Research does not support any cause-effect relationship between gun bans and lower crime. In fact the opposite appears to be the case; armed individuals deter crime.

Prohibition doesn't work. Be it alcohol, guns, or drugs, the criminalization of a commodity only creates a black market for it.

And if you think that prohibition somehow makes getting drugs or guns hard today, you are truly in need of some time on the street.

No the data does not show what you claim. Nor does the model of alcohol or drugs apply here either. Yes black markets for banned items will always exist. But the issue is that the statistics are clear - having a firearm in your house increases the likelihood that you will be injured by a firearm increases 5x.

Thus a ban on personal handgun ownership results in average individuals having to weigh the myth of "self-protection" against the very real consequence of being caught with an illegal firearm.

Whereas with drug use, the demand is not driven by rational analysis.

The fly in that ointment is the manufacture. People can grow/cook their own drugs, distill their own booze. Not too many people can build a Glock in their garage. With no supply of new guns, and a steady confiscation of illegal old guns, the nation would be, for all intents and purposes, unarmed in a short time.

The reason the DC ban was a failure is that a gun ban won't work on local levels, only nationally. The 2nd ammendment needs to be completely repealed. Guns should be illegal in all instances. Only America is so backwards in its thinking on guns, and only America has such a shockingly high rate of violent crime.

"Prohibition doesn't work. Be it alcohol, guns, or drugs, the criminalization of a commodity only creates a black market for it."

Your quote above is too far reaching. This would assume that for instance, any ban on any desirable commodity can not act as a deterrant. That's not fully true.

The prohibition may not be able to fully eliminate consumer demand and therefore black markets, but can go a long way to reduce the use of the commodity. It depends on the commodity being banned and society's general attitude towards it.

Where prohibitions are entirely useless is when the thing banned is socially acceptable, widely desired, and coupled with a government's inability to fully enforce the ban.

There are bans on fully automatic machine guns. I would love to own an old fashioned fully auto Tommy Gun. I know where I could find one. In my group of gun enthusiasts the idea of rattling off .45 slugs in quick succession is a very popular idea. It is illegal, however, in my state (California).

To society in general Tommy Guns are very unpopular, and there are large penalities to pay if I am found with a machine gun. I make a cost-benefit decision and it's not worth the risk of buying Tommy Guns. This prohibition actually does work to reduce the black market and control use of the commodity.

I also can go into a known neighborhood and score some pretty decent pot. I don't want to get caught by the cops however, so I don't buy it, and smoke far less pot due to the prohibition than I would if I could walk into any market and legally purchase it.

There are something like one billion guns in the US. We could repeal the entire 2nd Amendment tomorrow and then what?

The only way to fully ensure that there are no more guns in the US but for cops and military, or even put a meaningful dent in the number of then-illegal guns, would require door-to-door searches of residences.

Are you ready for that? I'm not. That's why I prefer to deal in reality and know that if there are bans on guns, only the law abiding will be unarmed.

DaveS:

The fly in that ointment is the manufacture. People can grow/cook their own drugs, distill their own booze. Not too many people can build a Glock in their garage. With no supply of new guns, and a steady confiscation of illegal old guns, the nation would be, for all intents and purposes, unarmed in a short time.

The reason the DC ban was a failure is that a gun ban won't work on local levels, only nationally. The 2nd ammendment needs to be completely repealed. Guns should be illegal in all instances. Only America is so backwards in its thinking on guns, and only America has such a shockingly high rate of violent crime.

People don't have to build their own Glocks any moreso than drug laws force them to create their own crack rocks. All they need is a black-market trade network that reaches someone who can make a gun. Remember, Samuel Colt's first practical revolvers were made before even steam power was commonly available. The only reason criminals aren't making their own guns right now is because they don't have to. Criminals can also share guns, stretching a few to go a long way (ever heard of "community guns?"), and they can assassinate policemen to get a few.

Why would a national gun ban be anymore effective here than it is in Jamaica? Jamaica is an isolated _island_ that bans guns -- you can't just drive down to Georgia to get your illegal gun -- and yet their handgun-murder rate is five times ours. Had England had built its slave plantations inside the mainland instead of in foreign colonies, their murder rate today might be even higher than ours.

Depending on who you read, either Mark Twain or Benjamin Disraeli once said,

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

Seeing as how you can get stats to say anything (or nothing at all) that you want, any argument that begins armed with statistics is an argument best left ignored.

Superposition,

I get where you're going with this, but were does this leave us? Conjecture? Making stuff up out of the blue? "All Japanese people love Sour Patch Kids."

Stats are often spun or misinterpreted, but they're better than nothing.

Let's assume crime rates are lower in areas with higher concentrations of legal gun ownership. The problem occurs when people assign causality to statistics. "I drink because I'm Irish." More likely I drink because beer is a tasty beverage.

I think the "statistical" argument being made is that there is no evidence to suggest that gun bans lower gun crime.

D.C. has long been the murder capital of the U.S. I think the more interesting question is whether it makes sense to use mandatory sentencing in cases of illegal gun possession. Gun crimes are almost never committed with registered firearms. It seems to me that harsher penalties on illegal gun possession (New York for example, which has an extremely low murder rate) are more effective policy measures than simply banning handguns.

"It seems to me that harsher penalties on illegal gun possession (New York for example, which has an extremely low murder rate) are more effective policy measures than simply banning handguns."

Exactly. The law abiding people want guns to protect themselves when they feel that the police will not.

The gun ban never stopped criminals from gaining access to firearms. I should know, I was held up once.

And then what? Then the number of guns will drop. Why?

Because over time

• There will be an initial surrender of weapons by citizens who don't want to run the risk of being caught
• There won't be "venue shopping" for guns by crooks. Crooks will buy and use and destroy and discard from the existing pool of firearms
• Over time, as individuals get busted for DUI and get caught with guns - and similar, the pool of guns will drop.

It won't happen overnight but there will be significant attrition.

Most "law abiding people" who are sufficiently fear driven to carry a firearm are very quickly no longer "law abiding". The so called "zone of safety" is roughly a 25' radius around the person carrying a holstered weapon. That means for those people to be "safe" they have to necessarily threaten anyone who is within 25' of them and "scares them" preemptively with that firearm.

That is the crime of brandishing - and very quickly these individuals are no longer "law abiding".

As for NYC, it has a ban on handguns. And it is precisely because of that ban that murder rates are low. Why? because there is a handgun regulation in the greater tri-state area reducing the ability to drive 15 minutes to buy a gun.

You make sense but it's a numbers game. Certainly some impact on the actual number of guns around will occur.

Considering that guns are not like asparagus or other items which have a shelf life, however, it will take a long, long, long time for us to see any change in the number of guns, by virtue of simply banning them.

And during that time, we're still dealing with a situation where the law abiding are disarmed while criminals are loaded for bear. And then let's ask ourselves if we can totally prevent big arms shipments across our borders. No.

Unfortunately I think guns are here to stay.

And for me it's a basic liberty question. I believe that as long as I, being of sound mind and body, live in a world where a gun is reasonably needed to defend myself, in the moment, I should be able to. I don't think a person should have to completely outsource his own self defense to police any more than a person should have to outsource every bit of his health decisions to a doctor.

I recognize that people are more likely to be harmed by their own guns than use them to defend themselves. So be it. We live in a democracy, not a nanny state, yet.

Seems to me that the phrase "Sound mind" is oxymoronic when combined with "a gun is resonably needed to defend [your]self".

Note, I'm a fairly strong Am2 supporter - but I also recognize that owning a handgun for "self defense" is about as utopian a fantasy as it gets.

I admitted that there is a greater likelihood of hurting oneself with a gun than defending oneself with it. But it's not that outlandish.

Most gun defense happens by virtue of one being brandished at the intruder, robber, attacker, rather than actually shooting it at the criminal.

It's also hard to really calculate how many attacks, break-ins etc., don't occur, given the fear of a criminal that his victim would be armed.