LogFAQs > #896533093

Selenara posted...

This discussion started because I stated that countries with successful gun laws did not have a significant problem with gun violence prior to enacting those laws. So yes, it is precisely the point that the US has far worse problems with gun homicides.

But listen to what you're arguing. You're saying that the positive effects that Canada, Australia, et al saw because of their gun legislation wouldn't apply to the US because those places didn't have as much gun crime as the US (though you haven't specified why that makes a difference).

My point is that no one in the developed world has the gun crime problems the US does, which makes your assertion baseless. You can't say "gun control doesn't work here, because we have high gun crime and gun laws don't work in places with high gun crime", because there is no other country suffering from the same soaring gun crime that you can use to back up that argument.

And this all ignores the fact that individual states within the US *have* tightened gun laws and have seen those same positive effects, which sort of sinks your argument.

Selenara posted...

It's a reduction in the number of suicides by gun, which constitutes the majority of gun violence

Sure, but most of what we've been talking about in this topic, and the data related to it, has been gun homicide, which effectively makes this a side conversation.

Admittedly, suicide is a subject I am not as well versed on. Based on what I've seen in the data it looks like the drop in overall suicide rate was negligible, although it may simply be that the gun law counteracted some other factor increasing suicides (notably, in Canada suicide rates doubled between 1950 and 1985, decreased slightly in the decade after and have been fairly stagnant since, suggesting that something else is driving higher suicide rates).

I'll punt on this one, as it's not really an area I'm familiar with and isn't related to a lot of my points anyways.

Selenara posted...

Most gun deaths are suicides.

Which wouldn't be reflected in the homicide rates I was referencing.

Selenara posted...

Out of those that are homicides, many occur in poor urban areas as gang-related violence. The drug war in the US is a major instigator of gun-related crime and homicides. If you excluded gang violence from the statistics, the numbers would be more in-line with other countries.

But then, as previously mentioned, if gangs and drugs really are the issue we would expect to see higher crime rates across the board and that isn't the case - murder is the only major outlier

Not to mention, the US isn't particularly exceptional in its gang proliferation and drug policies. American drug laws are not radically out of step with other developed nations, save perhaps for harsher punishments than average (though not by an inordinate amount). As for gangs, the World Economic Forum ranked countries based on their problems with organized crime and the US ranks 57th, which is far from the worst. Of note, Italy and Mozambique - both in the top 15 for gang activity - both have lower homicide rates than the US does.
http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-index-2017-2018/competitiveness-rankings/#series=EOSQ035

Moreover, the National Gang Center estimates that gang-related homicides account for just 13% of US homicides.
https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/survey-analysis/measuring-the-extent-of-gang-problems

In Canada, to contrast, roughly 25% of all homicides are gang related.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2009004/article/10929/c-g/c-g6-eng.gif

So no, sorry, chalking it up to gangs and drugs doesn't account for the difference.
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