Guns that are illegal for almost all New Yorkers to carry. So basically no different then anywhere else.
It's always been that way, even with one of the strongest systems. America in it's first few decades was a struggle too keep it from contradicting itself. Especially the Alien and Sedition Acts. It violated the first amendment. That was just one of the many laws that violated our freedoms.
That conversation doesn't constitute sufficient evidence, that's two personal accounts, shocking accounts I grant you. But you actually need slightly more evidence to back up claims like that. The gun is a tool of destruction, in the right hands it kills in the wrong hands it kills. I understand that certain situations arise where killing may be necessary, but don't romanticize it. Wow? People died in a world war? And don't kid yourself, those men and women died protecting America's interests.
Guns are not some magical item guarded by a dragon and host of goblins that you have to slay before claiming them for your own. Almost any pawn shop will sell you an illegal gun. All they care about is money. And you can bet your last dollar almost any of them will be willing to "lose" a gun to make a profit. I know this from experience. Most people at gun shows will sell you a gun illegally; which makes the gun illegal even if it was not beforehand. Once a gun is acquired through inappropriate channels it is considered illegal. So a gun doesn't necessarily have to have its serial number removed to be considered illegal. I also know this from experience. When someone walks into gun store and straw purchases a weapon the gun is then considered illegal as well. I don't think you fully understand how easily it is for a gun to become technically illegal. Even if someone steals a registered weapon from someone, the gun still becomes illegal once it has been stolen. Because it is not in its rightful owners care. In New York City and New Jersey if you go to the right corners and streets you can have a dude jump in your car to sell you almost anything you want; including guns. I also know this from experience as well. And like I said at the age of sixteen I got offered two AK-47's out of the back of a car in a parking lot in suburbia. They were even going to throw in a bag of ecstasy; what a deal. But, alas, I had no money. Even gun stores that are supposed to be legit will sell you a gun for the right price. Humanity is fueled by greed. Lastly, if you live in a state that is bordering Mexico you can get a gun in any of those neighboring cities easily. And before you say that this isn't proof enough, because it only happened to me, I will tell you that each of these occurrences happened in different states: - California - New York - Idaho - New Jersey So you can see that I am not special when it comes to attracting illegal firearms. It happens everywhere. And for the same reasons--money. When there is a demand for something, there will always been someone out there willing to take the risk to make a quick profit.
Regardless of location you are still just telling me about your experiences, which could quite easily be false. (I don't think they are mind you) But still if this is correct I guess I'll just have to do some research of my own.
http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=1502 This is a non-issue in Australia. To try and use Australia as an argument against gun laws in America is disingenuous. Australia is not America, we have never had the same "gun culture" as you have.
I've been away for a few days so I missed this argument, and I don't want to get into it, but I'd like to point out that not only do you misrepresent the information on the website, the information itself is given on the website (which clearly has a very biased author and readership) without any references, any context, any mentions of specific sources for any of its information and the graphs are almost invariably skewed to emphasise the shifts he would like to construe (different scales, different date ranges, mislabeled lines, incorrectly drawn lines of best fit, etc)...if this is really how people "research" political issues, Fox News suddenly makes a whole lot more sense...
Yep. Basically. The information this whole discussion is founded on seems highly suspect to me- not to detract from the debate itself, but aaron is right about that link Felipe.
It seems alot of people on this thread have issues with providing credible references... Jazzabel Join Date Jan 2012 Posts 6 I used to live in Melbourne (in the Uk at the moment), and just the thought that homicides went up 300% is unimaginable! But you might find that previously there were 4 murders in 12 months, now there were 12, that's really not that bad even though it gives a figure of 300%
ro·man·ti·cize (r-mnt-sz) v. ro·man·ti·cized, ro·man·ti·ciz·ing, ro·man·ti·ciz·es v.tr. To view or interpret romantically; make romantic. v.intr. To think in a romantic way. If anyone is romanticizing, it would be you. You are attaching human emotions to an inanimate object. A gun in and of itself can do nothing. It requires a person to pick it up, load it, aim it at another person and pull the trigger. It is the person who does the killing and goes on trial, not the gun. It is much more than a "tool of destruction" as you view it. Guns put meat on every table long before supermarkets existed and fed all families, they still do in many parts of the world. It is merely a tool like a machete, a machete can be used to clear brush or hack someone to death, this does not make it a tool of destruction. It is the main tool that millions of police officers strap on every day to protect society from evil. It is the main tool that millions of soldiers carry into battle to defend their nations against aggression. Blaming a gun or a machete for the evil perpetrated by a man is infantile thinking. I'd say that stopping a power that is killing millions of people and is hell bent on world domination is "acting on our interests."
He asked me about my experiences. Did you miss that part? You live in Australia don't you? I don't know if anything I just said holds true there. But it definitely holds true in America. And I think Lemex said it is the same in the UK. Looks like I should have done this from the start. It took me two minutes to find sources that repeat exactly what I have already told you. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/guns/procon/guns.html http://www.wheredidtheguncomefrom.com/pages/illegalGun.html http://gunvictimsaction.org/fact-sheet/fact-sheet-illegal-gun-trafficking-arms-criminals-and-youth/ Oh look, a spiffy PDF: http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/downloads/pdf/inside-straw-purchases.pdf If you scroll down on here: http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/bn/2007-08/08bn01.htm You will see that Australia has a major gun trafficking problem as well. It doesn't go into detail about how people get them. But I can guarantee it is the same way as the rest of the world.
I have no idea what you are talking about. My post was a reference to the OP and a challenge to these supposed "statistics" with an actual study published in an international research journal.
Much has been said but the bottom line is that when citizens give up their guns, either voluntarily or by having them taken away by the government, crime does not go down.
Except according to a professional study published in an international journal, as per my post above. No worries mate.
But just like you said: So who is to say that would hold true in America? Edit: Looks like after reading Felipe's post bellow this doesn't even hold true for Australia either. Crime went up.
CRIME does not go down. You can slice and dice it if you wish, but one example is as good as another. If armed robbery went up 19.8%, attempted murder up 20.1%, assault up 6.8%, and kidnapping/abduction up 17.8% one can't very well point out just one statistic and call this program a success. Crime went up. http://www.nraila.org/issues/factsheets/read.aspx?id=30&issue=015 Ban supporters, including gun prohibitionists in the U.S., are actively promoting the legislation`s alleged crime-fighting benefits. Crime statistics, however, contradict them. For example, from 1997-1998, assaults and armed robberies increased in all Australian states. Armed robberies increased from 42% of all robberies in 1997 to 46% in 1998. The number of total violent crimes and the numbers of all individual categories of violent crime, with the exception of murder, increased. In addition, unlawful entries rose 3.3% from 421,569 in 1997 to 435,670 in 1998.
You can't look at statistics from a single 12-month period and make the claim that they are the result of any single policy. If you want to continue to make these kinds of claims, I suggest you go to the effort of learning enough about statistics to understand how to use them properly. There's still been only one credible study referenced in this thread, and its conclusions contradict yours.
The last article he linked is pretty damn credible, and all the articles I linked are credible as well. Though, Rustic and I are discussing a completely different thing than you guys are--so you may not be talking about mine. However, did you not even read the last article he referenced? It is much more than just one years worth of statistics. But not only that, it says the same things as the first article he referenced in one of his original posts. I think it is a little unfair of you to jump to conclusions and say stuff like that without even reading the article he posted.
The laws were enacted for a specific purpose, to reduce gun homicides. They achieved this well, so yes they are a complete success. You said "Crime does not go down". Gun homicides went down by half to 2009, despite massive increases in population. Gun homicides aren't considered "crime"? These are small numbers we're working with here, it doesn't take much for them to have big swings year to year. Kid nappings 562 in 1997, 662 in 1998, up 17.8%. Manslaughter, 39 in 1997, 49 in 1998, increased by 25%. Murder dropped by 11.5%. Unarmed and armed robberies went up, I can't remember 1998... maybe the economy took a dive that year, maybe the police were occupied with drugs, who bloody knows. Assaults, that's a long term one. Australia has the fastest growing population of any developed country in the world. As our cities populations become more dense, we'll get more crime. If you're trying to say that Australian cities are "more dangerous" than American cities where you can carry concealed weapons, just no. I mean come on, are there significantly less armed robberies or house break-ins in America compared to Australia? No, there aren't. But whatever, I don't care. Just don't drag us Aussies into your stupid gun arguments.
The last article he posted only has detailed statistics on a one year period (1997-1998), a year so long ago that it hardly seems relevant to the discussion given that there is now far more information available. Besides which, none of the articles Felipe has posted properly contextualise the original buy back anyway. For instance, gun ownership among the Australian population before the buyback was the exception, not the norm. There is no constitutional right to bear arms in Australia, and it has never been the standard thing to keep a gun in one's house--the claim that violent crime went up because suddenly the population was unarmed is ridiculous. Anyone with any knowledge of Australian society and culture would know that that argument simply isn't true in any way. Many of the pages and statistics linked to (especially the first one) also fail to distinguish between rate and rate of change when discussing the effects of the law change. If we go to the actual sources of all relevant, verified information about this--the Australian Institute of Criminology and the Australian Bureau of Statistics--they confirm that homicides and gun-related deaths have trended slightly downwards since 1989 (through 2004 in data), and the proportion of armed robberies did, in fact, decline after the buy back from 24.1% in 1997 to 14.0% in 2000. Admittedly, there was a small increase in the number of assaults on the over-65 age group, from 1662 incidents in 1997 to 1793 in 1999, but this hardly constitutes a total failure of the program, a program which has seen statistically significant reductions, not increases, in almost all relevant categories of criminal incidents.
The laws were enacted for a specific purpose, to reduce gun homicides. They achieved this well, so yes they are a complete success. Where did this "data" come from? Do you have a source? People keep asking me for a source so where did you read that the purpose of this was to reduce gun homicides? They were under the illusion that if honest citizens voluntarily turned in their guns that crime would go down? do you realize just how rediculous this sounds? I guess armed robberies don't count in your world as they rose. I can't remember 1998 Had you read my link, from a credible source, you would have seen 98 If you're trying to say that Australian cities are "more dangerous" than American cities where you can carry concealed weapons, just no. I mean come on, are there significantly less armed robberies or house break-ins in America compared to Australia? No, there aren't. Again I ask you for a source, I never said this. But compare the population sizes. But whatever, I don't care. Then why do you keep responding? Just don't drag us Aussies into your stupid gun arguments. I didn't drag anyone anywhere. It is a fact that crime rose after law abiding citizens turned in their gun voluntarily, go figure... Now the criminals just know there are less guns in the hands of the innocent. The logic of this escapes me because there is none.
