top | item 26458356

(no title)

pandem | 5 years ago

I don't think that is obvious at all. I would assume most illegally owned guns have been legally owned in the first place so gun laws can have a big effect.

discuss

order

LorenPechtel|5 years ago

Only if you are talking about basically totally disarming society. Note some problems with this:

1) There are something like 300-600 million firearms in the US. Attempts to disarm only get the guns from those who are law abiding, you disarm the defenders without doing much to the criminals.

2) You probably increase the death rate as you have made people less able to defend themselves, but done basically nothing to most murders because you didn't succeed in disarming the criminals.

zepto|5 years ago

Can you explain how?

axaxs|5 years ago

I've had guns stolen. So overnight they went from legally owned to illegally owned.

jiofih|5 years ago

Every illegal gun is either stolen from a legal owner, the police, the military, or imported (where it comes from those same sources).

By increasing the supply their availability for criminals also goes up proportionally.

ralusek|5 years ago

People legally buy guns and then distribute them illegally.