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Originally posted by DJ Happy
If you reduce the number of firearms in circulation, you reduce the amount of firearms that are able to be used for crimes. Where do you think most of the guns used in crimes come from? At one point they were legally owned by someone. If you make it impossible for people to legally own one, where are the criminals going to get them from?
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If you make it impossible to legally own one, all you do is suddenly make a large number of law abiding citizens into criminals. Guns exist, the technology is here, the genie will not go back in the bottle. If they are made illegal, they will be obtained the same way that drugs are now, and alcohol was under prohibition, they will be traded on a black market. Keeping it legal and somewhat regulated is far preferable to creating more black markets.
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Apart from that, some studies of the CCW law shows that those being issued with licences are also the ones committing the crimes. All criminals have to begin being criminals somewhere. Someone who's never been arrested for anything in his life can easily go and buy a gun (and when I say 'never arrested,' that covers people who have not yet committed a crime and those who have never been CAUGHT committing a crime).
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And I'm sure a lot of studies show that some of those that are issued operators liscences are the ones running from police and driving under the influence, but we don't make cars illegal. A 3500 pound car is every bit as deadly as a gun in the wrong hands.
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Laws reducing gun ownership do EVERYTHING to affect those who are disobeying the laws. All you have to do is look at Europe to see that. Of course, there are always going to be criminals who find ways of getting guns, but their numbers are vastly reduced. Vastly. And the chance that they will actually use them on unarmed civilians is also reduced.
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Gun crimes (not illegal gun ownership, but crimes committed -with a gun-) have been shown to increase in jurisdictions where strict gun control is implemented, it has been shown again and again that in jurisdictions with "shall issue" CCW laws that violent crimes are reduced. Not knowing if your next victim is going to be the one that caps you WILL give a criminal pause. Yes, they move on to softer targets, like property crimes, but I'd prefer they steal your car rather than kill you. Again, making gun ownership illegal does not solve the problem. What should be enforced is strict laws severely punishing those who use a weapon to commit a crime. Punish the criminals, not the law abiding, responsible gun owners. We as a society have developed a frightening tendency to punish everyone -except- the person who caused the problem.