I wouldn't say I'm pro gun, or anti gun, or whatever other terms someone might want to divide the debate into. I'm for rational, data-driven (so long as it is *quality* data) public policy, and this applies to guns as much as it applies to everything else. If I had to pick a "camp" to join, I'd say I lean ever so slightly to the "pro gun" camp, but in reality both camps have built a lot of their positions on terrible or non-existent data and tortured emotional reasoning, so it's hard to really identify too strongly with either (and part of this is the whole framing of the debate, not just that both "sides" have too many sacred cows).
The debate over guns is far too limited in my opinion, and needs to instead be discussed in a much broader frame, namely, "by what standards should we determine the degree of merit-based regulation on potentially dangerous objects and items, and is non-merit-based regulation ever acceptable?"
There's also the fact that most everyone isn't even remotely informed about the debate. This includes advocacy groups on both sides of the issue, and especially lawmakers that push or oppose new laws. Take for example, this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rGpykAX1fo
The person being interviewed wrote a law that, as one of the few key features of the legislation, defines a gun having a barrel shroud as something that might make it an "assault weapon" in combination with other features (and having a barrel shroud is equally weighted with all the other features). She doesn't know what a barrel shroud is, though, and she also doesn't know what a modular/collapsible stock is ("the shoulder thing that goes up"). So what is a barrel shroud? A barrel shroud is a covering attached to the barrel of a firearm, that partially or completely encircles the barrel which prevents operators from injuring themselves on a hot barrel (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_shroud)". That's right, it's a safety feature, and a safety feature that in no conceivable way actually increases the lethality of a weapon. In fact, if we want to legislate based on low-probability incidents (more on this in a moment), such as the event that there's a mass shooter who happens to be using a rifle and someone gets close enough to wrestle for the gun, it would be much better if the gun had a barrel shroud, so the person wrestling for the gun isn't impeded by burning their hand(s) on a hot barrel. (Please note, this safety feature looks kind of "scary", leading a lot of pro-gunners to point out that assault weapon bans are really just intended to ban scary looking guns. This isn't even all that far off, as virtually all of the features included in the laws are largely cosmetic in nature, like a bayonet lug... unless you're concerned about say, bayonettings, which never seem to happen for some reason)
As for those low probability incidents, 1% of all guns used to kill police officers (note that this is explicitly referenced in the video) happen to fit the definition of an "assault rifle". To put that in perspective, 2% of guns used to kill police officers are the officer's own weapon. You could have double the effect by offering funds for police departments to purchase a better class of retention holster for their officers (prohibitively expensive to many departments), and extensive and regular training with respect to weapon retention (also something that officers don't get a lot of... after all, the vast majority of their job has nothing to do with using guns). This whole detour from merely mentioning barrel shrouds is a good illustration for how badly framed the debate is. The debate isn't about crime reduction, or death reduction. There isn't anything inherently worse about a murder by knife than a murder by gun (actually, being stabbed to death sounds worse, not like it matters), or a suicide from a shotgun versus suicide from jumping off the roof of a building (actually, in this case using the gun is probably preferable... less chance of injuring/killing anyone else).
As for what constitutes gun violence, in the United States in 2010, there were 31,076 total cases. 11,078 homicides (~1/3 of all cases), 19,392 suicides (~2/3 of all cases), and 606 accidents. With respect to accidents, as per the CDC's Injury Mortality Report, accidental poisonings are responsible for 17 times more accidental deaths than guns happen to be. Imagine if a fraction of the efforts of reducing accidental firearms deaths were put towards reducing accidental poisonings? Mandatory household chemical safe storage laws (including cap-locks, etc.), encouraging education about chemical safety as far as children go, making sure you know everywhere your child plays has their household chemicals stored safely. It's seems a bit of a silly analogy, but that's yet another symptom of how poorly framed the debate is. As another note regarding accidents, there is no breakdown of whether or not they occurred with legally owned guns or not, which would be quite interesting to see, as I doubt criminals who are already violating multiple state and federal laws by having a gun are likely to comply with more gun laws. With respect to suicides, as per the WHO, gun accessibility and suicide rate are entirely uncorrelated. Obviously, gun accessibility is a good predictor of committing suicide by gun, but the data suggest that it has *no effect* on the actual number of suicides. Are we interested in actually preventing net suicides, or preventing gun suicides? Based on all the laws intended to prevent gun suicides (which data suggest have had zero effect on gun suicides, even), and the utter neglect of improving the mental health system as well as social support networks in this country, it seems the answer is actually neither.
Homicides is an interesting metric, since 90% of all of those are committed by criminals, who cannot legally obtain a gun, and are violating multiple federal and state laws simply by possessing one (including a federal law that could send them to prison for 5+ years independent of anything else--just that is almost NEVER enforced, like most of all the other gun laws targeted at criminals, mainly due to systemic dysfunction of the justice system). The figure also lumps in justifiable homicides, so in the remaining ~1100 homicide cases, it would probably make sense to subtract those (I'm of course not aware of anyone actually doing this, though). After all including, for example, a guy who was shot to death, by the police, because he was charging them with a knife probably isn't something that more gun control laws will reduce the occurrence of (but something that say, having a mental health system that isn't garbage and actually trying to rehabilitate criminals might).
I don't have alot of examples cause I don't listen to your news, but I heard a bit about that crazy guy who killed a number of people in the navy or something and he went to buy a gun like just before it happened. I'd reckon he wouldn't have done it if he couldn't just go buy a gun like that. Thats just one example Im sure there are many.
First, it's obvious that this is a serious failure of our mental health system, just like so many of the other such cases. Improving the mental health system is something that would face little political opposition, and have lots of other benefits, yet virtually all of the focus every time is on the fact a gun was used.
Second, it's not like it's terribly difficult to obtain a gun illegally, and obviously, criminals don't undergo a background check before making a purchase or anything like that. Heck, it's not terribly difficult to manufacture a gun either, as pretty much anyone with access to basic shop tools can do it easily (there are plenty of areas in the world where people make perfectly functional guns using *hand tools*, even). Even if all guns were to be banned, and if all existing guns were confiscated/turned in (unlikely... look at Europe:
http://www.examiner.com/article/those-p ... -you-think), and the flow of guns through borders into the United States could be stopped entirely (also unlikely, given we can't stop the flow of drugs or people), it seems unlikely that there would still be no demand for guns, and if there were a demand, I'm certain there would be criminal enterprises that ,ake and sell guns, and there are already plenty of criminal enterprises that have easy access to the equipment and skills needed to do so (like say, chop shops).
Third, it's not terribly difficult to kill people with things that aren't guns. Look at the Columbine shooters, who despite being only kids, manufactured a ton of pipe bombs that they placed around the school (and also, modified most of their weaponry themselves at home, using basic household tools), or the Colorado movie shooter guy (who built bombs in his apartment), or the Boston Marathon bombers (who built bombs using ordinary stuff, from instructions they got on the internet). Everything someone needs to build a bomb is not only cheap, but easy to get. Heck, mix together the right easily available chemicals and you could very easily gas people too (Chlorine gas, aka bertholite used in WW1, being the easiest... I mean, people sometimes die from it just because they mix together the wrong household chemicals). To say nothing about someone who has access to any well-stocked science labs (especially nanofabrication facilities). Or, even just arson (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_fire).
Also calling Australia another planet without humans etc, just priceless!