also, to expand on those who seem to want gun owners to be held to a high standard, the overwhelming majority are and have been held to these standards. depending on what numbers you look at, there are between 80-90 million gun owners in this country. how many millions are military veterans? how many are former or current law enforcement?
for those who want to always compare us to the uk, austrailia , or other countries with very harsh restrictions/low firearms ownerships, the comparisions are invalid from the start. putting aside the % of firearms ownership, we need to look at it another way. i think it was in 1997 that the uk outlawed the private ownership of handguns for the most part. to get an effective and honest way of measuring the effects of the restrictions, we would need to compile accurate gun crime stats over the course of more than a few years prior to the restriction. we would then need to do the same post ban, a very tall order in itself. its also worth pointing out what the general trends were with regards to crime before bans/restrictions were put into place.
we would also need to factor in other variables such as the economic situation, the amount of police on the streets, as well as the rise or fall of other violent crimes such as rape, robbery and assualt. from all of the accounts that i've read over the years, the restrictions did nothing to reduce both gun crime, and crime in general, certainly not the news most were hoping for.
just a few of the first results that popped up...
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlic...banned-n1464528http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/12/...australia-show/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323777204578195470446855466.html
