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

[eppie]

No it is about the fact that normal people will have access to weapons. As I explained before the result of normal people having guns will be that petty criminals will also start carrying guns everywhere.

I must admit this makes little sense to me.

You think that criminals (sociopaths) don't arm themselves now because they know everyone is disarmed. And, if guns were available, then you believe criminals would arm themselves because they would assume their prey were armed.

So, I researched the Netherlands a bit more. It is not too difficult to get a gun if you want to get one. It seems to be a bit of a pain for legal gun owners to have the police visit you once a year to inspect your gun safe. But, you still do have gun crimes, but not as much as some other European nations many who have stricter gun laws. Similar to where I live, gun crime is more prevalent in urban poverty stricken areas.

Of interest -- Harvard Law Review; WOULD BANNING FIREARMS REDUCE MURDER AND SUICIDE? by DON B. KATES AND GARY MAUSER

"These statistics reinforce the point that murder rates are determined by basic socio‐cultural and economic factors rather than mere availability of some particular form of weaponry. Consider Norway and its neighbors Sweden, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Norway has far and away Western Europe’s highest household gun ownership rate (32%), but also its lowest murder rate. The Netherlands has the lowest gun ownership rate in Western Europe (1.9%), and Sweden lies midway between (15.1%) the Netherlands and Norway. Yet the Dutch gun murder rate is higher than the Norwegian, and the Swedish rate is even higher, though only slightly.137" -- from page 687

I would conclude that your experience with gun crime has more to do with the Dutch culture, and less to do with your access to weapons.

Please also think a bit instead of only placing links and statistics.

First, what do you (or your link) consider murder? Someone killed during a burglary will be manslaughter, not murder.

Sociopaths will always get their hands on guns, that group will not be 'affected' by legalization of guns or not. It is the much larger group of small criminals....people that commit crimes to gain some money. So we are not talking about drugdealers, organized crime or sociopaths. (crime and murder rates among these groups are indeed governed by other things).

I don't know if it is my bad english, or that you just don't get the fact that when normal people are allowed to have guns, the group of small criminals (that in Holland do not carry weapons) will also get guns?

There are so many examples coming from the US every year which show the risks of this.

-the black teen who was killed by some rambo type neigbourhood patrol
-little kids who accidently kill their little brother with daddy's gun
-violent break ins because of encounters between thief and home owner
-shooting of cops

Anyway I would like to explain the first thing (criminals getting guns because normal people will get them for defence) again because it is the basis of what I am saying and you say it makes little sense to you.

So I will try it by asking you a question:
say you are a person who resorts to burglaries to make money (maybe because of having no job, maybe because you have gambling debts etc. but not because you are a serial killer...).
In a country where normal people don't have guns; would you bring a gun with you when you went around breaking in to houses?

If however you know that the chance is very big that the home-owner has a gun; would you bring a gun now?