But your premise rests on the trust that criminals won’t obtain guns illegally if more restrictions are created. On mobile, so don’t have the numbers, but I recall a large amount of gun crime is done by illegally obtained firearms.
It doesn't rest on the premise that bad guys won't obtain guns illegally ... because they for sure will and that's the case everywhere.
Supply and Demand applies to the Black Market as much as it does to legal markets.
Again Japan is a great example: there are pretty much no guns allowed, anywhere, and guess what? There is almost zero gun crime.
There's no doubt that anyone with basic resources and need could obtain a gun if they really put their minds to it, but that's part of Supply and Demand, it's just not worth the extended effort in most cases. But if you have them lying around, with easy access, and your whole crew has them, and your rival gang is also easily and well armed, well, then you have a problem.
The argument that guns are good for personal defence just does not add up, it's just irrational at face value that everyone running around with guns (even legal ones) creates safer conditions.
The only place they would be useful is in highly dangerous situations, ironically made dangerous at least in part because historically lax gun regulations. If I lived in Mexico, I may very well own a gun, but in Maine, it would be basically pointless for the purposes of 'self defence' there.
Switzerland has high gun ownership, but they do not really have pistols and they do not carry them for self defence.
Mexico has strict gun laws, but they are not enforced, so the laws don't have much of an effect.
USA -> Can/Aus -> UK/Europe -> Japan form a fairly straight forward examples of ever stricter gun control leading to considerably less gun crime.
Note that some of those places have elevated levels of physical assaults, and knife attacks, but that leads to considerably fewer injuries and fatalities.
The 'stand against tyranny' argument notwithstanding, I think there's some legitimacy there, but that's another can of worms.
> Again Japan is a great example: there are pretty much no guns allowed, anywhere, and guess what? There is almost zero gun crime.
I think the relevant counterfactual example you're looking for here is, "If Japan had much more liberal gun laws, would murder rates go up?" I don't think anyone's specifically concerned about gun murders.
"I don't think anyone's specifically concerned about gun murders. " That's because they don't exist. They are made impossible because of the restraints.
Consider that Japan has so effectively kept gun violence out, that we consider their 'no gun deaths' an artifact of their culture.
Reference my comment on this thread for data on Japan, France, US, Canada.
If you add in Korea, which is similar to Japan, you see that guns are not completely restricted but very rare - and guess what - homicide by guns, though still rare - does materially exist above the levels of Japan.
So yes, if you allowed 'some guns' in Japan, there would be some gun crime.
The homocide rate in Japan is about 1/2 that of Norway, which seems about right, it's not like they don't murder people there.
My bet if that gun laws in Japan were the same as Norway, you'd see 1) that more of the homicides would be by guns and 2) the homocide rate would creep up a bit because it's just so easy to reach for a gun.
Of course, if guns were as widespread in Japan as they are in the US there would be much more homicide, but still considerably less than in the US.
Put another way: while culture is obviously an important factor - that culture is driven by gun availability.
And other things as well of course: if everyone has healthcare/welfare, well, that's going to start to limit the very negative situations people get into on the margins. I'm not making an ideological point here, rather than trying to illustrate systematic effects.
>Put another way: while culture is obviously an important factor - that culture is driven by gun availability.
I think that's incorrect. You really need to do experiments to get at this sort of causal story, though econometricians think they can sneak their way around said experiments. It's definitely a feedback loop and the availability of guns seems like a very, very small part of what goes into a "culture".
Anyway, what I really came here to say is I think you misinterpreted my comment: I didn't mean japanese people don't really care about gun murders, I meant all of us shouldn't really care about gun murders. From a public policy perspective, the thing we care about is just plain old murders--with what tools people decide to commit them is irrelevant. The relevant counterfactual you need to consider is, "If Japan had more liberal gun laws, would the murder rate go up?" if the claim you're interested in is "Do gun laws influence the murder rate?", NOT "If Japan had more liberal gun laws, would the gun murder rate go up?". It seems likely that the gun murder rate would go up to me, but who cares? What if the overall murder rate went down? What we really care about is the # of people murdered.
