wonder if any one has really changed their views

i find this an interesting thread from days gone by

So....In an effort to ward off the "we got to have gun control now"
crowd, Ive done some reading, believe it or not I can read. Any way I
came across a pretty good article and I thought I'd post it here.
Ummmm.... we could discuss the need for or the need to not have gun
control, but being an army guy and firm believer in the right to keep
and bear arms I think you can guess where my loyalties ly. so;

Gun Control Misfires in Europe
What's behind the massacres in Germany, France and Switzerland?

BY JOHN R. LOTT JR.
Saturday, May 4, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT

Sixteen people were killed during last week's school shooting in
Germany. This follows the killing of 14 regional legislators in Zug, a
Swiss canton, last September, and the massacre of eight city council
members in a Paris suburb last month. The three worst public shootings
in the Western world during the past year all occurred in Europe, whose
gun laws are exactly what gun-control advocates want the U.S. to adopt.
Indeed, all three occurred in gun-free "safe zones."

Germans who wish to get hold of a hunting rifle must undergo checks that
can last a year, while those wanting a gun for sport must be a member of
a club and obtain a license from the police. The French must apply for
gun permits, which are granted only after an exhaustive background and
medical record check and demonstrated need, with permits only valid for
three years. Even Switzerland's once famously liberal laws have become
tighter. Swiss federal law now limits gun permits to only those who can
demonstrate in advance a need for a weapon to protect themselves or
others against a precisely specified danger.

The problem with such laws is that they take away guns from law-abiding
citizens, while would-be criminals ignore them, leaving potential
victims defenseless. The U.S. has shown that making guns more available
is actually a better formula for law and order.





America has seen a major change from 1985, when just eight states had
the most liberal right-to-carry laws, which automatically grant permits
once applicants pass a criminal background check, pay their fees and in
some cases complete a training class. Today the total is 33 states.
Deaths and injuries from multiple-victim public shootings fell on
average by 78% in states that passed such laws.
In Europe, by contrast, violent crime is rising. Many factors are
responsible, but it's clear that strict gun control laws aren't helping.

In 1996, Britain banned handguns. The ban was so tight that even
shooters training for the Olympics were forced to travel to other
countries to practice. In the six years since the ban, gun crimes have
risen by an astounding 40%. Britain now leads the U.S. by a wide margin
in robberies and aggravated assaults. Although murder and rape rates are
still lower than in the U.S., the difference is shrinking quickly. Dave
Rogers, vice chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said that
despite the ban, "the underground supply of guns does not seem to have
dried up at all."

Australia also passed severe gun restrictions in 1996, banning most guns
and making it a crime to use a gun defensively. In the subsequent four
years, armed robberies rose by 51%, unarmed robberies by 37%, assaults
by 24%, and kidnappings by 43%. While murders fell by 3%, manslaughter
rose by 16%.

And both Britain and Australia have been thought to be ideal places for
gun control because they are surrounded by water, making gun smuggling
relatively difficult. By contrast smuggling is much easier on the
Continent or within the U.S.





Gun-control advocates frequently ignore another inconvenient fact: Many
countries with high homicide rates have gun bans. It is hard to think of
a much more draconian police state than the former Soviet Union, with a
ban on guns that dated back to the communist revolution. Yet newly
released data show that from 1976 to 1985 the U.S.S.R.'s homicide rate
was between 21% and 41% higher than that of the U.S.
Many French politicians complained during their presidential election
that the shooting in Paris meant "it's getting like in America, and we
don't want to see that here." Americans may draw a different lesson from
the evidence, and hope that they don't become more like the Europeans.

Mr. Lott is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and
the author of "More Guns, Less Crime" (University of Chicago Press,
2000).

There were three key words to my original post...."In my opinion"..
although I used the word solve instead of reduce..


"Guns don't REDUCE crime rates, they generate them, in my opinion.."

My explanation of this is as an individual living in Australia, for my
entire life, and for the last 11 years,since the changes to legislation,
where guns are not a household, nor personal accessory...and growing up
in a populated area, a city, Sydney.

A comment made consistently through this thread is 'I have a gun, I have
a right to a gun, I will keep a gun'...

Why? Because you anticipate violence? Is it that it is common to be
conditioned to expect violence, and to be no longer safe within your own
personal space?

I live in an area of frighteningly high crime rates per capita, domestic
violence being the highest, both reported and unreported, and there has
been one death within this Shire related to violence with a gun in the
past few years..

What is my point here? I have high stats of violence around me in this
town,(and considering the population size is tiny), but still I sleep
with my doors open, my keys in my car, and couldn't tell you where my
house keys are, to lock my house, and I live in town..because I don't
anticipate violence with every breath, I do not live with the
conditioned fear that a gun will keep my family and I safe.

Doc, your stats are good , in regards to Australia, however, one person
per however many square miles, makes us sound like we do not come into
contact with other people very often. What you may have overlooked, is
the volume of populations in cities and large towns, then compared that
to isolated areas...I think you may find the density of the Australian
population lives in fairly small surface areas..

The population of Australia is small in comparison to other countries,
big deal, whose culture do we follow? Whose tv programmes are drip fed
to us and our children? Whose political bed does our leaders sleep in?
We are being conditioned to think as your country does, and not in a
balanced way..

And for those that don't know...yours. It is quite disturbing to hear
young Australian children playing make-believe with American accents,
only in that they adopted these accents from tv and movies,...and sadly
there are many, many, of your programmes aired here, that feature guns,
violence with guns, every second person, whipping out a handgun, and
blowing the bad guy away. What is my point here? In mentioning this?
Again, we are being conditioned to think that violence is all around us,
waiting to leap out at us.The apparent undercurrent of fear of the
constant threat of violence, in your country, seems to be high, with
most wanting to own a gun to protect themselves..

It is hard for me to understand this mentality, I do not live in a
society in constant fear of violence, (although I, personally, have been
exposed to plenty, including violence with a gun)..whether this gives me
a protracted veiw on the subject, or a more balanced perspective, is
really only semantics.

If guns are not available, they cannot be used in crimes of passion, as
seen recently, and out of respect, I won't mention the college's name..

But before I get leapt on with , "If someone else had a gun there would
have been less deaths", there is another side of thought here, if the
perpetrator of that violence hadn't had access to a gun, there may not
have been any deaths..

I did not blame Americanisation for violence in this country, I said it
attributes to an awareness of fear of violence...

If it was not stated clearly enough, my apologies...

I am not one to accuse and point fingers at any, we are us, but there
are influences and contributers to cultures...

Hmmmm....I'd rather face a nut with a knife than a nut with a gun....

Oceans

disarmment

takes away your freedom

if no one is armed the govt can do whatever it wishes

hitler was a strong gun control advocate as well

GUN CONTROL IS NOT FOR OUR SAFTY. IT IS THE START FOR MONEY CONTROL IT
IS FOR OUR CONTROL.

Uh. Full caps and poor grammar won't help your point, any. In fact, it
makes the rest of us pro-firearms folks look like raving lunatics.