Congress bans the CDC from doing study on gun violence

[Reforged]

Look; YES, guns kill people and YES school shootings would probably stop happening without them and YES crime would likely be reduced as a result of them being banned.
But for fuck sake, look at the big picture; Target practice is really fun.

[Ben Davis]

You know, I'm always amazed at (what seems to be) the majority response in the US at the idea of increasing/improving gun controls and enforcing them more rigorously. The purpose of such legislation is to:

1. provide the general public with 'guarantees' around safety levels
2. make sure that gun owners are responsible and only responsible people can become owners
3. make it more difficult to unlawfully obtain firearms

By making it more difficult to unlawfully obtain firearms, you:

1. enable people who like/need guns and can be trusted with them, to keep them (responsible gun owners)
2. make it really expensive for criminals to have guns thus reducing the number of criminals who can afford them.

Consequently, where there are well-enforced, gun controls, you see far fewer guns in the hands of criminals.
To disagree with well-enforced gun controls would seem to imply:

1. you approve of irresponsible gun ownership
2. you want to see guns in the hands of criminals.

Am I going mad or is the above really an accurate analysis of the fundamental arguments from the NRA?

[Losty]

Boru, the argument is that banning guns will only take guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens while all the criminals will keep their guns anyways. Thereby banning guns would actually increase gun violence because no one would have any protection.

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'.

Boru

Again, the argument is that only law abiding citizens will turn in their guns. Why would a criminal turn in a gun just because it's banned?

[Ben Davis]

Again, the argument is that only law abiding citizens will turn in their guns. Why would a criminal turn in a gun just because it's banned?

Depends on how the ban is enforced. In the UK, we've tried a few different ways over the past 50 years or so. The most effective ones were 'gun amnesties' and focused police action where they targetted illegal gun sellers & owners, shook down suspects and confiscated weapons by the skip-load. It's do-able but not quick.

[Losty]

I'm not making the argument. Just repeating it. I like gun restriction. I don't see it happening in the US but if I'm ever given a vote I will vote in favor.

[Ben Davis]

I'm not making the argument. Just repeating it. I like gun restriction. I don't see it happening in the US but if I'm ever given a vote I will vote in favor.

Cool. My point is that spokespeople in the US often make it seem like removal of existing guns, which would fall outside of more rigorous legislation, would be an insurmountable problem; as if the criminals are just waiting for law-abiding citizens to give up their guns so they can go a the type of killing spree that only sci-fi authors can imagine (thanks James DeMonaco). That simply isn't the experience of other countries when they've gone through such a process. Instead, criminals have taken advantage of the opportunity to offload dodgy/incriminating weapons.

[TaraJo]

Look; YES, guns kill people and YES school shootings would probably stop happening without them and YES crime would likely be reduced as a result of them being banned.
But for fuck sake, look at the big picture; Target practice is really fun.

This should be the new motto for the NRA.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I didn't know the CDC was an American thing. How about the WHO? There must be someone who can say fuck congress and do it anyways.

The WHO wouldn't necessarily have the access to the data that I'm assuming the CDC or other investigating agency would have.

[Pyrrho]

Well, to be honest, what would the CDC have in relation to guns?  Guns are not diseases.

But they do many studies into the causes of society's ills.

Indeed.  They study all kinds of things, like things that correlate with divorce:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_23/sr23_022.pdf

It is very interesting, and I recommend that people read it.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Boru, the argument is that banning guns will only take guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens while all the criminals will keep their guns anyways. Thereby banning guns would actually increase gun violence because no one would have any protection.

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.