America has a ridiculous amount of gun crime, homicides using guns and accidental gun deaths. Freely available guns have not made America a safer place.

But, are the guns the cause of the violence, or something else? It seems the drug war and socioeconomic backgrounds that have more influence.

For example, New Hampshire has a murder rate of roughly 1.0 out of 100,000... which outperforms many European countries. New Hampshire also has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country (http://freestateproject.org/intro/gun_rights)...

Here in Australia gun control is very tight, and there are far fewer deaths per capita from them than in the US

I'm not saying freedom to own guns is the cause of the problem - I'm saying that in combination with other factors (such as the drug war and crime) weak gun laws make the problem worse. Louisiana is an example of a state with weak gun laws, socioeconomic problems and a huge gun crime rate.

Ah, okay.

I think the best approach is to deal with the socioeconomic problems, rather than bans guns. The banning of guns won't do anything.

Yes, and?

Brazil has fewer guns per capita, and much higher crime than either the US or Austrailia. So does South Africa and Russia, which also have very severe restrictions on firearms and insane crime rates.

Comparatively, Switzerland has even fewer murders per capita than Australia does, yet last time I checked, ensured a fully automatic service rifle was in every household in the country.

The reality is that each country has different cultures and problems that result in murder and other violence. Comparing the US to Australia for crime, and assuming firearms are the only variable to assume in regards to murders is stupid at best. Additionally, if you take all available firearm data, and plot it against murders per capita, the trend is that countries with more firearms per capita have less crime. The only outlier is America.

Correct.

Every gun ban in the US has done nothing to prevent crime. Our real problems are much deeper and can't simply be wished away through banning gun ownership.

If you do study on crime in the US, our murder rate per capita was much, much lower before the 1960s. Well within European standards of 1.5 murders per 100,000 people. Since then, our crime rate skyrocketed from that 1.5 to about 6.0 by the 1980s.

If you look deeper into our issues, as well as global trends in regards to crime, you find a lot of other more compelling arguments that correlate to crime:

• Economic inequality
• Education
• Mixed cultures

And so on. America is a mess not because of firearms, but in spite of it.

Our problems really started and ended with the baby boom in 1948 through 1972. Birth rates skyrocketed, and 18 years later, our crime began to spike throughout the 60s and 70s. Given the background behind why that happened, there are bigger reasons for the crime. Go watch Freakanomics for some pretty interesting analysis of crime in the US. I tend to agree strongly with their findings, despite my pro-life leanings (hint: abortions solved the crime problems more than gun banning ever did).

Never said control laws were the ONLY factor. (And the effectiveness of these laws have to be taken into account too) In Brazil, for example, they may be fewer guns, but they are very uncontrolled in practice.

Guns, like driving a car, (and reproduction in my opinion) shouldn't be a right, you should have to be rigorously tested to see if you are deemed responsible enough for it.

Yes, I'm well aware of the Freakonomics study. In fact, I made a thread about it a few years back, and you came in and made a post along the lines of

"Of course crime drops when you slaughter criminals".

Or something like that.

(I actually made the abortion point to Michael Howard last week. Who claimed during his role as Home Secretary that crime rates fell (early 90s), I mentioned the fact that abortion was legalized in 1967, and its usage grew rapidly during the 70s.)

Why is defending yourself not a right?

The Founders of the United States did not agree on much, just about everything in the Bill of Rights was heavily debated. The one thing they all agreed on, however, was the 2nd Amendment. After all, they know that without guns, they still would have been under the tyranny of a king.