People are ciritial of our gun laws, but without them are we safer?

There have been people pointing to England and their gun laws, and that they are safer. While their strict gun laws make gun crime considerably less, their violent cime is nearly 5 times more than out.





In the US in 2005, 5.6 out of every 100,000 people we victims of murder. That number is 1.3 out of every 100,000 in England. That is a big difference, but violent crime is much more of a problem than here.





In the US in 2005, we had 1,390,695 instances of reported violent crime, that is 469.2 of every 100,000 people. While in England in 2005 there were 843,000 reported instances of violent crim, and in a country of about 60 million people that is 1405 of every 100,000 people, almost 5 times as many.





The odds that in England that I would be a victim of violent crime there rather than here is 234 times more than the chanced that I would be murdered here rather than there.(936 per 100,000 people divided by 4 of 100,000 peope is 234)





I will live with those odds.

People are ciritial of our gun laws, but without them are we safer?
if you were at war, would you disarm your allies to vanquish your foes?


Gun control disarms our allies(good citizens) and ensures our enemy(criminals) the upper hand.


In the real world(not utopian fantasy)you will never disarm every criminal no matter how draconian the law.


Our government USA) puts a level of trust in our citizens that others will never put in theirs.
Reply:What about other countries, like Canada or Switzerland? You just can't site England, because there are other free countries, first world countries, who don't have these problems, we need gun control, we have more guns in this country than people....
Reply:Soccer riots account for most of those violent crime. Lol. But seriously, they get into lots of fights at local pubs in England over stupid things like soccer. I think they just have a more pro-fighting culture. But as you pointed out, they don't take it to the level of wanting to shoot or stab someone. But I think really differences in crime statistics have more to say about the culture as opposed to the safety of laws. For example, a pro-drug culture like Holland has very little murder and violent crime. Would New York end up the same way with a pro-drug culture? Probably not.





Oh, and re-check you math. It was 3 times as high, not 5.
Reply:Guns should be widely available to all law-abiding citizens for the purpose of self-defense. There's no greater weapon and no better deterrent to crime. It's ridiculous to think that banning firearms would make them less available to those who are determined to acquire one and use it to commit a crime. If that were the case, then there would be no illegal narcotics in this country. They're completely illegal and billions of dollars is spent on fighting them. Yet they're readily available to a person determined enough to get them.





Put a gun into every household in America and train the family living there to use it safely and crime would plummet. Criminals would be so much less likely to enter a home to rob or hurt people if there was a high likelihood of the people living there being able to defend themselves.
Reply:For you people out there saying it's people that kills not guns, and the criminals got guns illegally anyway,





Latest news released showing the gunman was a Korean student holding a green card. As a PR he is entitled to buy a handgun unless he had been convicted of any felony criminal charges before. AND INDEED a receipt for a Glock 9mm pistol was found in his backpack.





I guess the truth speaks for itself. That guy bought a gun Effortlessly AND Legally. Should there be tighter gun control, 32 lives could have been saved.
Reply:What Gunslinger said! I know people who have toured and lived in countries with very strict gun control (citizen disarmament) laws, such as the EU nanny states, South Africa, and even India, and their experience has shown them that violence in those countries is many times worse than in the US. Violent crime in Switzerland, where almost every household has an automatic weapon in it, is almost non existent. In addiiton, I live in a state which passed a concealed-carry law a few years ago and violent crime plummeted everywhere except in places with strict gun control. (certain dangerous and very liberal cities)


To Brian:


It is naive to think you can disarm everybody. It is too easy to make weapons out of anything. A fairly simple machine shop can be used to manufacture guns with. Would you ban machine shops or industry as well? Lead can be gotten out of batteries. How about banning those? How about cutting down and shredding all the trees-you can make spears or clubs out of those.


You are dead wrong on the legality of that Virginia Tech gunman's weapon. A weapon with the serial numbers filed off of it is not legal at all, receipts or not. In addition, it is not legal for a green card holder to own a handgun, and it certainly was not legal for that person to have that handgun on a college campus. Stricter gun control laws would not have saved those students, the laws we have now were not enforced. What would have saved them would have been if that nut had some respect for human life. Barring that, those people on campus should have been allowed to have some way to defend themselves. The "officials" you trust so completely were not there to defend them, YOU were not there to defend them. Self defense is a do-it-yourself proposition.
Reply:The town I live in made it a law that each household had to have a gun. They don't really police it, and they can't really police it. But, violent crime and burglary has gone down each year in the 10 years or so since they enacted the law. Average criminals are much less likely to enter a house when they are unsure of whether there will be a 12 gauge pointing in their face when they get in.
Reply:when all of you anti-gun people get your way and we can't own guns then your safety will be gone for good, because all of the criminal's will still have their's because they don't abide by the laws anyway.
Reply:In England slapping someone is counted in the statistics as a vioent crime not sure if this is the same as the US but it might account for the difference
Reply:Crime or no crime we need laws to bring the criminals responsible in the hands of justice.USA`s weak gun laws not only allows the criminals to escape but also provides them security.


Hence,i urge that you look at this point than of figures of violence.