Federal Court Finds California Magazine Ban Violates the Second Amendment

Naturally, law enforcement has seen a quantum leap in capabilities all over the world in that period. The end result of all that improvement in the US though is to still be at a third world level, vastly behind the (unarmed) rest of the G7

Then you are looking at the wrong graph.

And I have repeatedly reiterated the whole "not restricted to deaths directly attributable to guns" part of my argument. The fact remains that countries with armed citizens by and large have much higher murder rates than their disarmed peers. Feel free to explain that whilst maintaining guns make society safer overall.

I've not made the case you are in more danger with a gun than without if you are attacked, nor have I made the case that an armed civilian isn't a useful person to have about when an active shooter event occurs, you're fighting strawmen.

What I have claimed is that in a society without armed civilians at all the chances of facing such a situation or dying in one are drastically lower and that more than offsets the benefits. Every disarmed economic peer the US has is safer without exception. Removing guns has on many occasions demonstratably been linked to a drop in murder rates or at the very least a total lack of the spike you seem to think would come about.

That spike in murders just doesn't happen in practise, far from it.

Do these gun free zones have national borders? I think you'll find for the most part anyone can walk armed in or out of them from unrestricted areas with little chance of detection. Getting into the great big fuck off "gun free zones" that are disarmed countries is much more difficult because they have customs and border patrols.

If you want to see an illustration of how disarmament looks in practise "gun free zones" are a poor choice. Gun free countries tell a very different story and they tell it loud and clear.

I'm not sure I understand the, "gun ownership leads to non gun related murders" argument.

that part lost me too. Apparently just the presence of guns in a society inspires/compels people to commit more murders with weapons of all types.
Weird though when I was a kid in northern wisconsin nearly every home had guns of various types - handguns, hunting rifles, shotguns, occasional AR military styled semi-autos, etc. yet our murder rate was almost nonexistent. And I don't mean just in our small town, I mean across the entire region of hundreds of square miles and dozens of towns.
Any thoughts spot?

Or, I don't know, maybe the people in some places are more violent than others? Maybe it's even just specific cities?

You didn't know?

Guns are evil. They literally radiate evil into the ether.

So even if you don't have one but your neighbor does that gun will radiate evil and it will cause you to kill.

That's why I don't keep my guns in a lead safe. I don't care for my neighbors.

Or maybe they aren't.

Y'know, because the law of averages is pretty powerful where it comes to human nature. Circumstances can alter the aspects of it on display, but you don't get nations of aggressive people, nations of placid people, nations of people with good senses of humour. (definitely not the latter)

So try again, why does the US have a massively disproportionate murder rate?

Why does the only other similarly powerful nation with permissive gun laws (Russia) also have a sky high murder rate?

Why do all of those other major nations without guns enjoy such comparative peace?

Why did the murder rate drop in Australia following the buyback?

As a kid you were conscious of how your murder rate compared on a global scale?

If I had the bit in the middle I'd gladly offer it, but the numbers are really, really clear. I can only speculate as to the mechanisms but acknowledging the data is the first step in trying to understand it.

Permissive gun laws are associated with high murder rates, strict ones with low murder rates. It's a recurring theme on a global scale and there are a good few instances of bans preceding drops which cast serious doubt on the whole causation/correlation objection.

They are, as can be plainly seen by the evidence you use for your own argument.

And it really is only certain cities.

I'll point out again that it was already trending downward even before the "buyback" and that the US has also seen a downward trend in its rate for 30+ years.

Which is why the difference requires explanation. You look for variables which distinguish between those countries there's a key one which keeps recurring in nations with high murder rates, guns.

As a nation, the US has a massive murder rate.

Regional variations exist everywhere but the aggregate figures show someone living in the US is vastly more likely to be murdered than someone in France, or Holland, for instance.

And I'll point out again that really doesn't help your case.

Your argument is that removing guns would enable violent crime. It did not, but the drop became more pronounced.

The US, by comparison, can now boast an improved murder rate that's still so awful much of the third world would be horrified.

Are you seriously arguing all cultures are the same?

No, you seriously could remove two or three cities and our rates would be pretty close to what it is in most of the European countries.

It does because it illustrates that there's no correlation between the "buyback" and the drop in the homicide rate in Australia, so you can't really make an argument for causation.

Where did I say that? Or even anything remotely similar? Cultures vary widely but not in a vacuum. If you can observe a pattern then it has a cause somewhere and the pattern here is that guns are associated with high murder rates. It's not just the US, the US merely gets the focus here because we have so few representatives from other countries with permissive gun laws.

Russia has not dissimilar levels of permissive gun laws and even higher murder rates. As an aside that's also hard to square with the idea of guns protecting freedom unless you view Russia as a country free of tyranny?

Not really, no, in fact very few of the US' cities, major or otherwise, are even remotely on a par with their European counterparts.

Just to illustrate that, take London. It's currently infamous on this side of the pond for how dangerous it has become due to knife crime. It's been held up by the POTUS as an example of how dangerous gun free cities are, but when you look at the actual rate per capita quite a different picture appears.

Bear in mind this is the most dangerous city in the UK, using figures exclusively from the current murder epidemic, the one you've heard all the horror stories about. In other words I'd be hard pushed to come up with one more loaded in your favour, but look:



The safest city in the US is significantly more dangerous than the absolute worst our enormous gun free zone has had to offer in modern history.

That's what we call an epidemic of violence which makes the front page of newspapers and prompts emergency cabinet meetings; a rate which is still safer than even the very safest city in the US.

What does that tell you about our relative perspectives and experience of violence?

I can only imagine we're looking at the graph very differently if you see a steady decline, but fair enough I'll let that slide as we'll only end up playing verbal tennis.

So explain to me, where is the massive spike in violence as the gangs of drug crazed murderers went on a rampage unchecked by the threat of guns?

three words spot: ZIP CODES MATTER
to break it down further, the US is a huge nation with hundreds of millions of people. We are very diverse culturally, ethnically, racially, etc.etc. We don't all think the same or act the same. Thus we have areas of constantly, predictably high murder rates and areas of constantly, predictably low murder rates. So why should the people who can obviously control their murder rate (though having pound-for-pound more available gun) be lumped in with the people who cannot? Can you give me a straight down-to-earth non philosophical answer? If obviously guns aren't the problem for thousands of people in one neighborhood why are they a problem for thousands of people in a different neighborhood? Why does the presence of guns in a society (a neighborhood being a society) cause higher murder rates - which you claim it does - in one place but not another within the same state? Or within the same city? Don't show us proof that it does - show us why it does.

At a glance, Russia's gun laws don't look all that permissive to me. In fact they seem pretty strict. Canada seems to me to have much more permissive gun laws than Russia.

Okay, but if are going with "correlation = causation", then isn't your that argument similar to Oldfella's veiled argument that the amount of violent crime in a given area is linked to the demographics of that area?

because in the US gun laws vary so much from state-to-state you pretty much have to consider each state as it's own "society" for purposes of this discussion. So let's use the state of Wisconsin as an example of a society. In Oneida County Wisconsin (far north area of the state) the crime rate for 2018 was 2 per 1,000 residents. Violent crime = murder, rape, manslaughter, etc. In Milwaukee County Wisconsin (far south area of the state) the rate was 4 per 1,000 residents. Apples-to-apples shows the violent crime rate is doubled.

Yet as I explained guns are all over the place in Oneida County - apparently being surrounded by guns is not the cause of an increase in violent crime.
Yes there are many reasons and theories for a violent crime increase, but it's apparent that the presence and availability of guns is not a factor.

spot261 your theory doesn't hold up too well, at least concerning the state of Wisconsin. Maybe the other 49 states got your memo, who knows?

This has gotten me interested Australia vs US regarding violent crime. I was looking here and found these graphs representing "
Intentional homicides (per 100,000 people)"
Australia


United States


It shows that between 1995 and 2016, Australia's rate went from 1.7 to .94. I suck at math, so someone can check, but I get a 65% reduction.

America, on the other hand, went from 8.1 to 5.3. I make that a 55% reduction over the same amount of time, meaning Australia's homicide rate declined 10% faster than that of the US.

If we ignore the up tick in the US rates starting in 2014 as an outlier (since I can't think of any relaxation of gun laws during that time that might account for it) and compare 1995 - 2014, it results in a difference of 4% in Australia's favor.

Not really, because there's a temporal factor involved. If we were merely talking about a simple national regression in rates then I'd agree, but where that pattern is consistently repeated worldwide and we can demonstrate a clear instance where changing one variable leads to a significant change in another that becomes more persuasive. We can't do that with the 1988 and 1997 UK gun legislation because they were fundamentally different, there was never a comparable gun culture or legal status here beforehand, but Australia is as close to controlled laboratory conditions as we could possibly hope for.

That post 1996 drop (which, despite Capatin X's wilful objections is made perfectly visible in the graph I linked, there's even a handy comparison of the pre ban trend and the net one which occurred in practise) can't really be brushed away by the correlation/causation objection so easily.

Which works in my favour when you consider the cities in all those states have murder rates which the rest of the developed would be horrified by, including Wisconsin. (Latest data for the state wide rate there is 4.1 per capita, which is more than double that currently seen in London city centre with our knife crime epidemic at 1.8.)

Those states all have permissive gun laws, every single one. They vary in the specifics but there's not one state with gun legislation the rest of that developed world would even remotely consider strict.

Again, even the safest city in the US is more dangerous than London has been at it's very worst. In fact aggregating out to include rural areas in the state you throw up as an example and you still don't find anywhere as safe as the bogeyman of legend that is inner city London.

Sure, but as I've shown above, there wasn't that much of a difference between the decrease in murder rates in Australia vs. the US considering the vast difference in gun laws...especially between 1996 and 2014 where Australia saw a 4% greater drop in murder rates than the U.S. I was expecting the difference to be much much higher.

No, you seriously could remove two or three cities and our rates would be pretty close to what it is in most of the European countries. - Captain X
Not really, no, in fact very few of the US' cities, major or otherwise, are even remotely on a par with their European counterparts. - spot261

JESUS SPOT! Slow the fuck down and READ for the love of god!
Captain X is not comparing US cities to European cities! He's saying that if you took some of our dangerous US cities off the table it would drop our overall murder rate to a rate comparable to many European countries. In other words.....wait for it....ZIP CODES MATTER when it comes to murder rates in the US. You yourself showed a graph with Baltimore for example. Captain X's point is not that Baltimore is more dangerous than London - a demented slime mold can figure that out! But many of our cities spike our murder rates to make the US (as a whole) seem more dangerous than it really is. Yes, it's terrifying...if you live in Baltimore! Not so terrifying if you live in Des Moines Iowa. Peaceful as fuck if you live in Burley, Idaho.

Bottom line please connect-the-dots as to how confiscating guns in Burley Idaho will slow down the murder rate in Baltimore Maryland.
I've been to both these places and I have to say...... if you confiscated all the guns in Baltimore and gave them to the residents of Burley, Baltimore would still have a much higher murder rate. To argue otherwise would make you bat shit or thick as a post or possibly a little of each.

No disrespect intended but with all your "book smarts" and education you still can't grasp the very simple reality of the situation.

Wouldn't banning magazines be censorship and thus a violation of the First Amendment.

Only ban hi-capacity magazines, with more than 100 pages.

No it wouldn't, I get what he's saying but he's wrong.

There are currently precisely 4 cities in the whole of the US with lower murder rates than London. Those are Irvine, Chula Vista, Fremont and Boise. Beyond that every single city in the entirety of the States fares worse than the very worst we have to offer.

Londons' murder rate is currently 1.8 per capita.

Here's the list of US cities. Stripping Maryland, Michigan and Missouri off that list won't bring the average down to European levels.

This isn't a case of a few rogue cities where the rate spikes and biases the whole. Nearly every city in the US, including those famed for being comparatively safe, is worse than the very worst Europe has to offer. You couldn't do what @Captain X suggests and make it even out by removing the worst offenders because even the safest 25% of US cities are far more dangerous than the European norm.

Think through your Wisconsin example. You brought that up because in your mind it's an incredibly safe place, but even if you include all the farmland, rural areas, small towns it nonetheless has a rate more than double inner city Londons' at 4.1 per capita compared to 1.8.

You see Wisconsin State as an incredibly safe place. We're having crisis meetings about somewhere much safer.

What happens if you extrapolate that trend another twenty years? How about thirty? 4% in 18 years doesn't seem all that shabby to me when we are talking about fundamentally changing an entire culture. YMMV.

I don't understand how you did the math, but it's definitely wrong, as .94 is more than half of 1.7, so any reduction over 50% is impossible. Ditto 5.3 and 8.1.

I get a 44% AUS decline vs 34% USA decline through 2016, 39% AUS decline vs 44% USA decline through 2014. That's right, it declined *more* in the US 1995-2014 than in Australia. It's possible that 2012-2014 were particularly good years for homicides in the US and 2014-2016 represent a reversion to the mean. More data is necessary. Personally I'd bet on both being much more about declining lead levels and the aging out of the worst lead-poisoned criminals than anything to do with gun control.

are "scratch and sniff" magazines allowed? Asking for a friend......

"Think through your Wisconsin example. You brought that up because in your mind it's an incredibly safe place, but even if you include all the farmland, rural areas, small towns it nonetheless has a rate more than double inner city Londons' at 4.1 per capita compared to 1.8.

You see Wisconsin State as an incredibly safe place. We're having crisis meetings about somewhere much safer." - spot 261

Jesus spot CAN YOU FUCKING READ? I never said THE ENTIRE STATE OF WISCONSIN WAS SAFE. BTW is your "per capita" based on per 1,000 or 100,000 people?
Just so we are going apples-to-apples here. Anyway Milwaukee County (the biggest city Milwaukee is here) has double the violent crime rate of Oneida County in the "northwoods" area of the state. Thus I would not consider Milwaukee incredibly safe. You do understand that many of our states are almost as big as your entire country, right? I would never call an entire state safe.

They've all been per 100,000, it's pretty much the convention for these things.

I know what you said, but it makes no difference at all. Narrow it down to the cities and you are singling out the hot spots, using the whole state was done deliberately to make a point of weighting the argument in your favour and show how the figures still support my case. Every country has an uneven distribution of risk, London was being used precisely because it has become the bogeyman for the terribly dangerous city in the UK.

Except not that dangerous at all, not really. Not even with our epidemic and much as you have Oneida there are many places in the UK far safer than London. Regional variance doesn't help your case given it applies everywhere.

If you really want to go apples to apples and equate states to countries (incorrectly on many levels), then we are equating Wisconcin not to London but to the UK as a whole. In turn that means comparing the two most dangerous cities and that really hurts your case. On the basis of your objection we've gone from comparing Wisconsin state as a whole to London (4.1 : 1.8) to comparing Milwaukee as a city to London (19.8 : 1.8).

You've gone from a murder rate which is double that of London to one which is ten times that of London. Again, an overwhelming bias in the murder rates between armed and disarmed societies.

no way to run an experiment but if the US were "disarmed" today to the point of Britain (gun ownership being very rare) we would still have a much higher murder rate. Not a single doubt in my mind. I would "bet the farm" on it with no hesitation. We would stab, slash, run each other over, burn each other, beat each other to death, etc.etc. at a much higher rate and the population pockets with the highest murder rates would still have the highest murder rates.

There's no way to prove this of course but considering that I have lived here for many decades (in many different parts of the nation) I think I have a pretty good feel for how things work here. We are more vicious & lethal for better-or-worse, regardless of weaponry.

I'm not sure I understand the question.

Really? "Fundamentally changing an entire culture" and you don't think that small a number is all that shabby?

Either way, as O2C pointed out, my math was way off (I can subnet in my head, and reconcile payroll for 250k people, but I can't subtract 55 from 100. ) If we compare the decrease in murder rate between 1995 and 2014, it's a 3% advantage in the US's favor (1.799 - 1.035 AUS vs 8.113 - 4.458 US = a 42% reduction vs 45% reduction respectively). Again, as @Order2Chaos pointed out, more data is needed...like why did the murder rate in the US suddenly spike after 2014 reversing the trend? I can't think of any new gun legislation that might have caused it. At any rate, it seems clear to me that the answer is a lot more nuanced than "It's all because of guns".

Agreed. Evil, malicious intent, hatred, all the things that lead to murder finds a way.

Anyone ever taught classes on crime? I have. And you teach "MOM"- motive, opportunity, means- in that order when investigating a crime. The motive is the first qualifier regarding determining who committed a crime. "means" which is where a firearm would come into play is the last thing you look at.

Also, the decline in the murder rate in the U.S. probably had a lot more to do with cell phones, 911 systems, emergency care, and the explosive growth in trauma centers than in any actual reduction in violence in the U.S.