Without guns, there are still pipe bombs (Boston Marathon bombing), truck bombs (Oklahoma City bombing), mail bombs (The Unabomber), and other mass murder options for those with ill intent, to say nothing of poisons, biological weapons, etc. Banning guns will not address the root cause of the violent impulses, and only serve the demonstrate the Politician's Syllogism yet again.
Using real government violence against peaceable people who have harmed no one does not solve crime, it institutionalizes crime. Governments are by far the greatest mass murderers in history, and democide dwarfs "private sector" murder rates. You present raw numbers of incidents, not deaths per capita. You also treat the US like a homogeneous whole when it has more states, more land mass, and about 3/4 the population of the entire EU.
RazörFist phrased it best when he said "what you demystify, you disarm, what you demonize, you attract the impressionable to."
@aussieninja is hardly a unique case, as you may have guessed. I have never seen an honest argument for gun control. The people presenting the arguments may honestly believe what they are saying (thus making them useful idiots), but the arguments themselves are always dishonest in one way or another, from misleading statistics to misinformation about guns themselves.
I've known many people who were terrified of specific guns, and even guns in general, simply because all they know about them they have heard from legacy media propaganda. I've managed to "cure" one such person, and I'm working on two others. Luckily, my neighbour owns an AR-15 and I own this thing:
so exposing people to such items and informing them that what they've been told is wrong isn't all that difficult.
How easily can people get access to bombs? How easily can they purchase poisons or biological weapons? How many school children have been murdered in their classrooms by bombs or poisons?
The problem is the absolute ease that people in the US can get weapons of war to carry out their ill intent against innocent school children.
Nearly half of US parents are worried about their children getting shot Source... how many people in the US are truly worried about the government murdering them versus a random lone gunman with a high-powered weapon?
I understand your concern, really I do, the US government has never proven itself to be trustworthy... but my question to you is what percentage of school children would it take to be affected by gun violence before you'd change your mind on gun regulations?
Many deadly poisons are (or can be made by mixing) household chemicals. Fertilizer has been used to make bombs. Black powder can be made at home.
Guns are not "weapons of war" by default. The obstacle erected to prevent people from buying guns do not promote safety. Crime does not correlate with firearm ownership rates or types of firearms available.
Appeals to fear and popularity are irrational. Do you know what the real trend has been in violent crime over the past 35 years? It was dropping before the Clinton gun ban in the 90s. It continued to drop after Bush allowed that law to end per its sunset clause. It has dropped as states relaxed restrictions on carry. It remains high in two key areas: 1. impoverished neighborhoods with gangs and a black market in drugs, and 2. "gun-free zones."
No misdeeds by others can ever justify anyone infringing on peaceful people. Should crypto or cash be banned because they are "preferred by criminals"? No. Same for firearms, even machine guns. "But what about the children" is the exact same argument used by these book-banning Karens who prefer state violence as a solution to their fears.
He's not going to listen. He's just going to keep brow-beating you until you make some kind of concession. I thought he was a useful idiot, but now, I'm starting to think that he's just another narcissistic moral busybody. Arguing with such people usually feels like this after a while:
I'm absolutely willing to listen.
I totally understand why people would want to own single shot rifles for hunting, but I don't understand why someone might need to own a firearm that can fire 60 rounds a minute.... especially now that we know so many innocent children have died in school shootings to those types of weapons.
If there is a real reason why citizens need those weapons that is more important than the lives of those school children I'd love to hear it.
Your failure to understand is irrelevant. Your are building a false choice when you present either owning modern firearms or protecting children. You are also deliberately ignoring the violence necessary to enforce these arbitrary edicts and the dearth of evidence that firearm freedom is the root cause of violence in society.
Why are your fears more important than my liberty? Why do you advocate government violence against peaceful people as a solution to your fear?
He completely missed the point of my arguments as well. When I informed him that countries which restrict access to firearms tend to have a lot of knife crime, he deflected to "gUnS dO mOrE dAmAgE tHaN kNiVeS."
When I informed him that his statistics are lies by omission, he said they weren't misleading.
When I informed him that the majority of gun crime in the US is committed with handguns, he expressed support for banning them as well, not just semi-automatic rifles. Apparently he really liked my brief explanation of Russian gun laws, and fully supports implementing them in the US. I don't. Russian gun laws are a wee bit restrictive IMO, but I could at least live with them, unlike British or German gun laws.
Are more children killed by knives in Japan or England than by firearms in the USA?
Obviously knife crime will rise in the USA if common sense gun regulations were introduced, but I imagine the overall numbers of school children affected by violence would be lower. Is that not a fair assumption?
I don't advocate for government violence against peaceful people.
Is a child in the United States of America more likely to be killed by a firearm wielded by a US citizen... or by government violence?
Aight, Ima post this again:
Also, have you ever heard of the "public school to prison pipeline"?
What are the leading causes of death of children in the United States of America?
It's not poison. It's not bombs either.
At what point is the "cure" (guns) for "government violence" worse than the disease (children being killed by firearms)?
What would it take to change your mind on gun regulations in the US? What percentage of school children affected by gun violence will it honestly take to change your mind on this? 100%?
People who want common sense gun regulation and people who want to ban books are not making the same argument. The people who want regulations on guns are trying to solve the very real problem of children being shot in classrooms. Too many children are being murdered in their classrooms in the USA. That is a real problem that requires a solution.
Book banning is just religious people trying to enforce their views on others. They are very different arguments... the similarity is that children are involved in both scenarios.
How many "firearm-related deaths" are suicide or gang violence as opposed to school shootings? How does a ban address the root problem? How many instances of war, genocide, and police brutality will it take for you to change your mind about governmental legitimacy? We are facing a mental health crisis and a police state crisis. Blaming guns and demanding new laws is scapegoating, not taking serious responsibility. Your faith in political solutions is religious.
Honestly, I think there is a ton of work to be done in the USA to solve the violence affecting children.
I would absolutely love to see more resources devoted to mental health services, to housing, to solving rampart drug-use, etc. I absolutely want to see far more accountability for police in the United States. Police are absolutely a huge problem in this country, especially in their actions towards underserved communities.
If an increase in mental health services decreased gun violence in the United States, great, amazing, let's do it. If putting more resources into communities reduced violence, then awesome. I'm all for that.
To me, common sense gun regulations are part of the overall solution, and I might be wrong here, but they also seem like the easily place to start... the quickest win as it were, especially with buyback schemes that have been successful in other countries.
There is a problem with the amount of gun violence in the USA that I think needs to be solved.
Right, now you're starting to get it. The problem, however, is that the quick and easy solution is rarely the best.
First of all, judging by the rates of violent crime in your own country, I think it's safe to assume that the 1996 gun buyback didn't actually do anything. I sincerely doubt that gun buybacks in general are actually effective, even if the violent crime rate decreased afterwards. Correlation does not equal cause.
Second, the problems usually start in the public school system, which is why I mentioned the "public school to prison pipeline," in reference to the fact that the Prussian model (which American schools are based on) is an absolute failure, and @jacobtothe could explain why if you don't already know, because I can't be arsed to explain at the moment. I was spared from that experience, fortunately, otherwise I may very well have turned into a murderous psychopath... okay slight exaggeration there, but maybe you see my point.
Third, consider what I told you about the average school shooter, and bear in mind that not only are these (usually) boys abused at school, they are also neglected at home. Parents who don't want to raise their children stick them in public school and don't help them with their problems. Some people shouldn't be parents, simple as, but I don't think the government should be making the determination of who can or cannot be a parent; as before, Russia has this problem too, as @taliakerch routinely mentions.
Common sense gun regulations are part of the solution though.
Australia has 3 firearm murders per 1,000,000 people and the USA has 32.
I don't think that's correlation. That's because firearms are not easy to get in Australia which is part of those reforms. The buyback scheme got 650,000 firearms out of circulation, that has an effect on violent crime.
The murder rate in Australia is 1.3 per 100,000 people and in the US it's 5.
There are obviously a whole lot of factors that contribute to this. The Australian tax rate is really high, and a lot goes into services for mental health and low-income communities, but one of those factors is the inaccessibility of handguns and semi-automatic rifles.
The problem isn't with public schooling per se... it's with the resources that go into low-income areas. Lots of public schools have minimal violence, but when you have entire communities with very little opportunity, then violence increases.
Absolutely agree with your third point. The introduction of abortion laws and the outlawing of lead paint in the US had a significant impact on lowering crime 20 years later. The US is a great case study on this because the different states enacted different laws at different times so you can see the actual causation.
Hopefully reducing neglected children is something that countries and states get better at over time with family planning and health services... but if there are children that are neglected, you definitely don't want them to have easy access to high-powered weapons.