Regarding the actual meat of your reply — the part in the middle, where you seem to be putting forward an actual opinion — I have to continue to disagree. The reason is that, like I said in my blog entry, when you make laws against gun ownership, you only take guns out of the hands of people who follow laws. If you’re trying to stop crime, however, the idea is to get the guns out of the hands of people who DON’T follow laws.

The only way a weapons ban can be effective is if the ban stops the flow of illegal guns. In a country like Japan, that might be easier to do. But in the United States, where production of firearms is a big economic force, I don’t think the same tactics would be effective. Frankly, I’d be happier in a world where NOBODY had guns, but I just don’t think that’s a realistic expectation in my lifetime.

Look, I agree that there are many other countries with significantly lower gun violence. But I think it’s a mistake to credit that to gun bans. The two may be only loosely related, or they may be completely unrelated. And since you haven’t done even a few minutes of Googlesweat, you can’t see how ridiculous your position is. ;-)

Brilliant. I can’t even imagine how this wouldn’t work perfectly.

I apologize for my bluntness, but believing that encouraging the possession of firearms will promote safety isn’t any saner than believing that encouraging nuclear proliferation will help us avoid nuclear war. The logic is rooted in the idea of intimidation, a concept that has no place in a society interested in peace, and certainly shouldn’t be written into its laws.

There are years of data that make the link between high gun ownership levels and high homicide/suicide levels. It’s not a magical coincidence that the countries with the tightest gun laws (such as Japan) have extremely low gun death numbers, while the countries with the loosest (such as the U.S.) have extremely high ones.

Don’t get me wrong, in the case of the United States it’s not as simple as banning or not banning guns…as a country we’ve got some violence issues to work out. But, the idea that more guns = less crime is absurd, no matter how much we love Die Hard.

Opinions are opinions, and you’re entitled to yours, but I think a few minutes of Googlesweat might shed a little light on how ridiculous your position is.

That’s a really good question! Hahahahahah…