Comment Re:War of government against people? (Score 1) 875
We have more guns. (Per person!) According to our own government's statistics. Yet we have less violent crime. This is a direct, indisputable DISproof of the idea that "more guns equals more crime".
There's no real point in arguing with a gun nut, but I'll do so anyway.
You point out that the US has more guns per person. But the US also has (plausibly) seen a considerable drop in the number of people who own guns in the past 30 years: http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
So triumphal ballyhooing about "proof" (never a good sign in someone who pretends to be arguing the data, which only ever increase or decrease plausibility) is a bit premature. It is at least as plausible that some types of violent crime have decreased because fewer people can lay their hands on a deadly weapon in a moment of anger or confusion.
When making a statistical argument (but I repeat myself) it is always important to dig into the sub-structure of the data. In this case, the distribution of gun ownership. In other cases, the kind of gun owned may be important: there is some evidence that the prevalence of handguns specifically are associated with homicides. Canada, for example, has comparable long-gun ownership to the US--and they are used for the same primary purpose here as they are there, which is to commit suicide--but far fewer handguns and a far lower gun-murder rate.