Dumb arses and guns...

[PTT]

Who is penalising the law-abiding?

[500N]

Everyone who wants to ban guns. All you are doing is affecting law abiding firearm owners. Crims keep the one's they have.

[F900 Ex]

PTT
Who is penalising the law-abiding?


Governments, MP's and Politicians under pressure to grab votes from the ill informed public via the media and gun control nuts trying to stay in power taking the easy options.

[VinRouge]

If you cant kill a "crim" with a 3 shot semi auto shotgun, you shouldnt have a weapon in the first place.

Same goes for single shot rifle (unsuitable for home defence) and anything other than 6 shot revolver. Why do you need 30+ rounds?

Did you ever consider by holding weapons for self defence, you make it worse for homeowners who dont posess firearms, who will now potentially face an armed intruder instead of one who would prefer not to carry a weapon to a burglary and the significantly worse legal ramifications if caught doing so. You are making your own problems.

[PTT]

@ 500N

Everyone who wants to ban guns. All you are doing is affecting law abiding firearm owners. Crims keep the one's they have.

Do you really think life is so simplistic that you can divide the world up into "law abiding" and "crims"? It's not the black hat/white hat world of the spaghetti westerns in real life

What you do by restricting access to (not banning) guns is reduce the death rate due to guns. I don't doubt for a second that there are a lot of people who own guns responsibly: they are well trained and educated in their use, practice regularly, and absolutely should not be restricted in any way. On the other hand, there are also a lot of people who own guns irresponsibly: they are untrained, poorly educated in their use, and their concept of practice is shooting beer bottles off a wall (an exaggeration, but you get the point); these people should be restricted in what they can own.

My suggestion would be a testing and training system which allows you to qualify to own different types, or tiers, of weapon. Weapons would be divided into tiers and you can own and buy weapons from tiers for which you are qualified. Qualification would be determined by examination and a requirement for regular practice (not unlike flying) along with medical and mental health certification. Which weapons go into which tier would be determined by a suitable panel of experts either at State or Federal level, whichever is appropriate - I would suggest State because it would both be able to account for regional requirements and be more acceptable to people in general; the only issue is with different laws across state lines, but that's already an issue in the US. Basically a system of compulsory education prior to ownership rather than the voluntary education after ownership which now exists.
Purely as an example, Tier A (or whatever) weapons might include certain types of air weapons, handguns not capable of taking more than 6 rounds at a time, break action shotguns, and bolt or lever action rifles not capable of taking magazines of more than 5 rounds at a time - basically the relatively "safe" stuff. Anyone would qualify for this tier with the same minimum training required by the state now.
Sure, such a system would cost money as it's more bureaucracy, but it would certainly cost less that the $7.2Bn which security guards for schools would cost, it wouldn't penalise anyone who is law-abiding, and it would ensure that the most dangerous weapons are only available legally to those who are suitably trained, educated and practised - the most responsible. I'm not suggesting it would reduce the number of criminals who have guns, of course, but I am suggesting it would reduce the chances of those who are irresponsible getting hold of the most dangerous weapons.

[Airborne Aircrew]

Vin:

Did you ever consider by holding weapons for self defence, you make it worse for homeowners who dont posess firearms, who will now potentially face an armed intruder instead of one who would prefer not to carry a weapon to a burglary and the significantly worse legal ramifications if caught doing so. You are making your own problems.

Why, oh why, does everybody insist that I, or anyone else, should give a rat's arse about everyone else. Firstly, when the bad guy picks my house to invade Joe Public in the next town over can't help and almost certainly could care less about me. So for me to worry about him is silly. But, far more importantly, all the other homeowners have the same right to keep and bear arms as the rest of us. It is, entirely, their choice not to. It's the great part of America... They can choose and so can I.

[PTT]

Firstly, when the bad guy picks my house to invade Joe Public in the next town over can't help and almost certainly could care less about me.

It's not the bad guy you should worry about. From the study I have cited to you several times:

at least 76.7 percent of the murderers were relatives, friends or acquaintances of the victim. In fact, the victim's murderer was 21 times more likely to be a relative or acquaintance than a stranger. Even in the 14 percent of the cases involving forced entry, the vast majority of the intruders were known to the victim. The threat of forced entry is the most commonly cited reason for possessing a domestic firearm, but the researchers found no protective benefit for this subgroup either.

[Airborne Aircrew]

PTT:

handguns not capable of taking more than 6 rounds at a time

That'll help....

[PTT]

Really? You're citing the World Record Holder as a reason it won't work? Can you really not see the flaw in that reasoning?

Besides, it was an example, as I clearly stated.

[finestkind]

AA totally correct hence the ref to cars/knifes etc is a moot point. The reason bows have not been banned is that to walk into a school/cinema/shopping centre and start shooting arrows has a) not occurred and b) highly unlikely to result in multiple deaths (meaning in excess of single digits), this being the main point.

Nice world record. I guess he just walked in and picked it up and "surprise surprise SGT Carter" shot off twelve in three seconds just like anyone could have.

The divergent from the core of this topic is quite interesting and to continue...

I know if my neighbour was in trouble I would assist. I do give a rats arse about other people (possibly a reason why the citizens of the USA demand the right to blow away anyone they feel justified in doing so and why there is so much discussion on this thread from non-US citizens) and respect there beliefs and rights (unless they decide not to honour the responsibility that comes with rights) of others.

Just like most people abhor the suicide bomber and terrorist for the indiscriminate murder of people most of us are stunned by the amount of massacres (particulary death of children) that occur in the States and wonder why it is just accepted as part of the right to bear arms.

[HrkDrvr]

Interesting discussion. Or not.

PTT seems to have found the one and only study that supports his view and puts it out as the sole reference and then end to any differing opinion. Let's dig a little deeper than his link.

Kellerman is a known gun control advocate. This biases his work as a minimum. He used this same study to claim you were 43 times more likely to die if you had a gun in your house. He back pedaled a bit and now you're only 2.7 times more likely. The challenge is, he has not shared his data. It is not a true peer-reviewed study because nobody has really seen his methodology.

Well, here's a report that pokes holes in Kellerman which, by the way, is the only study to correlate gun death in the home the way he does.

Serious Flaws in Kellerman

Further, the three areas in question are not 'affluent' areas as PTT likes to claim. Seattle/Tacoma is probably the 'nicest' of these areas. Last year just the greater metropolitan area of Memphis had a violent crime rate of 980/100,00 and a murder rate of 10.6/100,000, Sea-Tac had a violent crime rate of 330/100,000 and murder rate of 2.1/100,000, and the Cleveland metro area had 404/100,000 and 4.8/100,000 for violent crime and murder respectively. US national averages were 386 & 4.7 per 100,000 respectively for 2011.

But what's more interesting is in 1992 when Kellerman's 'study' was done, the national averages were 757 and 9.3 per 100,000. The USA has seen well over 20 years of steady declines in both violent crime and murder.

For you correlation enthusiasts, in 1987, Florida enacted the first broad concealed carry licensing law. Several states followed suit - by 2002, 29 states had enacted similar laws and by 2012 all but one state, Illinois, have some form of concealed carry law. Most respectable criminologists will tell you that the reduction in violent crime overall, and murder specifically, is attributable to the increase in personal protection afforded under concealed carry laws.

Much like how do you prove your flight safety program is good because you can't prove something is causal if it didn't happen, trying to pin down how much crime is stopped or prevented by concealed carry is challenging. Reports vary widely on actual numbers, but I've seen 'statistics' (and I use that term loosely because sources are varied) that show anywhere between 2500/month to 2.2 million crimes were stopped/prevented by non-criminals with guns last year. Even if you go with the low number, that more than offsets the <10,000 murders last year with guns.

Of note, as of yesterday, Chicago has had 31 murders so far in 2013 and 109 people shot - this from the city with the strictest gun control in the state with the strictest gun control. Every single one of these guns is illegal, fired by criminals who didn't do a background check or get their gun from the range, or who cared what capacity magazine was in the well. Chicago is a veritable petri dish of what's wrong with the 'logic' of gun control advocates and why it doesn't work.

For those who think us Yanks are worried too much that someone is going to take our guns, it is a slippery slope indeed. You've been down it already, UK, I just hope Newtown isn't our Dunblane. You've lived with gun control for so long, most of you have grown up being told it's the right thing to do. Yet more and more of you cops are riding around in armed response units and not just in your major metropolitan areas.

Here's one you'll be familiar with - a mild dramatization of a true story with a little history thrown in:

by Anonymous

You're sound asleep when you hear a thump outside your bedroom. Half-awake, and nearly paralyzed with fear, you hear muffled whispers.

At least two people have broken into your house and are moving your way. With your heart pumping, you reach down beside your bed and pick up your shotgun. You rack a shell into the chamber, then inch toward the door and open it.

In the darkness, you make out two shadows. One holds something that looks like a crowbar.

When the intruder brandishes it as if to strike, you raise the shotgun and fire.

The blast knocks both thugs to the floor.

One writhes and screams while the second man crawls to the front door and lurches outside.

As you pick up the telephone to call police, you know you're in trouble.

In your country, most guns were outlawed years before, and the few that are privately owned are so stringently regulated as to make them useless..

Yours was never registered.

Police arrive and inform you that the second burglar has died.

They arrest you for First Degree Murder and Illegal Possession of a Firearm.

When you talk to your attorney, he tells you not to worry: authorities will probably plea the case down to manslaughter.

"What kind of sentence will I get?" you ask.

"Only ten-to-twelve years," he replies, as if that's nothing.

"Behave yourself, and you'll be out in seven."

The next day, the shooting is the lead story in the local newspaper. Somehow, you're portrayed as an eccentric vigilante while the two men you shot are represented as choirboys.

Their friends and relatives can't find an unkind word to say about them..

Buried deep down in the article, authorities acknowledge that both "victims" have been arrested numerous times.

But the next day's headline says it all: "Lovable Rogue Son Didn't Deserve to Die."

The thieves have been transformed from career criminals into Robin Hood-type pranksters.. As the days wear on, the story takes wings.

The national media picks it up, then the international media.

The surviving burglar has become a folk hero. Your attorney says the thief is preparing to sue you, and he'll probably win.

The media publishes reports that your home has been burglarized several times in the past and that you've been critical of local police for their lack of effort in apprehending the suspects.

After the last break-in, you told your neighbor that you would be prepared next time.

The District Attorney uses this to allege that you were lying in wait for the burglars.

A few months later, you go to trial.

The charges haven't been reduced, as your lawyer had so confidently predicted.

When you take the stand, your anger at the injustice of it all works against you.. Prosecutors paint a picture of you as a mean, vengeful man.

It doesn't take long for the jury to convict you of all charges.

The judge sentences you to life in prison.

This case really happened.

On August 22, 1999, Tony Martin of Emneth, Norfolk , England , killed one burglar and wounded a second. In April, 2000, he was convicted and is now serving a life term...

How did it become a crime to defend one's own life in the once great British Empire ?

It started with the Pistols Act of 1903.

This seemingly reasonable law forbade selling pistols to minors or felons and established that handgun sales were to be made only to those who had a license.

The Firearms Act of 1920 expanded licensing to include not only handguns but all firearms except shotguns..

Later laws passed in 1953 and 1967 outlawed the carrying of any weapon by private citizens and mandated the registration of all shotguns.

Momentum for total handgun confiscation began in earnest after the Hungerfordmass shooting in 1987.

Michael Ryan, a mentally disturbed man with a Kalashnikov rifle, walked down the streets shooting everyone he saw. When the smoke cleared, 17 people were dead.

The British public, already de-sensitized by eighty years of "gun control", demanded even tougher restrictions. (The seizure of all privately owned handguns was the objective even though Ryan used a rifle.)

Nine years later, at Dunblane , Scotland , Thomas Hamilton used a semi-automatic weapon to murder 16 children and a teacher at a public school.

For many years, the media had portrayed all gun owners as mentally unstable, or worse, criminals. Now the press had a real kook with which to beat up law-abiding gun owners. Day after day, week after week, the media gave up all pretense of objectivity and demanded a total ban on
on all handguns.

The Dunblane Inquiry, a few months later, sealed the fate of the few sidearms still owned by private citizens.

During the years in which the British government incrementally took away most gun rights, the notion that a citizen had the right to armed self-defense came to be seen as vigilantism. Authorities refused to grant gun licenses to people who were threatened, claiming that self-defense was no longer considered a reason to own a gun.

Citizens who shot burglars or robbers or rapists were charged while the real criminals were released. Indeed, after the Martin shooting, a police spokesman was quoted as saying, "We cannot have people take the law into their own hands."

All of Martin's neighbors had been robbed numerous times, and several elderly people were severely injured in beatings by young thugs who had no fear of the consequences. Martin himself, a collector of antiques, had seen most of his collection trashed or stolen by burglars.

When the Dunblane Inquiry ended, citizens who owned handguns were given three months to turn them over to local authorities.

Being good British subjects, most people obeyed the law. The few who didn't were visited by police and threatened with ten-year prison sentences if they didn't comply.

Police later bragged that they'd taken nearly 200,000 handguns from private citizens.

How did the authorities know who had handguns? The guns had been registered and licensed. Kind of like cars. Sound familiar?

[finestkind]

Hrkdvr

Sooooo true but not entirely a point against guns laws but a very valid indication of our crumbling Western Justice system. We have all heard of the person who sued and won MacDonald's for providing hot coffee that caused burn injuries when they spilt it on themselves. Also the mother that successfully sued the store for negligence when she tripped over a misbehaving child and broke her leg, even though it was her child. And the list goes on but just provides justification for a poor judicial system that is owned by the media and lawyers.

[sevenstrokeroll]

what a bunch of goofs!

I'm glad you can all say what you like. In the USA, we have the right to freedom of speech. Sure, there are reasonable limits like not shouting: fire in a crowded theatre (though it worked well in the film, "Iron Curtin"with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews).

But we also have the right to bear arms. Yes, some terrible people have stolen weapons and used them to kill innocents. Someone grabbed the controls of an airliner and killed thousands.

We have about 300 million ''guns'' in civilian hands in our nation of some 330 million people. If they were all nutcases we would all be dead now and the race would be on to recolonize the USA.

But we are not all dead.

Shortly after the Sandy Hook school shooting, I watched as 30 school children stood outside of a department store on the sidewalk. I was driving my car and could easily have killed them all by turning my wheel two inches to the right. But I didn't. And the other cars on the same path and I did the same thing...we turned our wheel to the left slightly and even though they were on the sidewalk, we gave them even more room. That day there were no nut cases driving cars near those students.

I don't own a gun. While in the US Army I qualified Expert and won a three day pass for my excellent shooting. I haven't fired a gun since then over 30 years ago.

But I sure want that right. We have a constitution that is wonderful and the father of the constitution said why that right is so important (see Federalist Paper 46). And I agree with it fully.

All the little comments about not being able to buy hand grenades or howitzers are cute. Reasonable firearms in general or standard use are the rule. Not laser guns, or manpads. There are over 1 million AR15's in general use. As the cousin of the m16 military rifle, it is the weapon I would choose to purchase if I wanted one. (actually the Colt AR15A2 MT6700 5.56mm, and for a hand gun I would want the Colt 1911 WW1 replica).

Contrary to popular opinion, we can even buy real MACHINE GUNS...there is a huge tax and the price would make even an airline pilot think twice about paying the price. And to buy the ammunition is incredibly expensive...100 rounds and you could easily make your electrical bill payment.

To you in different countries...it is your business if you want the right to bear arms. I wonder how the people of Norway feel about guns...90 kids killed and no one could stop the nutcase killer.

To you in different countries, I am reminded of the original "The Time Machine" with Rod Taylor having to teach the Eloi to fight back.

Our country is a young one and I live in the wild west of today, but not so long ago Pony Express riders were armed with guns to protect the mail. And well before the 911 attacks airline pilots had guns to protect the mail. Yes, real airline pilots with guns 70 years ago.

We like guns and the great majority of us are responsible with guns or we would all be dead like I said.

The only reason I am even thinking of buying a gun is a restraint on my rights. Not to use, but to have...just like the right I have to say what I like.

I wonder if the Jews in Germany would have fought back better if they all had guns in the 1930's?

I wonder if Hitler would have come to power if more Germans had guns in their hands?


No, were not nuts. We just know the price of freedom.

There are two recent gun violence incidents and both of the shooters did not legally obtain the guns. One of them, in New York state, had been previously convicted of killing his grandmother with a hammer...he only got 17 years in prision and was barred from gun ownership when he got out...but he still got a gun and killed some fire fighters. He should have had a life's sentence for his first crime.

any hammer restrictions...nope.


And the nut job in sandy hook...I wonder about his family but also wonder why metal doors/ballistic glass, armor wasn't used at a school and just a couple of shots allowed entrance through a shattered glass door.

[Airborne Aircrew]

This lass was 15 at the time... Look for the changes of magazine...



PTT:

You haven't done much at a high level it seems. While the difference between an utter dunce and a competent, practiced individual can be leaps and bounds the difference between a world record holder and that same practiced individual can be a matter of a few seconds. My P226 holds 18 round magazines of which I have several. Due to my own quirkiness I only ever put 15 rounds in each. A bad magazine change for me is 2 seconds and since I count my rounds I don't have a re-cocking issue. So... My P226 will fire rounds as fast as I can pull the trigger which is about twice a second on a bad day. I can put 30 rounds down range in about 17 seconds - there are pictures here of the targets I shoot that attest to my accuracy though I'm no Tori Nonaka. No matter how you restrict the capacity of my magazine I can, with not a lot of practice send, accurately, downrange in seconds the capacity of the magazine divided by two, plus two, times the number of magazines in my possession.

My point? Trying to control the capacity of magazines is a wonderful idea in the utopia you appear to live in but in the real world it's a non-starter...

Finestkind:

Nice world record. I guess he just walked in and picked it up and "surprise surprise SGT Carter" shot off twelve in three seconds just like anyone could have.

See above...

I care about my neighbours as do you. But, just like you, I really don't give a rat's behind about anyone I don't know and for you to say you truly do will be a lie. So, let's not go there...

Just like most people abhor the suicide bomber and terrorist for the indiscriminate murder of people most of us are stunned by the amount of massacres (particulary death of children) that occur in the States and wonder why it is just accepted as part of the right to bear arms.

I'll give you a frank and honest answer to that and I'll hear all the bleating and whining from others and simply ignore it, ok?

Because Americans have not yet, (though there are those working on it as I type), been completely cowed into submission by governments over which they have no control like Europeans have been. I do believe it was this thread where Keefe or some such from Holland made the most naive statement I have heard in many a year... Something along the lines of "We over here don't fear our government's we just send them home when we are done with them"... Stunningly stupid if you ask me from one on a continent that witnessed the holocaust, the near eradication of the Armenians and most recently Bosnia.

The Second Amendment is there to ensure that "The People" are armed... End of story. Whether they chose to hunt or shoot paper with those guns while they site idle in their intent is up to the owner. What needs to happen is that the number of owners who, on psychological grounds, really shouldn't have access to guns is minimized.

In the end, as has been proven all across the world in just the last century, a thousand mass killing with any kind of weapon by nutcases doesn't even begin to match the misery inflicted by a single government gone bad. I'm sure I don't need to list the slaughter for you.

So, America remains armed in the knowledge that these things will happen but also with the knowledge that every time a government uses an event to try to control arms they might be that government about to go bad.

[mary meagher]

Firstly, the United States Constitution makes provision for amendment. And when it was first approved by the founding fathers, certain states retained the right to slavery - with the kicker being that a proportion of the slave population was counted in apportioning the number of representatives each state was allowed in Congress. Basically, those in power have been gerrymandering the rules ever since.

For sure, the early settlers needed protection against indian raids, and hillbillies needed protection against the revenuers....so guns have always been popular and justified in the backwoods of the US.

Nowadays, parents in the US who keep guns are convinced their little darlings would not be able to get ahold of the parental firepower, as it is of course all properly locked away. The Newtown shooter's mommie took him to the range and showed him how to use the firepower, that sure backfired on her.
Parents who think their children wouldn't be able to access the armory have all too frequently had to bury them, or a neighbour's child who wanted to play with the toy gun.

I learned to shoot in New Hampshire with a 22 rifle, at summer camp. My father, living in rural Maryland kept a small assortment of rifles, we used to shoot tin cans on the fence. But the sound and fury of the NRA in resisting any sensible regulation of weapons that can kill very quickly large numbers of innocent people, is sick. Sick.

Americans can learn from the Australians. JSFfan in a previous post, number 187, has pointed out that between 1991 and 2001, there has been a 47% decrease in the annual number of firearms related deaths....since legislation has restricted firepower of private weapons, after a massacre took place in Australia.

I was confronted in Austin, Texas with a demented person holding a shotgun aimed at me; she claimed I was planning to rob her when I was looking for a friend's apartment. I was terrified. The police who came very promptly were so brave, they couldn't persuade her to come out of her apartment, I sure wouldn't have wanted their job! What firepower does is empower crazy people out of all proportion, and an awful lot of the posters on this thread look like nutters to me.

Although I live in the UK, I hold dual nationality, and have grandchildren in the USA. The sooner the NRA does the right thing and endorses Australian rules, the safer the US will be. Don't hold your breath.

What does all this have to do with military aircrew, anyhow?

[500N]

PTT

"Do you really think life is so simplistic that you can divide the world up into "law abiding" and "crims"? It's not the black hat/white hat world of the spaghetti westerns in real life"

Well, having lived through a couple of gun grabs by Gov'ts from LAFO,
it seems to me and others that the Crims are the only one's who get to keep them.

So yes, in those terms it is black and white because the crims didn't hand in any guns.



Re firepower, I use the following for a Bolt action.
4 shots in 9 seconds at 3 different targets spaced at least 10 feet apart.
And that is slow compared to some.

[PTT]

@ HrkDrvr

PTT seems to have found the one and only study that supports his view and puts it out as the sole reference and then end to any differing opinion.

Not at all. I'm quite happy to discuss it. Let's do that

The challenge is, he has not shared his data.

Not true. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, the world’s largest archive for social science research, released the data for public access on May 30th 1997. About 15 seconds of googling found it: Home Safety Project, 1987-1992: [Shelby County, Tennessee, King County, Washington, and Cuyahoga County, Ohio]

Well, here's a report that pokes holes in Kellerman which, by the way, is the only study to correlate gun death in the home the way he does.

Serious Flaws in Kellerman

Let's take a little look at your report and its criticisms:

The Kellerman, et al (1993) study has been widely quoted as demonstrating that there is a causal relationship between handguns in the home and homicides. The paper itself doesn't go that far, but it uses suggestive language, which suggests that there is more than merely an 'association'.

Oh very suggestive. All this says is that Kellerman doesn't conflate correlation and causation, but he could. Flim-flam.

Subgroups and confounding factors

This basically talks about spurious associations, which would be a valid point if it weren't for the fact that a multivariate analysis was used, thereby controlling for such spurious associations.

Bias due to failure to respond honestly

To quote the link I've posted before, which addresses this:
If this [underreporting the number of guns in the control homes] were true, this would indeed artificially raise the murder risk of having a gun in the home. Conversely, if the number of guns in the case homes were underreported, then this would artificially lower the murder risk associated with guns. But the authors do not believe this was a problem. First, in two of the three counties they studied, they compared their survey results to a pilot study of homes listed as the addresses of owners of registered handguns. The survey respondents' answers were found to be generally valid. Second, the rate of gun ownership by the control respondents in all three counties was comparable to estimates derived by previous social surveys and Cook's gun-prevalence index. (6)

Of course, respondents might not have disclosed possession of illegal guns. Pro-gunners argue that the case subjects were prevented from underreporting the possession of such guns, because murder itself is almost impossible to underreport. (It's difficult to hide either a corpse or a person's absence). And a murder causes the police to search -- and usually find -- the murder weapon, so the truth about gun ownership in the case homes probably came out. However, control subjects have not been investigated by the police for guns, nor do they desire such a search, so they may lie about possessing an illegal gun. The researchers were aware of this possibility, and they assured the respondents that their answers were confidential, and that they could freely refuse to answer any questions. Even so, only a very few respondents refused to answer a question. Ultimately, the possibility of underreporting remains pure speculation at the moment, and further research needs to clarify this question.
In short, the criticism is pure speculation.

Selection Bias and Response Bias

All this does is reduce the sample size from 388 to 316, thereby increasing the margin of error, but still not significantly enough to cause an overlap.

In other words, your "Serious Flaws" paper is an attempt to misrepresent both the study and the methods used, and it fails at every hurdle. Most amusing is the fact that it ignores the use of multivariate analysis in its first flawed criticism, then blames the use of multivariate analysis for the last one!

Further, the three areas in question are not 'affluent' areas as PTT likes to claim. Seattle/Tacoma is probably the 'nicest' of these areas. Last year just the greater metropolitan area of Memphis had a violent crime rate of 980/100,00 and a murder rate of 10.6/100,000, Sea-Tac had a violent crime rate of 330/100,000 and murder rate of 2.1/100,000, and the Cleveland metro area had 404/100,000 and 4.8/100,000 for violent crime and murder respectively. US national averages were 386 & 4.7 per 100,000 respectively for 2011.

They were affluent at the time when compared to national poverty rates, and I suggested that this might correlate with lower crime rates due to a correlation between poverty and crime rates. You've not looked at 1993 data for the respective areas there but at more recent data, so your comparison isn't really valid. Finally, control comparisons were matched by neighbourhood, thereby controlling the data for the neighbourhood.

Here's one you'll be familiar with - a mild dramatization of a true story with a little history thrown in:

Yawn.

@ AA

While the difference between an utter dunce and a competent, practiced individual can be leaps and bounds the difference between a world record holder and that same practiced individual can be a matter of a few seconds.

It's not the competents I'm suggesting restricting, it's the irresponsible.

[Airborne Aircrew]

Mary:

Thanks for that... Do me a favour, nip down to Abingdon and tell my mum and dad why their granddaughter should be left utterly unprotected. I'm sure your hand wringing will have them calling me immediately to have me crush all my guns and burn the ammo..

I'll wait for their call...

[Airborne Aircrew]

PTT:

I'm sure that you are quite familiar with this and your almost religious acceptance of your quoted study makes me believe it:-

There's lies, bloody lies and statistics...

It's not the competents I'm suggesting restricting, it's the irresponsible.

You said:-

Really? You're citing the World Record Holder as a reason it won't work? Can you really not see the flaw in that reasoning?

I responded... You're making yourself look silly.... You can't refute my premise...

[500N]

"there is a causal relationship between handguns in the home and homicides"

Their is a very direct relationship between cars owned by young people 8 - 30,
alcohol and car crashes, including drunken drivers crashing into other cars who are totally innocent.

So since this relationship is so strong, do we ban cars, alcohol or
young drivers from driving ?