[pyro-manic]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4368598.stm

Just browsing the news, but the numbers jumped out at me: 36,000 gun-related deaths last year in Brazil. That's quite a statistic.

[aldo_14]

But society can't exist without the ability to easily kill each other!

[Rictor]

Yeah, Rio de Jeneiro is supposedly one of the worst places in the world when it comes to gun-crime. Still, I'm glad, because it shows that people still have some will left.

aldo, I know you meant it sarcastically, but there is some truth in that. Broad ownership of small arms serves to decentralize power. Sure, it's not perfect, and many innocents die in abuses of that power, but the principle is sound. All power comes down to sheer force in the final analysis. Having the power to inflict physical harm  in many hands, even if they are evil and corrupt hands, is better than one faction having a monopoly on violence (though governments do already have a monopoly on *legitimate* violence)

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Rictor
Yeah, Rio de Jeneiro is supposedly one of the worst places in the world when it comes to gun-crime. Still, I'm glad, because it shows that people still have some will left.

aldo, I know you meant it sarcastically, but there is some truth in that. Broad ownership of small arms serves to decentralize power. Sure, it's not perfect, and many innocents die in abuses of that power, but the principle is sound. All power comes down to sheer force in the final analysis. Having the power to inflict physical harm  in many hands, even if they are evil and corrupt hands, is better than one faction having a monopoly on violence (though governments do already have a monopoly on *legitimate* violence)

 Is violence and intimidation now considered such a critical component of democracy so as to give everyone the ability to do it?

That without the ability to commit senseless acts of violence, democracy does not exist?

What sort of power does gun ownership decentralize, anyways?

[Rictor]

Originally posted by aldo_14

What sort of power does gun ownership decentralize, anyways?

All power. Economic, political, ideological, everything.

Like I said, all power comes down to violence. Most rules in society exist within the legal system. That's the reason you can't steal, that's the reason you can't kill someone and that's the reason you pay taxes. However, the legal system would be useless without force to back it up. Enter the police and army. To simplfy it, every time you pay $2.50 for the metro, there is a very indirect gun, though a gun all the same, being pointed at your head.

And it doesn't only apply to governments. If any corporation of group of corporations, or in fact any group of people at all, were able to outgun the government, they would wield all the powers of a government. You and I both know there is no fairy Godmother protecting our rights. Without the threat of force, even if it will always remain just a threat, all your rights mean nothing. When you get down to the nitty-gritty, you have only as much freedom and as much power as you have capability to inflict harm.

[Solatar]

I pay 2.50 for the metro so that it won't fall apart from lack of maintenance, then I can ride it later. I'm pretty selfish actually.

EDIT: although a little rebellion here and there could probably do some good...

[Styxx]

I voted against the prohibition, and I'm glad the ban was rejected. The government here doesn't have the power to remove the guns from the people actually responsible for all those deaths in the statistics - all the ban would do is remove guns from law abiding citizens and take away from them what little protection they still have on a society where the government isn't able to provide basic security (of course, that's not valid for the whole country, maybe not even for most of it, but it is valid in several places).

If the government was actually able to suppress contraband, illegal sales, and to do something to take the guns from the actual criminals, I could have a different mindset. As it is, this whole vote was a sham and a blatant attempt to direct attention away from the real problems.

[Mongoose]

How typical of the UN to back something like this. Yup, we'll just ban all guns, and then all of society's problems will vanish. As Styxx said, and he's the only one here who has a first-hand view of what the situation in Brazil is like, targeting the guns instead of the people using them is entirely ass-backwards.  Does anyone honestly think that a crime boss or gang leader would politely hand over their own personal arsenal just because of some legislative action?

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Rictor

All power. Economic, political, ideological, everything.

Like I said, all power comes down to violence. Most rules in society exist within the legal system. That's the reason you can't steal, that's the reason you can't kill someone and that's the reason you pay taxes. However, the legal system would be useless without force to back it up. Enter the police and army. To simplfy it, every time you pay $2.50 for the metro, there is a very indirect gun, though a gun all the same, being pointed at your head.

And it doesn't only apply to governments. If any corporation of group of corporations, or in fact any group of people at all, were able to outgun the government, they would wield all the powers of a government. You and I both know there is no fairy Godmother protecting our rights. Without the threat of force, even if it will always remain just a threat, all your rights mean nothing. When you get down to the nitty-gritty, you have only as much freedom and as much power as you have capability to inflict harm.

Can you cite one example where private ownership of weapons has overturned a corrupt/undemocratic government or resulted in democracy?   Certainly, the US police force (for example) seems to have a far greater capacity to inflict harm than the British.

Originally posted by Mongoose
How typical of the UN to back something like this. Yup, we'll just ban all guns, and then all of society's problems will vanish. As Styxx said, and he's the only one here who has a first-hand view of what the situation in Brazil is like, targeting the guns instead of the people using them is entirely ass-backwards.  Does anyone honestly think that a crime boss or gang leader would politely hand over their own personal arsenal just because of some legislative action?

Works quite well in the UK.  

Does anyone think having legally sold guns makes it harder for criminals to obtain weapons?

I mean, I know in the US they've had a fair number of studies that have said privately owned guns are predominately used in familiar violence (accidental shootings of family members, suicide, murder of family).  They found that the people arrested for non-traffic offenses were more likely to own weapons (37% versus 25% of general population, that the vast majority of purchased handguns had magazines of over 10 bullets (37% to 14%), and that 32% of all felons obtained weapons by stealing legally held guns (over 500,000 weapons in total).  

Of course, you are far more likely (by about 5 times) to be killed in the commision of a robbery by a criminal armed with a gun, than one armed with a knife.

Additionally, a study on 743 gunshot deaths (Scientific American, vol. 265, 1991, p. 48) found 84% occured due to altercations in the home, and of these only 2 were of an intruder, with only 9 found in court to be justified.  The FBIs 1994-95 release of crime statistics revealed 24,526 murders, 13,980 with handguns, and only 251 of which were found to be justifiable homicide.

Research by Dr. Arthur Kellerman ("Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home," The New England Journal of Medicine, October 7, 1993, pp. 1084-1091) identified that owning a gun carries a risk of murder in the home 2.7 times greater than not owning a gun.

Obviously this is all US figures, but english language details on Brazils' situation seem hard to come by.  Nonetheless, I'd suggest a correlation.

[Kosh]

In China no one is allowed to own guns. Period.



On the other hand the few times that I have seen a police officer here, they never carry guns.



EDIT: Although I always see these on TV:

http://www.iar-arms.com/mauser.htm

[aldo_14]

They just send in the Army with tanks to run people over .

[Kosh]

It's not the first country to do that.

[aldo_14]

Doesn't make it a good example of civil order though, does it?  I mean... running over unarmed protestors doesn't exactly convey the impression that gun control has made the country safe (rampant oppression has) or preserved democracy.

Although China is a singular example anyways, and I wouldn't suggest it's an argument against gun control any more than a democratic nation without said control is, because the reason why China is as it is goes beyond such simple reasoning.  I'm looking for a specific example where (civillian) gun ownership can be shown as the defining reason for the preservation, introduction or restoration of democracy and/or basic freedoms.

[Styxx]

Originally posted by aldo_14
Although China is a singular example anyways, and I wouldn't suggest it's an argument against gun control any more than a democratic nation without said control is, because the reason why China is as it is goes beyond such simple reasoning.  I'm looking for a specific example where (civillian) gun ownership can be shown as the defining reason for the preservation, introduction or restoration of democracy and/or basic freedoms.

That's not the point, at least not in Brazil. The government can't enforce the ban, period. Only law-abiding citizens would obey the law and be barred from buying weapons and ammunition, while actual criminals would still be well supplied by smugglers. Besides, most of the guns actually used by criminals are already banned - submachineguns (the Uzi is a favorite), assault rifles, even bloody rocket launchers. Having the sale forbidden doesn't seem to be helping a lot on that department.

When it comes to gun-related accidents causing deaths - the most popular examples from the pro-ban faction are those involving children finding their parent's gun - can be solved by education a lot better than by just banning the sale of guns and ammunition. And other "home" crimes, such as passion crimes, neighbour disputes and such would happen with or without guns - a knife or club kills just as much as a gun. There was such an incident on my building a while ago: one of the residents complained about a kid who was all day hanging out skating in front of the building, and a couple of days later the kid waited for him to leave the building and promptly hit him in the head with a baseball bat. He died of the injury. Would he be any deader if it had been a gun?

[aldo_14]

The point of banning guns in that context is that they make killing easier; there is the simple facts of physical distance (emotional dissassociation from the act owing to lack of physical contact or proximity) and effort (simple trigger pull); that's why I cited the (US) likelihood of being killed in an armed robbery being so much higher with a gun-armed robber than with a knife armed robber.

There will always be, of course, that sort of nutcase who'll chib, stab, bottle or soforth people. That's why we have police, and that's why I wouldn't advocate the banning of guns without also tacking the underlying social causes of such violence.  But the issue (I am referring to) is the people who aren't natural murderers but do so because it becomes 'convenient' in the heat of the moment.

Another little statistic I remember; in America, 56% of gun owners have had some form of formal (military, police, NRA, etc) training.  Yet this group were no more likely to store a gun safely (unloaded, locked away) than those without training (Hemenway, D., S.J. Solnick, and D. Azrael,
"Firearm Training and Storage," Journal of the
American Medical Association, 273(1):46-50, 1995*).  This is especially true for handguns; which, of course, due to their size are more likely to be bought for 'self defense'.

*unfortunately, I've been unable to access beyond the abstract.  I've seen a secondary citation that the most likely group to have an unsecured firearm are those who have bought it for self-defense, own a handgun, and have received formal training.  This was a survey of 800 owners, 20% of whom kept a firearm unlocked and loaded at home.  Bearing in mind that the majority of Americans bought a firearm for the purposes of recreation (i.e. hunting; so likely a rifle/shotgun); 46% buy it for self defense.  Given that a handgun is primarily a self-defense weapon (rapid fire, concealable, somewhat inaccurate), it would seem to make sense that the 20% are primarily of this group.

[Kosh]

Besides, most of the guns actually used by criminals are already banned - submachineguns (the Uzi is a favorite), assault rifles, even bloody rocket launchers. Having the sale forbidden doesn't seem to be helping a lot on that department.

Rocket launchers? So, what do you think the government should do about this problem?

When it comes to gun-related accidents causing deaths - the most popular examples from the pro-ban faction are those involving children finding their parent's gun - can be solved by education a lot better than by just banning the sale of guns and ammunition.

In reality, there are many other examples. I have heard many stories about gun owners shooting themselves in the head because they kept a loaded gun under their pillows. A gun won't protect from the greatest threat to your personal safety; yourself.

And other "home" crimes, such as passion crimes, neighbour disputes and such would happen with or without guns - a knife or club kills just as much as a gun.

Yes, but it is more likely to happen if there is a gun involved. A gun often gives the person who wields it a sense of power. A perfect example of this was after 9/11, gun sales went through the roof. Would a gun help you if someone set-off a nuke? No. But it is the false sense of security and power that having a gives you.

[Styxx]

Originally posted by Kosh
Rocket launchers? So, what do you think the government should do about this problem?

Give more funding to the police and oversee and regulate it better to prevent corruption. The police here basically has its hands tied most of the time due to lack of funds for training, weapons and equipment. The police should be better armed and trained than the crimnals, not the other way around.

A few years ago, when the situation got bad enough to prompt the government to put the army on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, they took care of it handily enough. Unfortunately, the army isn't trained for law enforcement, and keeping them as a regular street presence wouldn't work in the long term, so they were withdrawn. A while after the army was recalled, it was right back as it was before. The police - and the law enforcement establishment in general - must be able to intimidate criminals if it's to work in its intended role as deterrent. That's obviously not happening here, not by a long shot.

Originally posted by Kosh
Yes, but it is more likely to happen if there is a gun involved. A gun often gives the person who wields it a sense of power. A perfect example of this was after 9/11, gun sales went through the roof. Would a gun help you if someone set-off a nuke? No. But it is the false sense of security and power that having a gives you.

That's an opinion. I've seen statistics "proving" both sides of the issue along the campaign for the vote for the gun ban here. And as far as personal experience goes, I've had two cases happen with people I knew, one was with a baseball bat and the other was with an axe. As the usual line goes, should we ban baseball bats and axes?

[aldo_14]

Do baseball bats and axes have a use beyond hurting people?

[Styxx]

Originally posted by aldo_14
Do baseball bats and axes have a use beyond hurting people?

Baseball bats have only one other use: sport. My father has several guns - both shotguns and handguns. He uses all of them for sport: hunting and target shooting, whatever the name in english is. He never killed anyone, nor uses them for self defense, they're kept perfectly safe on locked boxes at home. So, both items have the same uses. Why should one be banned and the other not?

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by aldo_14
Can you cite one example where private ownership of weapons has overturned a corrupt/undemocratic government or resulted in democracy?

The American Revolution?