Congress bans the CDC from doing study on gun violence

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Then it's a bad argument. 'Banning guns' doesn't mean the same thing as 'keeping guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens only'.

The problem is that there are 300 million guns in America, many of them owned by criminals. You can write a law banning guns, but a man intent on robbing someone to get his fix isn't going to care about the fact that his gun is illegal. He's worried about his next fix. Gangstas warring over drug-sale turf aren't going to disarm in the face of a rival gang simply because there's a law requiring it.

Criminals break laws.

I haven't seen any statistics, but I'm willing to wager that the number of instances where privately held firearms offer 'protection' is insignificantly small.

Boru

From a study commissioned by the CDC (amongst others):

Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact number remains disputed (Cook and Ludwig, 1996; Kleck, 2001a). Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010). On the other hand, some scholars point to a radically lower estimate of only 108,000 annual defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey (Cook et al., 1997). The variation in these numbers remains a controversy in the field. The estimate of 3 million defensive uses per year is based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys. The former estimate of 108,000 is difficult to interpret because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.

Source: http://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/3#15, p.15

Even the VPC, which supports strong gun restrictions, acknowledges roughly 47,000 defensive gun uses annually.

Don't bet too much.

Okey doke. 300 000 000 guns. Let's use Kleck's figure of 3 million defensive use (I want to be as generous as possible). This means that 99% of the guns in the US are NEVER used defensively. Worst case scenario: If all guns were banned (and banned effectively) violent crime would tick up - at most - by 1% The actual increase would be far lower, as fewer criminal would have guns.

Bet's on.

Boru