For Chicago? Please cite your source.
ANd most of the illegal weapons were purchased through rogue gun store employees who care nothing of public saftey. Not through street dealers as I first thought.
Again for Chicago? Source?
SO now we can stop comparing them to drug dealers.
On the contrary most guns used in crimes in Chicago are handguns, and handguns are banned there. So the comparison is not only reasonable, it's spot on.
You spoke of Britain's crime rate vrs gun control (saying that I was wrong in comparing gun control to homocide rates which is exactly what you were doing). So I looked at other countries.
How does what other countries do impact a discussion of Britian's recent experience with banning guns and watching crime skyrocket almost immediatlely afterwards?
Canada for example, has plenty of guns too, but it is much harder to get a handgun there...consequently they have 15.3% less (per capita) homocides involving guns.
You're a bit too quick on the draw with the "consequently" statement there; you are implying that one thing causes another. It's hard to buy handguns in Canada and therefore gun homicides are lower there. (And, why this fascination with gun homicides? Are people killed by other means somehow less dead?) I have already told you that you don't even need a permit in Vermont to carry a concealed handgun, let alone to buy a handgun, and violent crime rates in that state (including gun murder rates) are lower in that state than nearly any other in the US. If you want to draw a "consequently" from your Canadian comparison, then I will draw a "Vermont recognizes the right of self-defense of its citizens and consequently has low violent crime rates." So there.
And by the way, you forgot to discuss the positive influence of gun control/prohibition laws in countries like Colombia, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico where guns are banned and violent crime, including gun homicides, occur at a rate far higher than in America.
And since gun control (which I oppose but came across this info) has taken affect there the crime rate has dropped to the lowest rate in 20 years.
At least they didn't ban guns there... look at Australia as well as England. (By the way, if you don't support gun control then why do you use all of their arguments, such as separating out gun homicides as if they were special?)
And the city of Vancouver British Columbia, has the poorest postal code between Canada and the U.S. along with the largest open drug market. But their violent crime rate is remarkably low compared to that of U.S. cities with the same problems.
You got this argument straight from the gun grabbers. Vancouver is lacking in a particular demographic that is abundant in Seattle, with which Vancouver was famously compared by gun grabbers, for a gun-grabbing purpose. If you look at the crime rates among European-Americans in Seattle and Vancouver, you will find that the violent crime rates are actually lower in Seattle than in Vancouver, despite the "easy availability of guns" in the former location.
As for Vermont, Vermont and Chicago are two completly different places, with different social problems and populations and laws. So comparing them is useless.
And yet you compare Canada with America, for which the same criticism applies. Your double standards are showing. I originally compared just one country: Britain before banning guns, with Britain after banning guns. Why do you reject that comparison but then advance similar ones?
Compare Detroit and Chicago, Detroit, with no handgun ban has a much higher rate of violent crime.
It also has a devastated economy from car manufacturing moving overseas. Again your double standards are showing. If you want to control for ethnic, cultural, economic, and demographic variables, you wouldn't cherry-pick states or locations as you do - instead you would study all of them together, especially watching crime rates as the gun laws in those states have changed. This study, by the way, has been done, by one John Lott. He started out as a gun grabber, incidentally, but changed his mind after looking at the results of his own study. (Also incidentally, several vocal pro-gun academics used to be gun grabbers, but changed their minds when they realized the facts. But there are zero examples of academics who started out as gun rights advocates who are now gun grabbers after scholarly research. FYI. These people include Gary Kleck, David Mustard, and David Kopel, as well as John Lott.)
But I also found cities with no ban and much lower crime rates.
And so what you draw from this is ... ?
Oddly enough though I found that Windsor Ont, Canada 1000 meters from Detroit had only 4 gun murders last year while in Detroit there were 354. If you work that out to population density Detroit would have a rate 18 times higher than Windsor.
And the ethnic breakdowns in the two places are? And the economic health of the two places are ? And the reason you restrict yourself to analysis of gun murders is ?
In Canada, it is hard to buy an illegal gun becasue the dealers are watched closely making it hard for them to sell to a dangerous person.
That is the case in this country as well. Permission from the federal government is required for any gun dealer to sell to any individual.
So maybe a crackdown on dealers without a care for the saftey of others is in order.
Yes, bring in the storm troopers and crack down on dealers! And you say you don't support gun control.
That way regular people can keep their guns and it is the dealers who will take the heat. And if they are selling illegaly I don't care if they do.
Even though these are the people allegely arming criminals? Now, you're talking out of both sides of your mouth.
And although I didn't look it up I am sure you can take a look at countries such as Zambia, SOuth Africa...etc that like the whole idea of an armed population and see how that has worked out for them. Because it hasn't worked well at all. There, now instead of just picking apart everything I said why don't you show me some stats to support your argument. Not just more "guns guns guns" talk
I have difficulty presenting my own arguments because you flog me with discredited "studies" from the gun grabbers (such as the Vancouver result), or reject a comparison I offer, and then make one of your own that is subject to the same criticism.
But here is my argument: Criminals don't obey laws and won't not murder someone just because a gun is illegal. But peaceable citizens do obey laws - and they are disarmed by gun control. Places such as Chicago that ban guns create a defenseless population that makes for easy pickings by the criminal class. The result of that is that crime flourishes. As is presently the case. In the nice areas of Chicago there are plainclothes officers on every block, and people "feel" safe and crime is indeed fairly low. But in the bad areas, it's a war zone and crime is high. Where did the story at the start of this thread occur? I'm willing to bet in the latter. More gun control, stricter crackdowns on so-called "illegal" guns, etc, won't fix the problem. It might take a few of today's criminals off the streets, but others will fill there places as surely as other ants swarm over dropped food, even after some ants are stepped on.
If you want the crime to drop, you have to present a siginificant deterrent to crime in the minds of those who would be criminals. Unfortunately, these people don't understand subtle concepts like how much more investment would come to their neighborhood, and how much better things would then become, if only crime rates were lower, which is why they shouldn't hold someone up right now. Instead, they only understand simple things like "this person has money and I don't and I'm stronger" or other similarly basic thoughts. With uniformly disarmed non-criminals, not much else matters.
Without even "arming everyone" as you say, but merely allowing those who wish to be armed to be so, the cost of sticking people up, or engaging in random acts of violence, the cost of crime from the criminal's standpoint, rises sharply. Even if 1 in 10 people were armed, that's still a 10% chance of dying on this particular holdup. Would you stick someone up for $50 or $100 if you had a 10% chance of being killed? It values your life at only $500 or $1000 - and even the street thugs can discern that their life may be worth more than that.
I appreciate your replies to my posts, by the way.