The answer to the first, is yes, America is more violent because it has more guns because it commits more gun homicides than many other countries due to it's lax gun control, and widespread gun ownership.
You accuse me of falling into fallacies, but actually you are engaging in numerous fallacies yourself. You assume that guns must be the
cause of violence simply because they are often
used to commit violence. This is the 'causation/correlation fallacy'. Read more about it here: http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Correlation_implies_causation_(logical_fallacy)
Rather than guns being the cause of violence in America, I think that they are merely the
preferred means of violence. My reason for believing this is that, as I've already mentioned, whenever a county takes away people's guns their citizens simply switch to other methods of killing each other.
The answer to the second, is also yes, because we don't see the equivalent number of murders per capita via other means than firearms in countries with strong gun legislation, so the murders are not replaced 1:1, so reducing guns _WOULD_ reduce murders.
You obviously haven't actually researched this, you're just assuming it's true because you need to it be true in order for your argument to be correct. There are
many countries that have far higher murder rates than the U.S., even though most of the murders are committed without guns. Mexico has very tough gun control laws and most of their murders do not involve guns, but their murder rate is
three times as high as the U.S.'s murder rate. Brazil's murder rate is almost
four times as high as the U.S.'s but their percentage of murders with guns is actually about 30% lower than in the U.S. Taiwan's murder rate is about 60% higher than the U.S.'s murder rate, even though guns are only used in about 1 in 10 murders.
So there are many countries that have higher murder rates than the U.S., even though they don't often use guns to commit murder.
Fallacy upon fallacy! Canada recently enacted gun registration! It is the free and unaccounted access to guns that is the problem, not the mere presence of them!
You're making that same causation/correlation fallacy again. You assume that gun registration must lower murder rates, simply because Canada has gun registration and low murder rates.
Canada's murder rate was already low even before the background checks and registration were put into effect. In fact, the murder rate
hardly changed at all when the registration was enacted. If you think that gun registration lowers murder rates, then one would expect to see the murder rate in Canada go down after the registration laws went into effect. The haven't. Canada is yet another example of a county in which gun control laws didn't have much effect on the murder rate.
Therefore, all Swiss reservists are trained and responsible gun users. they are the very model 'militia' the 2nd amendment mentions, that was the vision. There are serious penalties for misusing the issued rifle and ammo, so much so, they are only misused for suicides. The general population ebign well trained with firearms, means that non-reservists owning private firearms have a higher standard to aspire to also.
Exactly! High murder rates are caused by
cultural factors, not by mere access to guns!
Israel? are you kidding me? Is Israel a peaceful place? Guns keeping the populace safe from terrorist attacks? I don't think so.
This is another place where you're just assume that you're correct without actually checking. Even with all it's terrorist problems, Israel has one of the lowest murder rates in the world.
That is your problem. If guns were tied to the owner, via registration,, ammo only sold to license holders, and guns had to be kept secure, some of your problem might go away.
Possibly, or we might just end up like one of the countries that I mentioned above where the murder rate is high even though guns are seldom used. Since it's been established that strict control over ammunition sales etc. didn't lower the murder rate in Canada, why do you think it would work in the U.S.?
Fallacy! The handgun band was purely an effort to reduce the number of people killed with legally held weapons, no some magic bullet to reduce all crime or murder!
Well ok, but what's the point of reducing handgun murders if other types of murder end up increasing? It seems pretty pointless to me. If gun murders go down but other types of murders go up, it doesn't seem like you've really accomplished anything.
What you perhaps have overlooked in your keeness to make spurious connections, is that during this period, there was also a chnage in the way crime figures were collated and reported , making the figures more accurate, and it seems some crimes went unrecorded. So, naturally, we saw an increase post change.
You're talking about a recent switch between using 'victim surveys' to using police crime data for determining the level of violent crime. What you seem to have overlooked in your keenness to make spurious arguments is that the murder rate was always based only on police statistics, since obviously you can't have a dead person fill out a survey to see if they were murdered or not. It's true that the method for reporting most kinds of violent crime changed, but for murder it remained the same. Also, it's worth nothing that the murder rate has continued to rise even
after the switch in reporting methods.
Again, you are focussing on the whole murder rate, not just murder rates with guns, but as guns are used in the majority of your murders, and we have shown that other countries do not enjoy the same pro capita homicide rate via other means, your conclusion is false, and I don't see how you can still make that argument after being presented with thr facts.
You haven't 'shown' that other countries don't have high murder rates through means other than guns, you just said it and assumed it was true.
I don't see how you can continue to support gun control when you consider that:
1.There are many countries in the world with murder rates higher than the U.S., even though the percentage of gun murders is far lower.
2.There are many countries with easy access to guns that have a low murder rate.
3.In all the countries that have tried it (that I know of, anyway), gun control hasn't been effective at lowering the murder rate.
Also, I don't understand your focus on only gun murder rates rather than overall murder rates. The entire point of this thread is that gun control laws are pointless because people tend to simply switch to other weapons when guns are taken away. I don't see how people are any better off if shooting go down but stabbings etc. go up. It seems to me that the total murder rate is what one should focus on, since that's what really matters.