Sorry, the problem *is* the guns. Take away the guns, and nobody would be dead. --
This seems so logical, and yet I encourage you to present any real world example proving what you claim. The truth is that only law abiding citizens obey laws in the first place. If someone is willing to commit murder, they are certainly going to be willing to break any gun law.
Some things to consider:
New Jersey adopted what sponsors described as "the most stringent gun law" in the nation in 1966; two years later, the murder rate was up 46 percent and the reported robbery rate had nearly doubled.
In 1968, Hawaii imposed a series of increasingly harsh measures and its murder rate, then a low 2.4 per 100,000 per year, tripled to 7.2 by 1977.
In 1976, Washington, D.C., enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Since then, the city's murder rate has risen 134 percent while the national murder rate has dropped 2 percent.
Now these will surprise you:
In Kennesaw, Ga., the city passed a law requiring all households to possess a gun. Within seven months, the burglary rate dropped by 89 percent.
In Orlando, Fla., the police department set up a program teaching 600,000 women how to handle firearms. Subsequently, the rape rate dropped by 88 percent.
Among the six million Swiss, there are an estimated two million guns -- including 600,000 fully automatic assault rifles, and their murder rate is 15 percent of ours.
I challenge you, go ahead and give us an example of what you claim. You won't find too many. It would seem to make sense that if you take away the guns you stop the killing, but take a look sometime at a country like England that has stringent gun laws and look at the rate of murder and rape, in almost every case it increase with gun control. When you outlaw guns all you do is remove the right of law abiding citizens to protect themselves and the criminals have free reign. If, however, a person was going to break into a house in a neighborhood notorious for its gun advocacy, they might think twice as there is a higher risk of
them losing
their life.
Some sources and good references:
Article by the National Center for Policy Analysis [ncpa.org]
Article at the Independence Institute [i2i.org]
Capitolism Magazine Article [capitalismmagazine.com]
Article on Heartland.org [heartland.org]
An Article on Australia's Gun Control mistake, cut with some humor. [breakthechain.org]
Now I wouldn't post a problem without a solution, so
here [usmayors.org] is an article detailing an alternative to making all guns illegal.
