This speculative argument falls flat in the face of actual data.
More effective and regulated gun control and less access to guns is 100% consistent with less gun crime.
That there was a revolution in 1777 doesn't change the fact both the UK and US were fairly equally involved in other kinds of political violence, I mean, you do realize the UK have been at war with others and themselves since the dawn of time? That they had their own 'revolution' and a Republic 100 years before the US?
The Japanese have quite a violent history as well and yet have zero gun crime.
Most regions in the US don't directly have a relationship with slavery and even accommodating for elevated levels of crime among those communities - gun violence is still very high.
Guns are widespread and available to almost anyone in the US, and there's a huge amount of gun crime.
Canada/Australia - more restrictions, less gun crime.
Europe - quite heavily restricted, a small amount of gun crime.
Japan - effectively totally banned, and almost 0 gun crime.
Switzerland has militia training and ownership, but it's generally not pistols, and they definitely don't carry guns for personal defence. Their rifles are locked up in the basement.
Mexico has tight gun laws, but they're not enforced.
While there are concerns about freedoms, the formation of 'tyranny' etc. to contend with, there's no doubt that effective and highly restricted gun control has a significant impact.
To anyone who's lived in Europe, Can/Aus/NZ and the US, it's just blindingly obvious, it's not a rhetorical argument at all, it boils down to trying to understand the reasoning of people who have difficulty conceding the reality of how safe it really is when there aren't that many guns floating around.
Most police in the UK don't even carry guns, that's how real the implications are ... and it's not cause 'they didn't have a revolution'.
EDIT - FYI here are the data points:
USA: 4.5/100K gun homicides, 1.2 guns per/capita
Canada: 0.5/100K gun homicides and 0.4 guns per/capita
France: 0.1/100K gun homicides and 0.2 guns per/capita
Japan: 0.0/100K (!!!) gun homicides and 0.006 guns per/capita
It's crystal clear and unambiguous: for countries that have civil infrastructure, general lawfulness and the means to affect social policy etc. - fewer guns means fewer gun crimes. Obviously, there will be variations (i.e. Scotland has a crazy amount of stabbings) but prevalence of guns is a firs order issue.
> More effective and regulated gun control and less access to guns is 100% consistent with less gun crime.
So what? I don't care about "less gun crime"; I care about "less violent crime".
Talking about the subset of crime, violence, death, and injury that's caused by firearms is fundamentally dishonest. You could argue by the exact same logic that the lack of passenger trains in the US reduces train suicides compared to Japan. The specific tools are not the fucking issue.
> I mean, you do realize the UK have been at war with others and themselves since the dawn of time? That they had their own 'revolution' and a Republic 100 years before the US?
Sure. For instance, England and Scotland were intermittently at war for centuries, which resulted in a lot of the people living in the English/Scottish border regions developing a particularly violent way of life. These people were a huge pain in the neck after the unification of Great Britain. So a whole lot of them got shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to America.
You know who else the British shipped to America? Violent criminals. This was one of the reasons we declared independence, actually. People think of Australia as a former penal colony, but that only started because we stopped letting them ship people here.
Who else came here? The Puritans, whose other accomplishments included such things as burning witches and violently establishing that English Republic you alluded to.
The normal, peaceful, law-abiding Brit who wasn't particularly interested in violence or religious fanaticism? Those are the guys who stayed behind in Britain.
More effective and regulated gun control and less access to guns is 100% consistent with less gun crime.
That there was a revolution in 1777 doesn't change the fact both the UK and US were fairly equally involved in other kinds of political violence, I mean, you do realize the UK have been at war with others and themselves since the dawn of time? That they had their own 'revolution' and a Republic 100 years before the US?
The Japanese have quite a violent history as well and yet have zero gun crime.
Most regions in the US don't directly have a relationship with slavery and even accommodating for elevated levels of crime among those communities - gun violence is still very high.
Guns are widespread and available to almost anyone in the US, and there's a huge amount of gun crime.
Canada/Australia - more restrictions, less gun crime.
Europe - quite heavily restricted, a small amount of gun crime.
Japan - effectively totally banned, and almost 0 gun crime.
Switzerland has militia training and ownership, but it's generally not pistols, and they definitely don't carry guns for personal defence. Their rifles are locked up in the basement.
Mexico has tight gun laws, but they're not enforced.
While there are concerns about freedoms, the formation of 'tyranny' etc. to contend with, there's no doubt that effective and highly restricted gun control has a significant impact.
To anyone who's lived in Europe, Can/Aus/NZ and the US, it's just blindingly obvious, it's not a rhetorical argument at all, it boils down to trying to understand the reasoning of people who have difficulty conceding the reality of how safe it really is when there aren't that many guns floating around.
Most police in the UK don't even carry guns, that's how real the implications are ... and it's not cause 'they didn't have a revolution'.
EDIT - FYI here are the data points:
USA: 4.5/100K gun homicides, 1.2 guns per/capita
Canada: 0.5/100K gun homicides and 0.4 guns per/capita
France: 0.1/100K gun homicides and 0.2 guns per/capita
Japan: 0.0/100K (!!!) gun homicides and 0.006 guns per/capita
It's crystal clear and unambiguous: for countries that have civil infrastructure, general lawfulness and the means to affect social policy etc. - fewer guns means fewer gun crimes. Obviously, there will be variations (i.e. Scotland has a crazy amount of stabbings) but prevalence of guns is a firs order issue.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...