Quote:
Originally posted by Azred:
No, I think a sufficiently long period of time has elapsed to accurately measure the effect of bans or restrictions on guns. The net effect: bans/restrictions don't work, just like Prohibition didn't work and the War on Drugs didn't work.
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That's a very bold statement that I would love to see you support with some evidence. While I agree with the Prohibition/War on Drugs example, and while I'm pretty sure a ban on guns in the US wouldn't work in a million years, I don't think you can hold that claim for other, less gun-fixated nations. In a similar fashion to taking cultural and social developments into account as I applied in my previous posts in this topic, I'm not going to claim that statistics are automatically conclusive; but if you look at for instance homicide rates, those are still significantly higher in the US than in Western Europe. I'm not going to make bold claims as to the effectiveness of gun restriction laws based on that figure, but I can't imagine you stating that it has no effect whatsoever in the face of this knowledge.
Also see
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/hosb502.pdf
[ 05-30-2005, 09:17 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]