Reply #131: And since criminals don't fear prison (are not in their right mind)...

[krispos42]

then who will turn in their guns last?

And when the law-abiding people like you and me turn in their guns, what will the criminals do with theirs?

And what invasive, intrusive procedures and gestapo-style tactics will the police and government start doing to combat the sudden outcry of the citizenry as crime goes up?

The most common argument I'm given by gun owners for owning guns is to defend themselves against the very problem they caused: gun murders due to gun availability thanks to them.

Most crimes are not committed with guns. Therefore, people don't own guns to stop gun-armed crooks, they own guns to stop crooks.

Shifting the murder weapon is the best you can hope for with this kind of logic.

In the UK less than 8% of homicides were performed with a gun, 56 in total. Is that a cause to celebrate? Not when the other 678 people killed per year are killed with "other".

The reported uses of "real" (not air gun) firearms in crimes has doubled in the last decade. Four years after banning handguns, handgun crime had doubled. Use of firearms in robbery and assault has gone up markedly in the past decade, nearly doubling just a few years after banning and confiscating handguns.

But don't believe me, look in the UK's Home Office report for England and Wales. Incidently, it's where I got the numbers for this graph:



http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs08/hosb0308.pdf