> It's not a competition among countries, it's about making the US better.
But you conclude there is no need to fix the current problem. Comparing America to other Developed countries clearly shows there is.
But you conclude there is no need to fix the current problem. Comparing America to other Developed countries clearly shows there is.
Gun deaths in the United States have been declining for the since the 90's in spite of loosening of gun laws. We need to be studying those factors so that we can craft better policy.
Don't get me wrong, clearly if less people have guns less people can shoot other people. But if you really want to improve society you've got to get at the root causes of violence rather than just attacking the tools.
I simply said it's very clear there is a problem and something needs to be done about it.
Again, comparison to other developed countries proves there are.
Edit to answer to the comment below: think what you want. Don't try to convince me. I'm skeptical, you're not. Write to your legislators instead of here. Write your own blog posts.
In terms of number of guns, no other country is. That's the point: other countries made decisions and implemented policies to severely restrict access to guns, and the predictable result today is that there are far fewer guns and much less gun violence.
The decision to restrict guns is a long-term decision - it won't reduce gun violence overnight, but it will reduce gun violence over decades.
But I think you're wrong about the path that restrictions would take in the US: the slowly boiling a frog approach won't accomplish the goal, anything too quick, sharp and raw will merely spark the 2nd American Civil War during which "gun violence" will go way up. And most any restriction scheme will increase gun violence, if only on the part of the authorities using force to seize guns and the like.
Maybe in the long term public attitudes could be changed, the 2nd Amendment repealed, and the path you envision might happen, but that's the work of generations and will require a reversal of the renorming of gun ownership we've seen in the last quarter century (I take Florida's 1987 establishment of a shall issue concealed carry license regime as the start; today 42 states have them, de facto or de jure).
The US can also mandate safe storage of weapons and ammunition in separate, locked, secure cases. That in itself would reduce the incidence of gun suicide and so-called crimes of passion by introducing a long-enough delay between decision and action that sanity prevails.
Unless by "restrict ownership" you mean, say, the same as the current policy for handguns, can't buy unless you're 21? Can be gifted with one, though.
"Lock up your safety" (so called "safe storage") is off the table per the Supreme Court. D.C. insisted on that sort of insanity and got slapped down in Heller, the state must allow guns to be readily available for self-defense.
Then again, I might be wrong about the civil war bit. It's possible that America is simply culturally incapable of regulating its firearms in a safe, responsible way, and that a death-by-firearms rate several orders of magnitude higher than the rest of the industrialized world is an intractable side-effect.
Given that, if you live in the US, it's a "you bet your life" proposition, you'd best be very careful before possibly sparking one, no matter how low a probability you think it is from people you've shown yourself to know nothing about. And you're definitely limited in your imagination, we've watched recent history and know "real movements" as such aren't an option (at least in the beginning). Fortunately they're not needed.
You would also do well to remember a couple of quotes misattributed to Imperial Japanese Navy Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, the architect of their attack on Pearl Harbor:
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."
As for the risk of people dying if something is done: we know for certain that people will continue to die from gun violence by the thousands on an annual basis if something is not done.
If heterogeneity was a factor, surely homicide rates would be climbing in countries like Canada and Australia that have the highest immigration rates in the Developed world[1]. They are not.
Number of guns is precisely the factor at the heart of the issue.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migrat...