Random urban sniper sprees just got a whole lot worse.

Really? I have not seen any evidence in the news reports lately. Is CNN burying a story on a sniper spree?

In the grand scheme of things, this rates a large yawn. Guns (especially rifles) still make a hell of a boom. Yes, you can not shoot from a LOT further away, but the people around you can still hear it, call the cops, etc. Even IF you managed to put a suppressor on this thing, any round that can reach any appreciable distance is, by necessity, going to be far above supersonic, so there will still be a lot of noise.

The current cost of this type of system also keeps this out of all but the most dedicated hands. Really, I see this being useful to hunters with too much money. Your average street thug will not be able to afford this. Besides, how often are rifles of ANY type used in homicides? They account for about 3% or so of all murders - a drop in the bucket.

I remember California freaking out about the .50 BMG round so they outlawed it. Total number of crimes committed with the .50 BMG in the US so far? Zero.

I would suggest that the states with higher murder rates implemented tougher gun laws as a response to high murder rates.

And yet they still have higher murder rates. Those laws must not be very effective.

Let me put it this way. The areas that tend to have more crime also have higher population densities and lower incomes (more poverty). That is MUCH more indicative of the crime rate than simple gun ownership. Some place, like Wyoming, have a VERY HIGH gun ownership rate, but rather low crime. They also do not have any real big cities to speak of. If it were actually true that more guns = more homicide, then Wyoming would have a murder rate through the roof. As it is, Wyoming is infinitely safer than Chicago, which has done all that it can to ban guns.

I am not saying that gun ownership can't affect the murder rate. I am just saying that there are MANY other factors (mostly economic) that are FAR more important. As you have already seen, getting lead out of the environment has stopped way more murders than even banning all guns would have.

I'm quite happy for you to live your life as you wish, providing you don't go about gratuitously harming others.

Just checked my "to do" list. Oil change. Pick up groceries. Take my daughter to get her hair done. Wait.... Nope. Sorry, but "kill some random people" seems to be missing from my list. I am far too busy to fit anything else into my schedule, so everybody else is safe from me for now.

And as mentioned before, you're 3 times as likely to commit suicide and twice as likely to be murdered if you have a gun in the house. More & more people are wising up to that fact, and that's why the proportion of households with guns is dropping.

Sorry, but I am going to call BS on that study. Ever heard of "cherry-picking" data? Yup, that is what the vast majority of anti-gun reports do.

The tendency is for states with higher gun ownership to have fewer murders. Indeed, among the most dangerous places in the entire country are the places with the most strict gun control. Explain that one!

As to suicides, where did that number come from? While guns are particularly good as suicide tools, they are far from the only tool. In Japan, there is no such thing as private gun ownership, and yet that country has a lot more suicides than the US. Ever heard of rope? Knives? Pills?

And, even if there WERE a grain of truth in what you say, increased alcohol intake costs lives. So does trans-fat, tobacco, and lots of salt. Who are you to tell me how to live. Whether I but a gun, a cigar, a bottle of whiskey, or the jumbo-sized box of Oreos, it is honestly none of your business.

Tell you what: I will graciously allow you to live your life in the best way that you see fit, and you extend to me the same courtesy. Deal?

Do you know what America did to reduce crime and the homicide rate? We banned lead in paint and gasoline. Yes, seriously!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/al...

So, why doesn't Australia do this?

If the homicide rate dropped by 30%, and 30% of that is the result of banning guns, then that means that 0% is attributable to dropping lead levels. This leads to four possibilities:

1) Australia never actually had any lead. Even back in the 1960's, Australia did not use lead paint or leaded gasoline. Possible, I suppose. Maybe gasoline was not used, as adults rode kangaroos to work, and the kids rode wallabies to school? Maybe nobody painted their houses with lead paint, as there is no need to paint corrugated tin?

2) Australia still has not banned lead. If so, they need to do so immediately!

3) They DID ban lead just like the US, but decreasing lead levels did not impact Australian physiology the same way it does in the US. Maybe the mass quantities of alcohol consumed over there somehow rids the body of lead. Maybe being upside-down all the time, and the fact that lead is heavy, meant that all the lead leaked out of the tops of your heads.

4) They DID ban lead just like the US, and most/all of the drop in homicide is due to declining lead levels, and the gun ban has actually had little to no impact on the homicide rate. Coincidentally, this would ALSO neatly explain why the knife and club murder rates also dropped.

So, which theory do you support?

By the way, it is also good to know that your country isn't doing any of that other useless stuff to reduce crime and murder, like improve education, reduce poverty, or any of that other rubbish that is less useful that taking guns away (which also, as a strange coincidence, reduces stabbing and beating deaths by the exact same proportion, by some strange miracle). Good on ya, mate!

Did they have a great knife buy-back? Do you need to get a background check and lots of forms for buying kitchen knives and golf clubs? Just wondering, but if Gordon Ramsey (famous chef) showed, up, would he get arrested for smuggling weapons?

No, seriously! Most guns were removed from the population. You need strict permits and prove that you need one to get it. This reduced gun crime. I assume that they did a similar thing for knives and clubs to get murders with those weapons reduced by exactly the same amount. Stands to reason.

So, that explains about 20%. Did Australia crack down on the tools used in the other 80%? Did banning guns somehow also reduce the prevalence of golf clubs and cricket bats? Or did crime maybe go down for some other reason. Be honest!

Riiight. Nope, no bias in that study at all. Refer to my link above about the murder rate of states vs. gun ownership.

And I am completely sure that there is no bias in that study that you linked... none at all.

Guns are used about 800,000 times per year in America to prevent crime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So, explain to me why the gun usage, as a percentage of homicide rate, did not actually drop significantly? Could it be that the HONEST people were the ones that gave up their guns while the criminals kept theirs?

Also, is mass shooting the ONLY way to measure success? What if you went back in time, prevented the gun laws from passing, and found that 20 more people died per year in mass shootings, while an extra 100 or so were killed individually? Is it somehow worse when people die as a group but not so bad when they die one-by-one?

Yup, the gun laws are responsible for EVERYTHING. It must have NOTHING to do with the population density, the criminal justice system, the social system, the economy, the government, or the family structure. Gun laws dictate everything.

Say, Japan has almost not guns, but a much higher suicide rate. According to your logic, this is proof that fewer guns cause suicide, right?

The Riemann Hypothesis has not been proven either, but everybody assumes that it's true.

I actually wanted to run the numbers for this myself, but I could not find a database of number of murders by zip code. If you can get this, and get the average income per zip code, it should not be TOO hard to make some decent conjectures. Maybe add data on population density per zip code, and you should get some REAL eye-opening results. If anybody knows where to get this, I would appreciate it, and publicly admit that your google-fu was stronger than mine.

With that being said, would you feel more nervous about being a victim of violent crime in a low-income neighborhood, or an area with mansions and Ferraris?

pools don't shoot out of your neighbours property and hit you in the face. BULLETS CAN. and no you can not prevent yourself from being accidentally shot by somebody else. What will you do? shoot them first?

Let me paraphrase...

pools don't shoot out of your neighbours property and hit you in the face. CARS CAN. and no you can not prevent yourself from being accidentally run over by somebody else. What will you do? run them over first?

Car accidents kill LOTS of people (about 20,000 each year in the US), and many people are NOT the ones who did anything wrong. Using the same logic, should we ban cars? If not, why not? Both kill about as many people per year. One is protected by the Constitution, one is not.

Seriously? They are NOT the same, but common sense should STILL apply -- keep them away from children -- this ain't rocket science. Sort of like you should practice common sense before hitting the "submit" button.

Hmmm. What else does Detroit also have? Yes, the have guns. So does Dallas, but Dallas is much safer. Detroit has major economic problems, which Texas does not suffer from so much.

It is not the guns, it is the poverty. Why not attack the root cause instead of just the tools used?

If you take guns away from Detroit, you still have more criminals, just without guns. Take away poverty and provide jobs and you don't just reduce crime, but you also make the general population much happier, as they could then afford luxuries like food.

And if a child falls in a pool, the child is still dead. Accidents are preventable. Accidental drownings do not mean that we ban pools -- it means that parents must be careful. Why should this be suddenly different for guns, except for the fact that you are looking for excuses to ban guns, not pools.

Since when does "disarm everybody" work that well on crime?

Austalia had a great "gun-ban" and their homicide rate DID go down (it wend down MORE here is the USA during the same period, but why bother with facts). Let's look at one of the consequences:

http://www.aic.gov.au/dataTool...

Choose Homicide, 1995 and Homicide, 2012. The number of gun homicides, by percentage, looks almost EXACTLY the same. Firearm usage in murder dropped from 18.38% to17.5% Wow. WHAT A SLAM DUNK! There might be a LOT of reasons for the decrease in homicide rate, but apparently less than 1% can be attributed to banning guns. Wow, that makes a difference, huh?

I know, Australia is also cracking down on knife crime too, and cops can hassle a person for carrying a Leatherman -- nice freedom over there guys.