LogFAQs > #967610063

ParanoidObsessive posted...

This is incredibly untrue, considering the trend for decades now has been fewer and fewer gun owners, but gun owners themselves owning more and more guns.

So the number of guns in the country isn't actually proportional to the number of people who actually have guns. Most of its citizenry isn't armed at all.

And most people are dumb and don't understand how statistics work.

To be fair, the existence of other countries isn't necessarily a counter-argument to anything, because millions of different variables exist across a wide span of categories, so direct comparison between nations can be incredibly misleading.

For instance, gun control works better in the UK because the borders of an island (or more accurately, a handful of islands) are easier to patrol and control than the massive borders of a continent-spanning nation. Social net policies and massive income taxes work better in a homogeneous nation like Sweden than they potentially would in one of the most heterogeneous nations on Earth. It's easier to push mass transit solutions over individual car ownership in smaller European nations than it is in a nation with massive sprawling landscapes and spread out populations. And so on.

There are always "The US should do X because Nation Y does it and it works", but most of those arguments are simplistic as fuck and fatally flawed to anyone who is actually paying attention.

I am aware that there are other factors, but I believe it very hyperbolic to suggest that any argument comparing the US with another country in regards to gun laws is 'fatally flawed'. Is it...really 'fatally flawed' to suggest that more detailed background checks and training would be beneficial? As other countries do? Pretty sure it's more of a 'fatal flaw' to dump a gun into a schizo's hands at Walmart.

There are always "The US should do X because Nation Y does it and it works", but most of those arguments are simplistic as fuck and fatally flawed to anyone who is actually paying attention.

How is this itself not an oversimplification? "The USA is different, durrr!!!". Sure, it's big. Sure, most of the guns are in the hands of a relative 'few', although it's still overall high (44% have a gun in the household).

Other countries won't sell guns to people with criminal records. Obviously this will not stop all of these people from seeking out guns and buying them (legally, illegally), but it will obviously and legitimately limit the fact that it's almost as easy to buy a gun as it is to buy a slushee in many US states. Whereas here in Canada, you're free to get a gun...but you have to prove that you're capable of handling it first.