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Comment by ltcoleman | Hacker News Reader

I'm not completely convinced all of his facts are backed up, but I do agree with his sentiments. Gun control will never be an answer to violent crime, far too easy to obtain illegally. I remember my gun nut friends all had illegal assault rifles during the Clinton ban.

I agree that mental illness awareness is a much better place to spend the $500 million Obama just asked for gun control.

More government always fixes things! .... right?!

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If you are not convinced of his facts, check the relevant websites yourself. There's a great drill-down on the statistics in this video and you can go to the same (official) websites and pull the stats yourself: https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ooa98FHuaU0

Or you could look at the US and UK murder rate and conclude that gun control radically reduces murders even when one country is possibly more violent than another.

You are looking at only one type of violence, murder, and then assuming that murder rates are affected by guns.

Then you turn around and say that one country is possibly just naturally more violent than another and it has nothing to do with the deterrent affect guns have on violent crimes of any kind.

Hmmm..

Murder provides a nice apples to apples comparison because, as noted elsewhere on this page, violent crime statistics for the US and UK is an apples to pineapples comparison.

"far too easy to obtain illegally."

Please go to Japan and obtain a gun illegally as proof of this claim.

" I remember my gun nut friends all had illegal assault rifles during the Clinton ban."

Bad regulation is proof that all regulation doesn't work! ... right?

Japan isn't the same as the United States. We don't want to be the same as Japan, because to do so would be to give up what this country was built on. We have always had firearms and our constitution says we SHOULD always have firearms.

Nevermind the fact that we have millions more guns in our country -- making guns illegal after they've hit such a penetration level would be impossible.

Japan has forbidden the keeping and bearing of arms by normal subjects since 1588; the collective guilt based controls that followed during the Shogunate were sufficiently hideous that I really can't see any utility in comparing the two nations in these areas.

Handguns were outlawed in 1958 and new rifles since 1971. Shotguns are available but heavily regulated.

"I really can't see"

The point I was making was pretty obvious but I'll repeat it here again: it is actually very possible to make it hard to obtain a gun. Japan is hardly the only exhibit.

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