Guns vs people

[kittysunlover]

I was skimming my Facebook feed this morning on the bus, as is not uncommon for me to do. As is also not uncommon, I came across a post from a friend (don't remember who, presumably one of my pro-gun southern buddies) linking a letter to the editor in some newspaper that may or may not have been fake (I didn't bother to look it up, because its

Comments

[kittysunlover]

The only problem with these sorts of arguments is that they're completely unfounded. I personally don't have time to do this tonight, but you can go and find statistics and studies that show that gun death rates rise or fall in correlation with factors such as prevailing gun laws or the number of firearms owned or whatever else. YMMV - I've seen statistics and studies both for and against various gun control measures, but of course there are other factors in play. I think it is interesting to look at the history in our own country of gun deaths compared to the existence of gun laws, especially since a lot of people (or at least, I didn't, and a lot of my family and friends who make anti-gun-control arguments didn't) don't know what laws we do have / have had in place. (For instance, the federal assault weapons ban from 1994-2004

[polarisdib]

Off hand, I learned something lately that will complicate gun debate if we do bother to ban them:

Something like 6 out of 10 or 2/3rds of gun-related deaths in the US are suicides. This complicates matters. I could see a scenario where severe gun control legislation is passed, immediate numbers start declining resulting in celebrations from gun control advocates all around, whereas suicide and crime rates don't particularly drop making the cause of the decline unclear. That's if the gun control legislation was severe. If it's not that severe, it basically makes the results all the less clear

[kittysunlover]

That's kind of about where I land on it, too - it's interesting and certainly a problem that needs to be resolved at some point, but there are more pertinent things at stake. I come back to gun control now and again when things crop up in the news or something sparks a thought, but mostly it's just thoughts.Though the concept of rational dialogue to work towards a solution applies to those other things, too.