An issue I have been thinking a lot about lately is gun control. I was wondering what you guys here think about it. While I am quite sure prisons are not a sensible policy, I am not so sure about gun control. I can think of some rather compelling arguments both for and against gun control, from the purely consequentialist perspective (so, not appealing to rights and similar concepts).
AGAINST:
1) How could it work given what gun control laws actually say? Gun control laws in most countries make automatic and semi-automatic weapons illegal, while leaving non-automatic weapons legal. But automatic and semi-automatic weapons are precisely those weapons that can come useful in self-defence, when every second counts. Criminals generally do not use automatic or semi-automatic weapons. Why would they? An attacker has all the time in the world to set up his or her weapon for the attack. It is the defender that needs to respond immediately, for whom automatic weapons may come useful. How could such gun control laws be anything but counter-productive?
CONTRA: This is argument from incredulity.
2) Self-defense use of guns seems to greatly outnumber the number of deaths caused by guns. It is hard to tell how often self-defense using guns happens, but it can be anywhere between 100'000 times per year to more than a million times per year. For comparisons, guns only cause around 50'000 deaths per year.
CONTRA: Many of those self-defense uses of guns would not be necessary if there were no guns to begin with.
FOR:
1) There appears to be a really strong consensus among social scientists that gun control helps.
CONTRA: That consensus may be based on political bias, since social scientists tend to be very left-wing.
2) There seems to be a strong correlation between gun ownership and violent crime within the US.
CONTRA: There does not seem to be such a strong correlation elsewhere, such as in Europe. The UK has among the lowest gun ownership rates in Europe, yet it is the highest in violent crime. Croatia and Serbia have the highest gun ownership rate in Europe, yet they are very low in violent crime.
Like I have said, I was wondering what you think.
AGAINST:
1) How could it work given what gun control laws actually say? Gun control laws in most countries make automatic and semi-automatic weapons illegal, while leaving non-automatic weapons legal. But automatic and semi-automatic weapons are precisely those weapons that can come useful in self-defence, when every second counts. Criminals generally do not use automatic or semi-automatic weapons. Why would they? An attacker has all the time in the world to set up his or her weapon for the attack. It is the defender that needs to respond immediately, for whom automatic weapons may come useful. How could such gun control laws be anything but counter-productive?
CONTRA: This is argument from incredulity.
2) Self-defense use of guns seems to greatly outnumber the number of deaths caused by guns. It is hard to tell how often self-defense using guns happens, but it can be anywhere between 100'000 times per year to more than a million times per year. For comparisons, guns only cause around 50'000 deaths per year.
CONTRA: Many of those self-defense uses of guns would not be necessary if there were no guns to begin with.
FOR:
1) There appears to be a really strong consensus among social scientists that gun control helps.
CONTRA: That consensus may be based on political bias, since social scientists tend to be very left-wing.
2) There seems to be a strong correlation between gun ownership and violent crime within the US.
CONTRA: There does not seem to be such a strong correlation elsewhere, such as in Europe. The UK has among the lowest gun ownership rates in Europe, yet it is the highest in violent crime. Croatia and Serbia have the highest gun ownership rate in Europe, yet they are very low in violent crime.
Like I have said, I was wondering what you think.
