Food for Thought

logicd:

To save you the time of reading everything, the gist of it all is that there are many factors being ignored in crime rates and gun ownership especially between countries, and that the gun control laws in Japan, British(1996) and Australia(1996) played at best a minor role in some gun crime as other greatly increased. 

This is just a quick rundown and will focus mainly on Australia since people mention them the most.

Sunday Morning Herald

Gun laws fall short in war on crime

“In 2005 the head of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn, noted that the level of legal gun ownership in NSW increased in recent years, and that the 1996 legislation had had little to no effect on violence”

The British Journal of Criminology

Gun Laws and Sudden Death: Did the Australian Firearms Legislation of 1996 Make a Difference?

“In 2006, the lack of a measurable effect from the 1996 firearms legislation was reported in the British Journal of Criminology. Using ARIMA analysis, Dr Jeanine Baker and Dr Samara McPhedran found no evidence for an impact of the laws on homicide.”

Social Science Research Network SSRN

Mass Shootings in Australia and New Zealand: A Descriptive Study of Incidence

“That study found that in the period 1980–1996, both countries experienced mass shootings. The rate did not differ significantly between countries. Since 1996-1997, neither country has experienced a mass shooting event despite the continued availability of semi-automatic longarms in New Zealand. The authors conclude that “the hypothesis that Australia’s prohibition of certain types of firearms explains the absence of mass shootings in that country since 1996 does not appear to be supported… if civilian access to certain types of firearms explained the occurrence of mass shootings in Australia (and conversely, if prohibiting such firearms explains the absence of mass shootings), then New Zealand (a country that still allows the ownership of such firearms) would have continued to experience mass shooting events.”

Australian Institute of Criminology

Comparing international trends in recorded violent crime

Number of Violent Crimes

The cost of the reduction in gun crime here is negligible compared to the increases in all the other crimes.

You can see the violent crime rate (sexual assault, homicide, robbery, and assault) for the United States has been dropping after looser gun laws and higher ownership. England & Wales on the other hand has seen an increase after their ban, along with Australia.

Unfortunately, they didnt continue to track these trends past 2004 and compare them (nothing stopping you from getting the numbers yourself and punching them into a new chart), but at least they got 8 years worth of data and the overall 34 year trend to compare it too.

Factors people ignore when pushing Australian, UK, or Japanese gun control 

There are many factors anti-gun people like to ignore when propping up their smug “other countries” arguments. Some of those factors are:

• Japan, Australia, and the UK are island nations with no bordering countries
  
• Guns and other illegal things like drugs are very difficult to smuggle in compared to the ease of connected countries like USA and Mexico
  
• Different governments
  
• Different politics and policies
  
• Different issues concerning the country and people
  
• Different society
  
• Different cultures
  
• Different history of firearms and civilian ownership and founding
  
• Different rates of gun ownership and guns per capita even when adjusted for population
  
• Different demographics
  
• Different environmental and economic factors
  
• UK and Australia still have firearm problems and home manufacturing
  
• Other crimes are higher and rose after bans (Japan suicide, UK knives, etc)
• The cost of reduced gun crime (gun crime goes down slightly, most other crimes increase greatly)

Another thing I notice is that any noticeable crime rate drops are often credited to recent gun control measures. But you cant really attribute the drops to the gun control laws when no one bothers to look at previous years crime rate trends. If crime is already dropping without gun control, how can you honestly attribute falling crime rates to gun control after you enact it? 

Look at the UK for example

Source

As you can see, England and Wales had already hit their recent all time high in crime and was in the process of their down trend when gun control was passed a year later in 1996. It eventually took them 9 more years to reach average crime levels back in the 80′s when they didnt have their gun bans and crime was much lower.

You may as well blame the weather for causing or reducing crime at this point.

Also take into account how they never really mention other countries outside of Japan Australia or the UK. What of Russia? Switzerland? Canada? Mexico? Serbia? Yemen? Finland? There are many countries with total or severe bans with rampant crime including gun crime and there are countries with pretty lax laws with little crime. They also act like gun crime is the single most important facet of crime in general. Gun crime is rather small everywhere compared to other forms like rape and general homicide including the USA when other crimes are much more common. People praise UK’s gun ban and credit it with dropping gun crime (even though looking at rates prior to ban shows a down trend already happening before the ban) as other crime goes up.

People also dont take into account the differences in crime rates between countries considered to be safe, and the USA. Despite all our guns, our homicide rate is 4.7 Its not even double that of the UK who sits at 2.6.

The USA has 13x more guns per capita compared to the UK, with only 1.8x more homicide. This is significant. If guns caused homicide, our rate compared to the UK should have the USA at 34.9 or 44.4 if we compare to Japan.

We would be the 9th and 5th most dangerous country in the world out of 218 countries, beating out Zimbabwe, South Africa Rwanda, Mexico, Nigeria, Colombia and other African and South American nations. Instead we are 111th place. Guns are clearly not the problem.

Number of guns per capita by country

List of countries by intentional homicide rate

Gun Ownership & Correlation in OECD Countries for Suicide & Homicide

• No correlation between homicide and gun ownership rates for OECD countries
• No correlation between suicide and gun ownership rates for OECD countries
• No correlation between homicide and gun ownership rates between states in the USA
• No correlation between household gun ownership, income, and poverty between the states in the USA
• Gun control largely ineffective in preventing crime

My firearms master post

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Special thanks to Portuguese commando Elpatron56 for the first few links and reminding me I hadnt covered this subject yet and had old graphs lying around I could use.

“Audaces Fortuna Juva”