Federal Court Finds California Magazine Ban Violates the Second Amendment

(reaction to the way the thread is going, not anyone in particular).

I agree totally, it wouldn't drop in the first instance precisely because there's a culture in place and these things don't change overnight. It's a process, not a switch, and one that takes years or decades. Bear in mind you guys are no more likely to attack each other than we are, it's just that culture normalises taking violence to an extreme.

@Man Afraid of his Shoes has illustrated that intransigence perfectly with his breakdown of Australia, you can't suddenly alter the mindset of a nation but that mindset is cultural - not genetic. It does change over time. People in America aren't born any more violent than people in Norway, or Canada, or anywhere else you could care to name. People here aren't born with a quirky sense of humour the rest of the world doesn't get

What Australia does illustrate, though, is that this fear of unchecked crime after a disarmament doesn't actually come into fruition. People there said exactly the same things, expressed exactly the same concerns and objections. It didn't happen.

In the nicest possible way, (because what you are saying isn't wrong), I do a bit more than teach classes on crime.

My point is that change happens slowly, you wouldn't expect a culture to change instantly but that positive trend is there. Naturally there will always be other factors in play muddying the waters but it's really hard to escape the international data.

As for 2014, any ideas?

I guess I am missing your point. The US was enjoying the same positive trend as Australia up until 2014, and that was without a gun ban like Australia's...in fact it was trending better than Australia. I would imagine it was a trend shared by most "Developed" countries over the same time period.

I'm not sure. Ferguson effect? Opiate epidemic? Have other countries been having the same spike in opiate addictions that we have in the past few years?

Except that violent crimes in general are following the same trend.

I seem to remember that aggravated assaults (the crimes that show people are actually trying to seriously injure or kill one another) have not declined nearly as much as murders. I'll freely admit that I could be wrong.

Last I heard, pretty much everything except for non-violent property crime has been on the decline ever since the late 80s/early 90s.

Not what I said. I said that IIRC aggravated assaults have not declined nearly as much as murders. I never said aggravated assaults had not declined at all.

Aggravated assaults would fall under "violent crime."

https://www.statista.com/statistics/191129/reported-violent-crime-in-the-us-since-1990/

Again showing an uptick after 2014.

Hmmm... Isn't 2014 when the whole "social justice" thing really came out into the mainstream?

No wonder!

I was wrong about property crimes. They've been on the decline too...and no 2014 reversal this time, although it does look like it tried to level off a little.

I'll grant you there's a positive trend which has continued, but nonetheless the ban seems to link to an acceleration.

Bear in mind over the past nine or ten years the US has been enjoying a period of economic growth and improvements across the board in employment figures. That's not always acknowledged but it is true, so it'd be pretty surprising to not see an improvement on all violent crime, especially as law enforcement, communications and emergency care have seen massive progressions in that period.

As for opioids, I'd have to say in the UK the answer is a pretty solid yes:



Though as a disclaimer I'd say the greater concern in my experience is the epidemic of synthetic cannibanoids or "legal highs", which are incredibly difficult to detect or legislate for and whose effects are so unpredictable and variable as to be frankly terrifying.


EDIT: Just googled "2014 US violent crime" and was a little bemused to find this.

Any thoughts?

How? Australia banned firearms, and the murder rate dropped. The US didn't ban firearms and the murder rate dropped even more. Additionally, the murder rate in Australia was already on the decline before the ban, and it continued to decline after the ban. How can you claim for certain that the ban is linked to the decline?

Because the US' decline was already faster than Australias' pre 1996 anyway (although the actual murder rate remains much higher to this day). Whatever was causing that differential was already in play regardless of gun legislation.

However, the observed actual rate of decline in Australia over the whole period compares favourably with that predicted based purely on a extrapolation of the pre 1996 rate, meaning it accelerated post ban.

damn that's a good point! People that would have died thirty years ago (time is crucial - that "golden hour" is no joke!) have a better chance of surviving now. We have shootings constantly here in Augusta but the survival rate is pretty damn high.

Explain?

Antifa is quite violent.

I don't think antifa have committed hundreds of murders....

It should be noted that here in Australia I don't think I have ever heard anyone connect the gun bans to the overall murder rate in either direction. Trying to read much from that misses the purpose of the restrictions - mainly to keep guns out of the hands of those who would use them for mass acts.

Don't have to to drive overall violent crime up.

The entire rational being used for gun control is to prevent murders. The stats show that it has either done very little toward that end, or even nothing at all.

I didn't realise you followed Australian domestic politics (especially 90s politics where the laws were changed).

Good to have someone on here I can chat about it with, what sources do you follow?

Camera tech.

Spot and I already discussed this.

Jolly nice it was too.

They would.

The spike in 2014 required literally hundreds (well, low order thousands) of additional murders beyond those normally expected over a 12 month period. They'd had nowhere near long enough in the public eye to alter the prevailing culture to that extent and they were still very much in operation come 2015 and 2016 yet the rate came back down.

I'm extremely skeptical of ANTIFA but the the idea they can account for the 2014 spike would literally rely on them killing many hundreds of people directly that year, despite doing nothing of the sort in 2013 or 2015.

Perhaps I should requote the post you rated "dumb".

You then asserted:

The gun reforms put in place after the Port Arthur massacre were intended to prevent another incident like that. Australia never had a gun violence problem on the scale of the US, so if anything I was agreeing with your claim that the Australian example isn't too useful when discussing a solution to that.