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Gun laws where guns take the most lives

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Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#121

Post by goshx »

jostmey wrote: post #55

The debate here has focused on guns as the problem. Guns are not the problem, they are an expression of the problem. To quote the article: "The Economist stated that rapid urbanisation and inequalities in wealth distribution were some of the largest factors in violent crime, and as one of the most unequal countries on the planet, Brazil backs up this claim." I think this statement applies to Mexico and other Latin Am…

> Removing guns from the streets may reduce gun deaths

It didn't in Brazil. Since 2004, civilians can't carry their guns and the police makes it very hard for them to be able to have one in the first place, or to register them again when it's time to renew.

Here is a graph with the homicides in Brazil from 1996 to 2016: http://www.ipea.gov.br/atlasviolencia/dados-series/31 (click on "País", then scroll down to see the graph)

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#122

Post by leereeves »

baroffoos wrote: post #107
leereeves wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't see a gun and decide to use it. They decide to hurt someone, then look for a weapon. If it's not a gun, it will be a knife, or acid, or poison, or fists, or a vehicle...

See what happens when someone gets in a crowded place with a gun vs a knife. Also the general public should not be allowed to take a vehicle in to a dense area like a city.

> Also the general public should not be allowed to take a vehicle in to a dense area like a city.

First, ban guns. Then, ban knives. Then, ban vehicles. Where does it end?

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#123

Post by leereeves »

hexane360 wrote: post #106
leereeves wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't see a gun and decide to use it. They decide to hurt someone, then look for a weapon. If it's not a gun, it will be a knife, or acid, or poison, or fists, or a vehicle...

This actually isn't well backed up by psychology. The large majority of violent crimes aren't premeditated--they're impulses.

I'm willing to learn here, but I can't find a source for that claim.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#124

Post by koyote »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #95
baroffoos wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns are like a megaphone for violence. Violent people will still exist but their reach is far less with a knife

You are a bit quieter with a knife though. A gun gives you away immedietly to all around you unless you have a silencer but those arent so easy to get in the USA (class 3 if I remember correctly). In England people get knifed and who can know? And if its not a knife it will be a car, power tools, planes, boats, pushing someone off of a building. I rather retain my right to protect myself from crazies and die trying t…

> You are a bit quieter with a knife though. A gun gives you away immedietly to all around you unless you have a silencer but those arent so easy to get in the USA (class 3 if I remember correctly).

What are you trying to say with that statement? That knives should be the preferred murder weapon? That clearly isn't the case in any country where getting a gun is 'easy'. Or are murderers in the those countries idiots for using guns instead of the stealthy knife?

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#125

Post by arduanika »

crowdpleaser wrote: post #10
pat2man wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mexico would also benefit if we solved our drug problem. We’ve created a huge economic opportunity for the black market in Mexico. If we really focused on drug rehab instead of just throwing people in jail I bet a lot of the violence in Mexico would go away.

Why can't Mexico perform the basic state function of protecting its citizens from organized violence? Drug rehab may sound like a panacea, but as it's practiced and administered in America, rehab centers seem to respond to their perverse incentive to treat addicts enough to get them out the door and relapsed back into treatment. I think we're doing a lot to treat addiction, but Mexico can't count on us to solve the h…

> rehab centers seem to respond to their perverse incentive to treat addicts enough to get them out the door and relapsed back into treatment

Interesting. Unrelatedly: how's OkCupid going for everyone?

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#126

Post by magoghm »

acdha wrote: post #75
testrun wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that is true, then Canada should have exactly the same problem.

Canada has a much stronger, better funded government and, in particular, they don’t have the drug trade pushing amounts of money rivaling state budgets into crime syndicates. Mexico has been destabilized by U.S. influences fore decades and the widespread corruption is in no small due to the number of areas where honest cops and prosecutors are dead – there’s even a phrase “plomo o plumo” (Silver or lead?) describing…

It's "plomo o plata" (lead or silver).

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#127

Post by [deleted] »

leereeves wrote: post #103
pryce wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Latin America there have been repeated movements for many decades to identify and address these underlying social injustices, including the wealth distribution. These movements often do not fare well, and the US Government is invested (financially, militarily, politically) in ensuring that these movements do not fare well.

Yeah, Venezuela's going through one of those movements right now, and thanks to it, has the third highest homicide rate in the world.

[deleted]

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#128

Post by magoghm »

crowdpleaser wrote: post #70
joecool1029 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't Mexico perform the basic state function of protecting its citizens from organized violence? The drug cartel has better funding. This is why you see El Chapo housed in the US and not Mexico anymore.

Do the drug cartels have better funding? Mexico's Federal Budget was $314 billion dollars last year, estimates put America's illegal drug expenditures in the region of $100 billion [0], I imagine a lot of that money stays within the country. But I don't see how it's possible for Mexican cartels have even 25% of the budget of the government. Why do you think the Mexican drug cartels have better funding than a governme…

Most of the Mexico's federal budget isn't for protecting citizens from violent criminals, if I remember correctly the federal budget for "security" (police, army, navy, etc.) is less than $20 billion dollars.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#129

Post by briandear »

ppseafield wrote: post #115
giancarlostoro wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are a bit quieter with a knife though. A gun gives you away immedietly to all around you unless you have a silencer but those arent so easy to get in the USA (class 3 if I remember correctly). In England people get knifed and who can know? And if its not a knife it will be a car, power tools, planes, boats, pushing someone off of a building. I rather retain my right to protect myself from crazies and die trying t…

> Having gone to the range here in the US I gotta say its not as easy as most think. You have rules amongst people who handle fire arms you must follow or get banned from a range. I don't think being banned from one particular range significantly reduces the chance someone will commit an act of gun violence. > ___ is a tool. Anybody can use a tool correctly and anybody can use a tool incorrectly. Any tool can be boug…

In Australia, homicide has decreased by nine percent since 1990 and armed robbery by one-third since 2001, but recorded assaults and sexual assaults have both increased steadily in the past 10 years by over 40 percent and 20 percent respectively. Crime was already decreasing in Australia before the 1996 ban, however since that time violent crime overall has increased significantly.

Re: Gun laws where guns take the most lives

#130

Post by arduanika »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #40
leereeves wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mexico actually has one of the lower homicide rates in Latin America (17th in LA, 20th worldwide). Proximity to the US isn't correlated with a high homicide rate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

What you're pointing out is exactly what the article misses: firearms are not the only tool used in homicides. Negative effects on society from homicide are because of the violent death, not because of the mechanism.

That's a bingo!

You can't really draw very much from the poorly framed data in this article. They selected these 6 countries by absolute number of deaths / guns, rather than per capita; mix suicides with homicides; and don't include the overall number of homicides, which (as I think you're suggesting) could be used to tease out direction of causality.

Moreover, n=6 lies in the realm of anecdote, not data. There are ~200 countries in the UN. If you want to know anything significant, throw all their gun ownership rates, homicide rotes, Gini coefficients, etc into a regression and maybe you'll be able to say something interesting.

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