I'm convinced the town I work in is full of crazy people.

[eppie]

Well, there is solid evidence to show that in states with 'less strict' gun laws, crime is lower than in areas where they are more strict. Granted, this could be due to the fact in more so-called democratic states where gun laws tend to be tougher, there tends to be a higher concentration of crime in inner cities where more social inequality exists - so maybe crime is attributed to that rather than the laws. But then again, when the Firearms Control Regulation Act of 1975 was lifted in D.C., in 2008, crime rate there began to go down, and it has done so steadily since. Montana has some of the most lenient gun laws with a very low crime rate, but also a much smaller population than say, CA.

It is good that you posed some critique yourself.

Also one should ask the question what type of crime we are talking about here. Nobody here said that crime rates would be lower or higher depending on gun laws.

What I said is that crimes will escalate faster. Your comments on police officers have to do with this. In the US it is pretty common that police officers are shot at, something that happens very very rarely in say, Holland. So it is alos imaginable that police officers tend to become more aggressive because of this.

Having a gun is not the same as having a nuke. If you have a nuke chance is big that everyone is afraid of doing something because of fear of mutual assured destruction. With a gun this is not the case. Most criminals are reasonably sane, so if they break into a house they try to do this when noone is home, with the least risk of confrontation. If however it is known that the chance is very high that the home-owner has a gun the criminal will bring a gun as well. Well and if there is a confrontation it is a 50/50 chance of a kill on either side.....so yes there is some more chance of justice, but much more chance of the burglary victim dying..


But seriously the whole gun law thing, freedom of hate speech and hatred of taxes are all really based on some old documents made a few 100 years ago. As mentioned before here, time when there was fear of the british or indian tribes etc. So very emotion-based is probably the best description.