Gun Control

[Lexite]

Luduan, the effectiveness doesnt matter, people get killed all the time with weapons and means that are not guns and a ban on guns would just increase it. If a person wants to kill or harm someone, they are going to do it either way. Removing guns only take them away from a person who is going to try to protect themself, it will not stop the attacker from trying to kill them, harder to get a gun to do it with yes, but not prevent them from getting a gun.

Criminals will always be able to get guns. The fact that they commit murders now with illegal weapons proves that. They were prevented from purchasing a legal gun, clearly there is already somehting in place that prevents them from obtaining a gun. No one can just go into a gun store and just buy a gun, you have to have a background check first, if you have a criminal reccord you cannot get a gun. The criminal would be prevented from getting a legal gun and will just have to go somewherre else to get an illegal one. Just because something is illegal does not mean a person cannot still obtain it.

Gun ownership is fine, but handguns/ semi-automatic/ fully automatic weapons should be banned. If responsible gun owners are such great shots and so very educated about guns, they should just one-shot the criminals with their rifles.

I take it you have never fired a rifle. Yes a well educated person can defend them self with one shot, but they need time to load the weapon since a well educated person does not leave the gun loaded. A hand gun is much quicker and easier to load the a rifle is and that person cannot afford the time it takes to load the rifle if they are being attacked. I agree fully automatic weapons are not needed out there on the sales floor but do you actually know how often they are used in crimes, very very rarely, but I do say there should be heavier restrictions on them.

 

[highstakespkmn]

The problems with this argument are rather obvious. First, it is easier to defend oneself against a knife than a gun.

Why would you ever do this to yourself, bringing up the self-defense argument in favor of gun control? If one person has a knife, he is going to kill the person without a knife 90% of the time. That's just the way it works. Or make it a baseball bat or something. Whatever the situation is, the armed person is going to be able to do pretty much whatever they want to the unarmed person. Since I'm all assuming we'd like our laws to favor the upstanding, responsible citizen, imagine this situation, one with gun control and one without it. You hear what you think a person is breaking into your house. If you have a gun, you grab it, crouch down and you corner the burglar/rapist/whatever AT GUNPOINT. As long as said individual is unaware of your presence, this is going to be victory for you pretty much no matter what, no matter how armed he is. If you feel at danger, you shoot them out of necessity. After all, they ARE breaking into your house perhaps with a gun.

Second situation is said individual breaks into your house. He's armed like before. He's holding a knife, and since its easier to defend yourself against a knife than a gun, you take advantage of that fact and quickly disarm him. Who knows how, you just do cause a man with a knife is no threat. Especially if you're elderly and female, you have experience disarming men with knives and save the day with your wisdom and cooking powers. Oh, and this man is a criminal so who knows, he might have obtained a gun illegally. Just grab a cooking pot, hold it up as a shieild, and deflect his bullet right back in his face.

While it is possible to kill someone with practically any implement, speeding projectiles travelling at hundreds of feet per second are exceedingly effective.

See: cooking pot. But seriously, its not even a great way of killing people, except in cases of like drive by shootings, but the kind of people likely to be involved in those are drug traffickers who would be the most likely to own guns even in a country that bans gun ownership. So it leaves the more domestic cases where you want your wife/husband/girlfriend/whatever dead. Most of those cases you are living with the person. If you have any bit of premeditiation involved, are you going to shoot their head into a bloody mess and hopefully hide up the mess AND their body, or try a more subtle approach like poison or drowning. You could even say its suicide. If its not premeditated, its probably a crime of rage, and more often than not that's grabbing the nearest object and hurting the victim. You don't want them dead, you just want to hurt them bad. That's going to happen with both guns and without guns, and sometimes they're going to die and sometimes they aren't.

It is also easier to disarm someone holding a knife, especially in a presumably crowded area such as a bank, than someone wielding a semiautomatic (or automatic) weapon. The former requires close proximity and physical overpowering, the latter requires a pull of the finger and decent aim. Furthermore, a gunshot wound (especially from, say, a hollow point round) is harder to recover from than a knife wound and may very well kill instantly, immediately terminating resistance. Bows and arrows aren't exactly very easy to conceal, as was mentioned earlier in relation to rifles and shotguns. There should, at least, be extensive background checks and possibly psychological examinations for those wishing to purchase weapons. Had more stringent policies been in place that homicidal maniac at Virginia Tech would have at least had to exert some effort into obtaining a weapon, although the readily-available-no-questions-asked firearms marketed at gun shows -- ubiquitous in the South, not sure about other areas of the country -- would likely have yielded the same results.

OK I concede. Guns are bad in one situation: homicidal maniacs. It's the most effective way to kill a large group of people. But seriously, what percentage of murders each year are committed by homicidal maniac. It's probably so close to zero that it isn't worth even considering. And if somebody is that much of a psychotic maniac, they might somehow be able to get their hands on a gun anyway. Who the fuck knows.

 

[Ancien Régime]

I'm pretty sure you can, given my stats that I provided on page 1 are more current and also more objective in that they specifically define the % of homicides committed with a firearm. I don't know if you realize this, but unless the criminal is found (and perhaps not even then) - replica weapons count as gun crime for the purposes of things like armed robbery even though they're not really guns.

The percentage of homicides committed with a firearm is utterly irrelevant. Guns are more freely available, so people who *do* commit homicides will opt to use those over other weapons. That does not reflect an overall increase in homicide.

Your argument about currency is somewhat relevant, but there is no way that these trends could completely reverse in the span of a decade.

Had more stringent policies been in place that homicidal maniac at Virginia Tech would have at least had to exert some effort into obtaining a weapon

Depends on whether he was a "maniac". I might as well make the argument that "if some of the students were armed, then his rampage would have ended sooner" - campus security cannot be everywhere.

How does Canada have 1099 violent crimes PER CAPITA? That's a billion violent crimes per million people. Each person would need to commit an average of 3 violent crimes per day

I should have clarified. It was 1099 violent crimes per 100,000 people.

And no, Canada does NOT have more violent crimes per capita than America.

With that said, I just presented data that shows the opposite. This seems more based on what you believe about the two countries than on actual data.

Final thing, if I were to rob a bank, and knew that even a quarter of Americans carried concealed weapons, I'd be inclined to shoot everyone immediately and grab the money/valuables afterward... Not the kind of outcome we'd want, considering that currently very few bank robberies involve homicide.

Let's say 200 people are in a bank. Let's say that 50 of them have concealed weapons. Do you really think you, can take 200 people out before you get shot yourself? Maybe if you had an a true assault weapon or a military-style rifle. But if you don't horribly outgun them, logic tells me to take the bank over the robber every time. Not to mention that he would likely be unable to get at the valuables if he simply shot everyone.

Your analogy is flawed.

 

[CaptKirby]

highstakespkmn, I vote for people based on who has the cooler name. If both have bad names, then I pick whoever's name is closest to either edge (a or z) of the alphabet.

Deck Knight, I am not using sophistry. I am stating a common sense observation; what is this, third grade? 'I'm not using sophistry - you're using sophistry!!'; way to avoid admitting to your lying. I definitely use sophistry when I am unwilling to do research because it is an easy way out, but here the universal claims are so obvious and compelling it is not needed. I do not distrust humanity, I do not care for humanity at all. Most people are sheep, 99.9% of people are liars, some huge number are cheaters, et cetera. None of this necessitates anything about a person doing anything bad, which is why my point was not misleading or anything. My point is that everyone has bad qualities in spades for the most part, except the most genuinely nice/optimistic people (almost no one), and anyone thus has some impetus to go commit a crime.

As to the government, I would like the government to be perfect as much as anyone, but that is just utterly impossible. Corruption always comes, special interests always creep in, many states become terror states when they feel threatened by external forces or are losing power (the last most applicable to this conversation)...but we need government to control all the little dumb sheep of the world.

I did misread the police home/station thing, my apologies.

 

[Luduan]

It's easier to defend yourself when you're using more force than the person who's attacking you. If someone pulls a knife on you and you pull out a gun, they'll be the one to back off. If you're both forced to use knives, or you're unarmed and try to disarm them, odds are you'll both get hurt.

This is thoroughly irrelevant to the argument at hand. Lexite was comparing knives to guns in that both can kill people; by the same token, I can compare nuclear weapons to belts. I was pointing out the serious flaws in her argument. You and the below posters seem to not realize that I nowhere advocated banning guns. I'd recommend you read my post more carefully before responding with tangential cavils.

Luduan, the effectiveness doesnt matter, people get killed all the time with weapons and means that are not guns and a ban on guns would just increase it.

Statistics say otherwise, though the evidence is sketchy on both sides.

If a person wants to kill or harm someone, they are going to do it either way. Removing guns only take them away from a person who is going to try to protect themself, it will not stop the attacker from trying to kill them, harder to get a gun to do it with yes, but not prevent them from getting a gun.

You'll note, as I have already pointed out, that I nowhere advocated banning guns, although any non-suicidal species would strive for their elimination.

Criminals will always be able to get guns. The fact that they commit murders now with illegal weapons proves that. They were prevented from purchasing a legal gun, clearly there is already somehting in place that prevents them from obtaining a gun. No one can just go into a gun store and just buy a gun, you have to have a background check first, if you have a criminal reccord you cannot get a gun. The criminal would be prevented from getting a legal gun and will just have to go somewherre else to get an illegal one. Just because something is illegal does not mean a person cannot still obtain it.

No, but you can go to a gun show and buy a gun immediately, no questions asked, cash only exchange, often times in the parking lot. My entire family is composed of lifetime NRA members; I have seen this sort of thing time and time again.

An example: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7297745&page=1

Why would you ever do this to yourself, bringing up the self-defense argument in favor of gun control? If one person has a knife, he is going to kill the person without a knife 90% of the time. That's just the way it works. Or make it a baseball bat or something. Whatever the situation is, the armed person is going to be able to do pretty much whatever they want to the unarmed person. Since I'm all assuming we'd like our laws to favor the upstanding, responsible citizen, imagine this situation, one with gun control and one without it. You hear what you think a person is breaking into your house. If you have a gun, you grab it, crouch down and you corner the burglar/rapist/whatever AT GUNPOINT. As long as said individual is unaware of your presence, this is going to be victory for you pretty much no matter what, no matter how armed he is. If you feel at danger, you shoot them out of necessity. After all, they ARE breaking into your house perhaps with a gun.

Once again, you are taking my argument out of context. You are also incorrect to say that a gun is immediate defense. They are more likely to shoot at you if they see you have a gun. Most robbers are after one thing: a quick and easy haul. Few rob houses with the intent to kill any possible occupants.

Second situation is said individual breaks into your house. He's armed like before. He's holding a knife, and since its easier to defend yourself against a knife than a gun, you take advantage of that fact and quickly disarm him. Who knows how, you just do cause a man with a knife is no threat. Especially if you're elderly and female, you have experience disarming men with knives and save the day with your wisdom and cooking powers. Oh, and this man is a criminal so who knows, he might have obtained a gun illegally. Just grab a cooking pot, hold it up as a shieild, and deflect his bullet right back in his face.

Because elderly women have such amazingly quick reflexes, eyesight, and alacrity that they will successfully reach, aim, and discharge their firearm before they are shot in the attempt.

See: cooking pot. But seriously, its not even a great way of killing people, except in cases of like drive by shootings, but the kind of people likely to be involved in those are drug traffickers who would be the most likely to own guns even in a country that bans gun ownership. So it leaves the more domestic cases where you want your wife/husband/girlfriend/whatever dead. Most of those cases you are living with the person. If you have any bit of premeditiation involved, are you going to shoot their head into a bloody mess and hopefully hide up the mess AND their body, or try a more subtle approach like poison or drowning. You could even say its suicide. If its not premeditated, its probably a crime of rage, and more often than not that's grabbing the nearest object and hurting the victim. You don't want them dead, you just want to hurt them bad. That's going to happen with both guns and without guns, and sometimes they're going to die and sometimes they aren't.

Sure, but crimes of passion are easier to effect with handguns. Besides, the risk of accidental shooting is ever present.

OK I concede. Guns are bad in one situation: homicidal maniacs. It's the most effective way to kill a large group of people. But seriously, what percentage of murders each year are committed by homicidal maniac. It's probably so close to zero that it isn't worth even considering. And if somebody is that much of a psychotic maniac, they might somehow be able to get their hands on a gun anyway. Who the fuck knows

I'd consider any act of murder to be an act of a homicidal maniac.

Depends on whether he was a "maniac". I might as well make the argument that "if some of the students were armed, then his rampage would have ended sooner" - campus security cannot be everywhere.

I don't disagree, but ideally he would have been caught by a psychological screening before purchasing his (legal) weapons.

Let's say 200 people are in a bank. Let's say that 50 of them have concealed weapons. Do you really think you, can take 200 people out before you get shot yourself? Maybe if you had an a true assault weapon or a military-style rifle. But if you don't horribly outgun them, logic tells me to take the bank over the robber every time. Not to mention that he would likely be unable to get at the valuables if he simply shot everyone.

The problem with this has been pointed out: knowledge that many may be carrying concealed weapons makes him more likely to enter shooting. Most bank robbers are interested, as I said regarding house robbers, in a quick and easy haul. They want their money, fast, and they want to get the hell out of there before the police arrive. They aren't generally interested in killing staff or patrons unless they are after hostages, in which case guns are probably more likely to end in a greater number of needless deaths.

 

[umbarsc]

I'm not going to try and jump in the conversation because I'm not really decided on whether guns should be banned or not (I'm leaning pro-ban I guess but there are good points on both sides). However, to the argument that the knowledge that there could be guns deters robbers, I would like to say that I would rather have an increase in 7-11 robberies than an increase in murder.

 

[Lexite]

What is stopping the 7-11 robberies from ending up in murder.

 

[umbarsc]

I haven't seen percentages, but I would think that most robbers wouldn't want to kill the cashier (assuming the store is empty or near empty). Besides the whole emotional aspect of murder (some people are capable of killing someone in cold blood, some aren't, and not all robbers are), there's also the fact that if they are caught for armed robbery, they serve maybe 8 or so years in jail, but if they're caught after they kill someone they could be serving a life sentence.

I actually know someone who worked as a cashier and was caught in a store robbery twice (then quit immediately after the second one lol), and neither time was he shot at, and neither time did the police catch the robber.

 

[Ancien Régime]

The problem with this has been pointed out: knowledge that many may be carrying concealed weapons makes him more likely to enter shooting. Most bank robbers are interested, as I said regarding house robbers, in a quick and easy haul. They want their money, fast, and they want to get the hell out of there before the police arrive. They aren't generally interested in killing staff or patrons unless they are after hostages, in which case guns are probably more likely to end in a greater number of needless deaths.

My point was that the robber cannot kill every armed person in the room, at least not with a handgun (or anything short of an assault rifle really) in the time between he starts firing and the time when the 50 armed patrons start firing at him. There are other variables of course - the skill of the gunman versus the skill of the patrons (which favors the bank - it is highly improbably that there is not one person among 50 who is more skilled in handling firearms) - the fact that the patrons will be moving at that point, while the gunman will likely have much less room to maneuver (a fairly wide open room versus a narrow doorway), and this assumes that there is no outside interference.

In this scenario, the most likely fatality will be that of the gunman - obviously resistance is be riskier than simply handing over the money and valuables (though not risk-free - the criminal may be an asshole and shoot people in the head after securing the money, or his demands may not be met in a timely fashion, leading to someone being executed), but the odds are ridiculously stacked against the robber in every conceivable way.

To me, a prospective bank robber would be among the more rational of criminals, and thus would recognize the stacked odds and be deterred.

 

[Vineon]

And Ancien, your statistics are misleading or wrong. How does Canada have 1099 violent crimes PER CAPITA? That's a billion violent crimes per million people. Each person would need to commit an average of 3 violent crimes per day.

And no, Canada does NOT have more violent crimes per capita than America.

That was for a cut of 100,000 people. Ancien Régime just apparently doesn't know how to properly introduce a table. He just threw it out there, up to you to interpret it. He calls it a violent crimes ratio at first, then a murder ratio later. The link sources don't even work.

Now our homicide rate has certainly never been lower than America's, like he implies, for this entire period (1970s to 1991, and continuing today, the US had a murder rate about 3 times higher. Canada never had that alleged 25% higher murder ratio.

It also happens to stop at 1991 quite conveniently, since our crime rate has been on the decline since.

 

[b0b3rt]

I don't understand how the leap of logic goes from: 50 out of 200 people in this building have guns, so instead of finding a better target, I'm going to try to take out as many as I can to get the loot.
It makes no sense. As I've stated in my last post, most criminals are unwilling to rob/mug a single armed victim. If bank's employees were suddenly and consistently armed, I think that we would have practically no more bank robberies in the US.
Also, about 90% of handgun wounds are non-fatal, including those that are immediately fatal. (This is a rebuttal to the handguns are the most dangerous therefore should be banned argument - the most effective weapon to clear a crowd would actually be a shotgun, not a so called "assault" rifle, whose name is misleading and inaccurate).

I also wonder why nobody responded to my last post - is it because the statements invalidate most of your arguments, and you can't figure out how to get around them..?

 

[Vineon]

I don't understand how the leap of logic goes from: 50 out of 200 people in this building have guns, so instead of finding a better target, I'm going to try to take out as many as I can to get the loot.
It makes no sense. As I've stated in my last post, most criminals are unwilling to rob/mug a single armed victim. If bank's employees were suddenly and consistently armed, I think that we would have practically no more bank robberies in the US.

That is laughable. It takes a bit more preparation to rob a bank than it does robbing a conveniant store. It is usually done by a group of people to begin. Criminals adapt and will likely always be more heavily armed than the bank employees, should they now all be armed. Give a handgun to a regular policeman, an organised criminal will counter with a semi-automatic.

Giving a weapon to simple bank employees is giving them the mandate to protect the bank rather than protect themselves. They are not trained for this, they are not policemen/women. If they do as told, they are not in danger. Should one of them draw his/her gun, chaos will inevitably insue. Bank robbers have no reason to barge in and kill, they just want the money. As if old ladies behind a counter shaking like leaves are going to be a real threat to an organised group of criminals.

Perhaps you are right about a reduced number of bank robberies however, but every single one of them would be a lot more dangerous to everyone and I dont think the odds will ever balance well on the bank employees' side. How could you justify a couple of bank employees dying because they drew their gun to take on the robbers?

 

[Surgo]

How often do banks get robbed in the United States anyway? It seems like a fairly moot argument.

 

[b0b3rt]

That is laughable. It takes a bit more preparation to rob a bank than it does robbing a conveniant store. It is usually done by a group of people to begin. Criminals adapt and will likely always be more heavily armed than the bank employees, should they now all be armed. Give a handgun to a regular policeman, an organised criminal will counter with a semi-automatic.

Giving a weapon to simple bank employees is giving them the mandate to protect the bank rather than protect themselves. If they do as told, they are not in danger. Should one of them draw his/her gun, chaos will inevitably insue. Bank robbers have no reason to barge in and kill, they just want the money. As if old ladies behind a counter shaking like leaves are going to be a real threat to an organised group of criminals.

Laughable? You ignored the bulk of my argument, and you also assume that only a minuscule number of the employees will have weapons.
Actually, I don't know why I'm responding.
You totally ignored the fact (again) that bank robbers simply won't rob a bank if they know they are likely to get shot at by multiple people (a single security guard doesn't cut it, obviously). In order to overpower employees, you would need a large (30? 50?) amount of robbers, which is not only totally ridiculous from a logistics standpoint (not to mention it cuts into the profits), it also means there is a very high chance that some of them will get shot, and/or arrested, because how are you going to co-ordinate an escape of 50 people, let alone from a bank?

Edit, surgo: I don't have the statistics, but I was just showing that the argument doesn't hold up under different circumstances.

 

[Ancien Régime]

Okay, let me present some more data then, my original post was flawed.

(This table did not transfer correctly - the bolded parts are Canada as a whole and the United States).

Atlantic
Quebec
Ontario
Prairies
British Columbia
Canada
USA

Difference 91-99







Homicide
-58%
-35%
-46%
-46%
-41%
-43%
-42%
Sexual assault
-44%
-18%
-31%
-30%
-37%
-31%
-23%
Assault
-19%
-23%
-32%
-12%
-22%
-23%
-45%
Robbery
-9%
-40%
-23%
0%
-7%
-23%
-22%
Burglary
-25%
-38%
-37%
-31%
-32%
-35%
-38%
Motor vehicle theft
11%
-16%
16%
23%
-4%
3%
-36%

This would seem to suggest that the stringent gun laws did not play a large role in the decrease in crime (while we had our own gun law in 1994, it did not have the same impact as Canadian laws). The rate of decrease in both countries during the same time frame was roughly the same.

http://champpenal.revues.org/document448.html

You are correct; homicide rates in Canada are far lower; property crime rates are far higher. I did not mean to imply otherwise.

 

[Vineon]

Laughable? You ignored the bulk of my argument, and you also assume that only a minuscule number of the employees will have weapons.
Actually, I don't know why I'm responding.
You totally ignored the fact (again) that bank robbers simply won't rob a bank if they know they are likely to get shot at by multiple people (a single security guard doesn't cut it, obviously). In order to overpower employees, you would need a large (30? 50?) amount of robbers, which is not only totally ridiculous from a logistics standpoint (not to mention it cuts into the profits), it also means there is a very high chance that some of them will get shot, and/or arrested, because how are you going to co-ordinate an escape of 50 people, let alone from a bank?

Edit, surgo: I don't have the statistics, but I was just showing that the argument doesn't hold up under different circumstances.

I actually went by "all" employees being armed, including the old ladies behind the counter handling common transactions, armed as well, which I mocked.

You insist this would reduce to 0 bank robberies, I disagree. It hardly would take 30-50 people to rob a bank. Certainly not my bank. A group of 4-5 is more than enough. Do you think you can coordinate an effective offensive response from bank employees? Do you picture cold blooded cashiers diving below the counter drawing their shotguns, ringing an alarm while from the offices wave after wave of financial consultants will barge in straf/shooting a la Golden Eye???

An employee drawing his gun not only puts himself in danger but every single one of his co-workers as well. They don't want to fight, they don't want to put their lives at stake for their insured institution, they likely would even refuse to be armed if you offered them a weapon.

 

[Ancien Régime]

That is laughable. It takes a bit more preparation to rob a bank than it does robbing a conveniant store. It is usually done by a group of people to begin. Criminals adapt and will likely always be more heavily armed than the bank employees, should they now all be armed. Give a handgun to a regular policeman, an organised criminal will counter with a semi-automatic.

Okay, let's make it 50 armed persons versus 10 armed robbers. Let's spot the 50 handguns and the 10 semi-automatics. 50 handguns still win, though they actually do take casualties. But the 10 robbers all die. Still stacked against the robbers. Like you said, bank robbery takes preparation, ergo, rational thought. Rational thought says "We don't have a shot to pull this off without getting killed."

Do you think you can coordinate an effective offensive response from bank employees?

If this were the bank, then they would likely be trained, much like private security officers are, in case of a bank invasion where the assailants come in guns blazing, they'd undergo some marksman training, and so forth.

It is a common principle of military strategy that the aggressor is at an inherent disadvantage, and the bank invasion is no exception. The robbers cannot see every potential armed person. If they start firing immediately in fear of concealed weapons, they will be gunned down immediately by more mobile persons in an armed space, who presumably have some sort of arms training (often, law abiding gun owners have acquired some sort of firearm training), and if they pretend to be innocent bank patrons, then declare their intention to rob the bank, then they still get gunned down.

This would not "end" bank robberies - but this would make the odds of pulling one off and coming out alive so stacked against the robbers that they would be far less likely to consider it.

 

[Vineon]

This isn't a war game, Ancien Régime, not a single bank employee should put his life on the line and will agree to. This isn't their home, this isn't their kids, this isn't even their money or their jobs thats at stake, nothing is. What the hell are they protecting? Would you go as far as force them to be armed? You just insisted there would be casualties, reason enough for them to refuse having weapon. I can near guarantee you there wont be any casualty if none of them are armed, you just told me there would certainly be casualties if they were.

You would consider a good trade to lose 5 employees in such a robbery, hell to lose one?

Rational thoughts say bank employees would rather not be armed. Rational thoughts say they have no incitive to take the chance to engage the criminals even if they outnumber them, they have no reason to. This isn't Risk where losing 1 to get 3 is a good move. Rational thoughts say criminals would know this very well, will have the edge in preparation and psych. They barge in a building made up exclusively of people with no reason to risk their lives.

I could be in convenient store with 4 of my friends while a single guy decides to rob it with a knife. With my 4 friends, we could easily outmuscle him although one of us will likely get stabbed. Bet your money on me and my friends not do anything until he leaves. I don't have a reason to risk getting stabbed, even if we have a 100% chance to overpower him. The robber knows he's going down should everyone jump on him, he knows just as much that we aren't going to risk it thus we are not an obstacle to him robbing the store.

 

[b0b3rt]

Vineon, you completely ignored my post again, but Ancien Regime summed it up nicely - bank robbers just won't (for the most part) rob banks when they are likely to take heavy casualties. It just isn't worth the money when you have an incredibly high risk of dieing in the process. Now, I understand that maybe if the stakes were multi-millions instead of tenss of thousands, that some people might be willing to risk getting shot at. But the typical bank robbery doesn't net anywhere near that.

Edit: I saw you post again and you continue to maintain the unsaid philosophy that bank robbers are completely devoid the fear of getting shot at, which is totally ridiculous.
You continue to avoid arguing that point despite it being what we emphasize in our posts, every time, because it is the reason that our argument actually makes sense and yours doesn't.

 

[jamespicone]

No, it really doesn't, B0b3rt. I worked in a supermarket for a while. In the event of an armed robbery, we were told to do whatever the robber told us to do, slowly and carefully, making sure that it was obvious we intended to cooperate and were no threat. We were specifically told not to try and be heros. Why? Because if you do that, you'll get out alive. If you draw a gun, that's when the stakes get higher. Once again, the Rincewind Principle: Weapons make you a target. Most people won't kill in cold blood. But if you threaten the life of a criminal? It's not cold blood any more. Now they have a reason to shoot you.

More to the point, that's just not what guns are used for. People don't use them to defend themselves. Remember that statistically, if you have a gun in your house, it is most likely to be fired at somebody in that house, not an invader. This makes sense - they're the people around the gun most often, aren't they? Most murders are committed by somebody who knew the victim.

And quite frankly, Ancien, those statistics are unconvincing. Crime is a complex phenomenon with a number of interlocking causes. Just giving crime rates for two countries over a decade that doesn't even go up to the present and saying that gun control is the difference is ridiculously simplistic. Particularly since Canada is right next to somewhere guns can be exported from.

 

[Vineon]

I certainly didn't ignore it, you ignored the answer.

I'm saying arm every employee and the robbers will still know they have the psychological advantage. While it might be a deterrant which I admitted in my very first post, it is not an absolute one, like you implied.

The reason is none of those armed employees will accept engaging regardless of the number advantage because they have no reason to. Criminals know this and will abuse it, see my convenient store example in the previous post.

"It is a common principle of military strategy that the aggressor is at an inherent disadvantage, and the bank invasion is no exception. The robbers cannot see every potential armed person."

This isn’t war, all military correlations do not apply. These employees aren’t trained for it and they’ve just been surprised. They are not protecting anything thus have no reason to put their lives at stake, no matter how guaranteed the ‘war is to be won’. Why must I need to repeat none of them will be inclined to risk launching an assault? To them, the war is lost if only one employee dies. What will all the guns in the world do anyway if ONE employee is held hostage at gunpoint?

 

[b0b3rt]

Ok, can you link me to the "Rincewind Principle"? I googled it and no results came up, the only Rincewind I can find is a character by Pratchet. I'm not familiar with it, but it sounds like a gross miscarriage of logic.
Can you explain to me why Vermont, which has practically no gun laws whatsoever, where even people from out of state can carry concealed weapons on their person, has a tiny violent crime rate?
Can you explain to me why Switzerland, where all males must serve in the militia and keep a firearm in their homes also has a tiny violent crime rate?
This doesn't seem to fit your description of what would happen if everybody was armed.

I also fail to understand your logic in assuming that a criminal would take the risk of being shot in order to rob anybody/anything. If everybody was armed, there would be no "psychological advantage" as Vineon said. The whole point is that most criminals aren't willing to engage in an armed confrontation (for which I've already provided proof on my first post, summarily ignored).

I must have missed your last paragraph Vineon. Yes, maybe the robber will go down, but if everybody is armed, the robber will die, not get arrested. It tips the scales slightly, I think.

 

[Trax]

If someone pulls a knife on you and you pull out a gun, they'll be the one to back off. If you're both forced to use knives, or you're unarmed and try to disarm them, odds are you'll both get hurt.

The time it takes you to reach and draw a gun is longer than it takes them to ram a knife under your ribs.

Unless they were retarded enough to pull a knife outside of close range.

 

[Phantom_IV]

Hypothetical scenario: I know that 1/4 of the population(including the tellers) are armed with concealed weapons, likely handguns. I'm disgruntled with the economy, dislike taxes, and was disappointed by an unsuccessful teabagging protest this week. I want to get rich fast. I decide to rob a bank.
That means I buy semi-automatic weapons in a parking lot, bring a few of my friends along, and DONT rob the bank when there are 200 customers inside. I choose a time when there are more like 4.
I value my life, because money is no good without it. I dont want the risk of getting shot in the back while grabbing the money, and neither do my friends. Instead of telling eveyone to get on the ground, we do it ourselves within seconds of entering the bank.

Of those 4 people in the bank, statistically only 1 had a gun. The remaining 3 were killed only because they had a high chance of being armed. If handguns were relatively rare(being illegal or requiring a license) and rifles were the preferred method of self defense, those people may have been spared and the robbery would go in a more conventional manner, asking everyone to get down, telling nobody to be a hero, maybe even asking the guy with the rifle to be smart.

 

[umbarsc]

Ok, can you link me to the "Rincewind Principle"? I googled it and no results came up, the only Rincewind I can find is a character by Pratchet. I'm not familiar with it, but it sounds like a gross miscarriage of logic.
Can you explain to me why Vermont, which has practically no gun laws whatsoever, where even people from out of state can carry concealed weapons on their person, has a tiny violent crime rate?
Can you explain to me why Switzerland, where all males must serve in the militia and keep a firearm in their homes also has a tiny violent crime rate?
This doesn't seem to fit your description of what would happen if everybody was armed.

I also fail to understand your logic in assuming that a criminal would take the risk of being shot in order to rob anybody/anything. If everybody was armed, there would be no "psychological advantage" as Vineon said. The whole point is that most criminals aren't willing to engage in an armed confrontation (for which I've already provided proof on my first post, summarily ignored).

I must have missed your last paragraph Vineon. Yes, maybe the robber will go down, but if everybody is armed, the robber will die, not get arrested. It tips the scales slightly, I think.

You're missing the point. If five armed men hold guns up to 15 armed employees, the employees will kill the robbers, but some employees will die, or at least severely wounded. If every single employee cooperates fully, the scumbag robbers get away and the bank loses some money, but you have a much larger chance of making it out alive. A smart robber will take advantage of this.