Like some have responded, when I'm talking about the correlation, I'm looking at other countries, noy distinguishing between U.S. cities. I'm not sure there are appreciable differences between the way Dallas, Seattle, NYC, and Atlanta control guns.

Who knows? Maybe we Americans are just violent mofos. Get rid of guns and we'd have the same murder rate, but with knives. Get rid of knives and people would use hammers or heavy objects. (Although, an American is more likely to kill himself than be killed by an assault.)

According to the Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, covering the period 1998 - 2000 (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention), New Zealand had 45 intentional homicides in 2000. That makes NZ's per capita murder rate .01 per 1000 people.

The United States had 12,658 in 1999. (2000 wasn't reported.) 8,259 of those involved firearms.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics, I know.

Are there any Swiss on this board? A gentleman of my acquaintance from Vancouver, B.C. carries dual citizenship from Canada and Switzerland. He returns to his home country every two years to compete in their national shooting competition. He uses the rifle issued him in the WWII era, a bolt action Steyr-Mannlicher. His son uses the rifle issued him in the '60's - selective fire capability and all. His grandson uses a very modern Steyr-Aug bullpup configuration, also selective fire, also his to keep as issued when he served in the army.

I'm not exactly sure how this works, so hopefully any Swiss members here can clarify. It's my understanding that they keep the rifle issued them after mandatory military service. Most citizens have one, plus some prescribed amount of ammo for it. Kept at home for immediate access. My friend tells me that during the months of the national Schuetzenfest it is not uncommon to see people just strolling down the streets with assault rifles. He was in a bank exchanging money and there were people standing in line with their rifles, on their way to their appointed shooting place and time.

The point I'm driving at is that there are a lot of guns in Switzerland. I'm not sure that it is mandatory to keep your issue firearm, but it is at least encouraged and it is facilitated. Gun crime in Switzerland? For all practical purposes, there isn't any.

It's not the guns, it's the attitude. Here in America, gun crime is almost unheard of in the more rural areas. Get away from the big cities and gun ownership goes up while crime goes down. Our real problem in this country is our failure to adequately prosecute perpetrators of crime in general and gun crime in particular. The answer will never be to take guns away from honest people. The answer is to deal very harshly with those that would use them to commit crimes.

I rely on Penn and Teller for all my opinions on such matters. :D

http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/topics.do?topic=gun

Jeff,

I lived in Europe for many years and had a lot of Swiss friends. Every able bodied male above the age of 18 (or is it 21?) is issued a cabinet that they keep in their house. Locked inside is a fully auto rifle and ammo and its kept until something like 45 years of age when they turn it back into the govt.

Kinda beats the hell out of the crap that sarah brady and her gang is slathering around the country the last years!

JoeA

Guns are enablers for the cowards who are afraid to physically engage another person. To kill with the tools you list above take some degree of courage and skill - generally speaking.

Cam,

Please explain to us why the incidence of violent crime in Australia and England has increased now that the weapons have been confiscated from the law abiding public??? Now only the criminals have weapons and its showing.

Please also explain why the Swiss have no problems at all with weapons, when every adult Swiss male living there has a fully automatic weapon at their disposal?

I have family living in New Zealand and they do not like the gun control there. Course they cannot change it so just have to live with it.

Joe A

I don't think we, US, can ever not have guns. It's just something innate in this society. It will take a mindset change that is nigh impossible. I visited Ireland twice over the past two years. Gun crime relatively unheard of. Gardi do not carry guns. I have a distant cousin there who is a detective. The nation as a whole has accepted a mindset that guns should not be used. That may be changing is the future as there has been a wave of immigrants recently.

Sociologically, the differences between the U.S. and Switzerland are so numerous that it laughable to compare the two.

In a nutshell.

Average time spent in prison for a California murder conviction? About 6 years.

That's a disturbing low number. Is that for first degree murders only or does it include all homicides? Does it account for the prison stays of those who are executed?

http://www.corr.ca.gov/offenderinfoservices/Reports/Annual/TIME6/TIME6d2003.pdf#search='prison%20time%20for%20murder'

indicates time served before parole for murder was 20 years.

where did 6 years come from?

Jeez, talk about a contradiction in terms.

So how did this person get shot if no-one carries guns, hmmm? With a pea-shooter or slingshot perhaps?

While I'm not a gun control freak, I do get a giggle out of the robbery scenario the gun nuts love to bring up in their circle jerks: the one where the Heroic Gun Owner whips out his assault rifle when confronted with the bad guy, while the anti gun person would be dialing 911. You guys conveniently leave out the 'escalation' factor. Now think for a minute: (I know, it's hard, but try this time, OK?) in your Wild West "everyone's packin' heat" fantasy, the 'bad guy' would know there's a good chance of you having a gun, right? Why wouldn't he, unless your gun fantasies are like your sex fantasies, where all the women are blind and deaf. This means he's going to bust a cap in yo' ass first, no questions asked. He's not going to ask you to hand over your wallet; he's going to get the jump on you, pop a slug in the back of the head, then take your stuff, sodomize your children, and make your wife read Hillary Clinton's latest book. So unless you're either going walk around town with your gun drawn, safety off, cocked and ready to fire, or you're very quick on the draw, your "two guns in every waistband" utopia isn't tenable.

Whenever I read of this "arming every citizen" nonsense I think of a crowd at a stadium and what would happen if they were all armed and the usual fight broke out.

They quote average time served for "homicide" as 60 months, but do not differentiate between which class of homicide. Even if all classes are considered, the numbers don't match. The important number, which is not shown, is months served for first felony offense murder. This number is frequently quoted as about 6 years. I last saw a reference in the San Francisco Chronicle.

We all know how reputable the UN is, they would love to disarm Americanshttp://www.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/uzi.gif http://www.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/ar15.gif http://www.pelicanparts.com/support/...shockwhore.gif http://www.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/rlwhore.gif http://www.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/2ar15.gif

In the link above, the average time for all homicides was about 6 years.
First degree is 20 years, 2nd degree is about 18 years, manslaughter is about 7 years, vehicular manslaughter is just over 3 years. The average number is pushed lower by the number of cases of each type, murder was 14 out of 450 cases paroled.

So I don't think 6 years is the appropriate number to quote relative to prison time for gun death.

This really shows we do not punish bad drivers very well. I had a cousin killed by a drunk driver as he was standing at a light. Drunk got off with probation.

The problem is the FELONS who get convicted of murder serve long sentences. First offenders serve light sentences. The data posted does not address this at all.

That would be interesting data to look at. Do you have a source? thanks