Which makes the reduced number of guncrimes even more impressive.

When I finally get my Remmy 700 I shall post back in this thread.

-PB

You do realise that the lowered crime in America is because of guns?

Which makes the reduced number of guncrimes even more impressive.

You are aware that...

Britain has a higher crime rate than USA?
Britain has more than half the number of crimes than USA, despite being a 5th of its population?
Britain has more than twice as many crimes as the USA?

http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/United-Kingdom/United-States/Crime

The wider implications are the same - remove the guns and long term crime rates will reduce to UK levels. Continue to put more and more guns out there and rates will remain higher.

Ofcourse, more guns = more gun related deaths.

However, you can't look at it in isolation. Look at the wider implications on overall crime when there are no guns.

Here's a couple of stats for you:

2011 - USA, where firearms are easily and legally obtained - firearms related deaths = 10.3 per 1,000 citizens
2010 - UK, where firearms are for the most part illegal - firearms related deaths = .25 per 1,000 citizens

I may be reading too much into this, but my take is that less firearms mean less firearms related deaths. Just putting that out there.

The argument that criminals are still going to get guns so why have laws against them is fatuous.

In that case why have any laws? Someone will always not pay attention to them. You could make the same argument against any law.

No empirical study of the effectiveness of gun laws has shown any positive effect on crime. To the dismay of the pro hibitionists, such studies have shown a negative effect. That is, in areas having greatest restrictions on private firearms ownership, crime rates are typically higher, because criminals are aware that their intended victims are less likely to have the me ans with which to defend themselves.

If gun laws worked, the proponents of such laws would gleefully cite examples of reduced crime. Instead, they uniformly blame the absence of tougher or wider spread measures for the failures of the laws they adv ocated. Or they cite denials of applications for permission to buy a firearm as evidence the law is doing something beyond preventing honest citizens from being able legally to acquire firearms. They cite Washington, D.C., as a jurisdiction where gun laws are "working." Yet crime in Washington has risen dramatically since 1976, the year before its handgun ban took effect. Washington, D.C., now has outrageously higher crime rates than any of the states (D.C. 1992 violent crime rate: 2832.8 per 100,000 resi dents; U.S. rate: 757.5), with a homicide rate 8 times the national rate (1992 rate 75.4 per 100,000 for D.C., 9.3 nationally.) No wonder former D.C. Police Chief Maurice Turner said, "What has the gun control law done to keep criminals from gettin g guns? Absolutely nothing... [City residents] ought to have the opportunity to have a handgun."

Criminals in Washington have no trouble getting either prohibited drugs or prohibited handguns, resulting in a skyrocketing of the city's murder rate. D.C.'s 1991 homicide rate of 80.6 per 100,000 population was the highest ever recorded by an American big city, and marked a 200% rise in homicide since banning handguns, while the nation's homicide rate rose just 11%. Since 1991, the homicide rate has re mained near 75 per 100,000, while the national rate hovers around 9-10.

Clearly, criminals do not bother with the niceties of obeying laws--for a criminal is, by definition, someone who disobeys laws. Those who enforce the law agree.

Because apparently guns don't make it safer...