Reply #110: and if the price of tea in China rose precipitously [View All]

[iverglas]

it would undoubtedly be because of that butterfly flapping its wings.


I'll just have to keep waiting for someone to explain to me how

a fluctuation upward (or lack of fluctuation downward) in firearms-related crime committed by people in illegal possession of firearms that it would have been illegal for them to possess before the legislation

can be attributed in any way to

legislation designed to eliminate the commission of assaults and homicides by people in legal possession of firearms by prohibiting most possession of handguns by members of the public.


Violence by lawful gun owners was so rare before the laws were enacted, that eliminating it entirely could hardly drop the overall violence rate, I suspect.

And I'll just have to keep wondering what your point is.

You are the one attempting to make this connection, so you really oughta make it.

If I stop watering my houseplants to save money and it rains twice as much this summer as last, the overall wetness level on my property will rise significantly ... but I'll still have dead houseplants. So, should I just stop watering the houseplants, because not watering them isn't having any appreciable impact on the overall wetness level on my property?

Some people want to get everybody to think about "the overall violence rate", because thinking about the actual separate and independent elements of that rate doesn't advance their agenda; so they pretend that it's what every discussion about firearms violence is about.

Some people think about a room full of dead kids and think about things that might prevent more kids from being killed.

The UK handgun legislation was not ever intended to be, or characterized as being, a remedy for "the overall violence rate", or intended to have, or characterized as being likely to have, any effect on "the overall violence rate".

You know this and anyone who gets his/her news somewhere other than gun-head covens on the internet knows this, and anyone not pushing an agenda that doesn't actually pay any more than lip service to reducing any violence at all acknowledges it.

Handgun ownership in the UK prior to the legislation was legal only in extremely rare instances, but occasionally very unsafe. I will venture to say that legal handgun ownership prior to the legislation played very little to no role in any classically "criminal" violent activity in the UK.

Why anyone would think ... or in any event say ... that ending legal handgun ownership in the UK would play any role at all in the fluctuations in firearms crime -- let alone crime that has nothing to do with firearms -- I'll probably never know.