>Banning guns is a bad idea. Just look at Mexico. Guns are illegal in Mexico, >yet there have been over 3,000 murders in Mexico this year alone over the >drug trade, and most of those murders were committed with guns. If there is >a profitable illegal trade, the people involved in it will get guns, >grenades, explosives, and whatever else they can get their hands on to >protect their trade.
At the same time there is a very restrictive ban on firearms in Canada. Yet in Canada there is nothing like the situation you have in Mexico. The violence is more the result of the illegal drug trade than any gun control legislation. That said I suspect that if there were no controls, most likely it would be even more of a shooting gallery. A few other things to consider, Canada has a far lower homicide rate than the US, even when accounting for the differences in population size and demographics. Several years ago there was a comparison of emergency room visits to hospitals in the Vancouver BC and Seattle WA areas. Even when controlling for demographics, SES etc., the only factor that explained the number and types of emergency room visits was the more restrictive gun control legislation in Canada. More recently epidemiology studies found that the presence of a firearm in the house was associated with a 33% greater chance of suicide than those households without firearms. Interestingly enough since the more restrictive gun control legislation was introduced in Canada, there was a significant reduction in suicide rates. This reduction could not be accounted for by other social factors (http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a713842220~db=all) http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=suicide+rates+gun+ownership&num=100&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=any&as_sauthors=&as_publication=&as_ylo=2001&as_yhi=&as_allsubj=some&as_subj=bio&as_subj=med&as_subj=soc&hl=en&lr= shows my google search of this topic. Of the first 100 articles, excluding the non relevant ones, not one failed to find an association between suicide rates and the availability of firearms. This relationship was also strongest among teens. As for the so called prevention explanation - I ran a similar search and found very muddled results, homicide increases as a result of looser gun control laws. But those studies that argued ownership reduced potential crime were poorly conducted, many to such an extent that they ought to have been rejected on methodological grounds. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:279798 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
