, Meth and Crack dropping 60-70%).

Your argument has no factual basis whatsoever. You are building your case off of opinion and emotion, not facts and logic. Drugs are certainly bad, but so are many things in life. Bad things exist in life. Rather than banning every act that one engages to harm themselves, we should let Darwin work and weed out the stupid ones.

@Farmageddon:

CATO produced a white paper on a savings analysis last year: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12192

Their findings are as follows:

• $41.3 billion savings in government expenses (lower incarceration rates from de-criminalization saving millions of people from going to prision on the taxpayer's dime, no monies spent on War on Drugs, ect)
• $46.7 billion in tax revenues per year from tax rates similar to tobacco and alcohol

This assumes all drugs. Most of the savings comes from de-criminalizing the harder drugs which are the focus of more interdiction efforts.

I think a lot of Americans use this argument to support firearm possession, and I honestly think its ridiculous. Think about it, if everyone is carrying a gun for "self-defence" the place isn't exactly going to be safe because everyone is carrying a lethal weapon. A small disagreement with someone could often turn into a shoot-out. Having a gun isn't going to protect but is probably more likely to draw you into a situation where you could get shot. Hows that for self-defence?

Surely, you've heard of personal responsibility.

You'd have to be of legal age and get a license for operating a gun.