What is the evidence that 2 is out? Suppose there are five available effective means to some end. If I take away one of them, doesn’t that reduce the availability of effective means to that end? Is the idea supposed to be that the various means are all so widely available that overall availability of means to the relevant end is not affected by eliminating (or greatly reducing) availability of one of them? Seems contentious to me. Moreover, what you say after the claim that 2 is out seems rather to support the claim that 2 is basically correct: poison, bombs, and knives are either practically less effective for one reason or another (hard to use, hard to practice, less destructive—in the case of knives) or practically less available for one reason or another (poisons not widely available).
I think you have a point here, but there’s a more fundamental problem—there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that gun control affects the ability of criminals to get guns.
The problem here is similar to prohibition of drugs. Guns and ammunition are widely available in many areas, are relatively easy to smuggle, and are durable goods that can be kept in operation for many decades once acquired. Also, the fact that police and other security officials need them means that they will continue to be produced and/or imported into an area with even very strict prohibition, creating many opportunities for weapons to leak out of official hands.
So gun control measures are much better at disarming law-abiding citizens than criminals. Use of guns by criminals does seem to drop a bit when a nation adopts strict gun control policies for a long period of time, but the fact that the victims have been disarmed also means criminals don’t need as many guns. If your goal is disarming criminals it isn’t at all clear that this is a net benefit.
there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that gun control affects the ability of criminals to get guns.
Mass murderers such as school shooters aren’t really typical criminals, though. They’re very unusual criminals. Do they have access to black-market guns the way that career criminals might?
Some school shooters (e.g. Wayne Lo, Seung-Hui Cho) bought their guns legally. Others (e.g. Adam Lanza) used guns belonging to family members. Harris and Klebold had another person purchase guns legally for them, but also purchased one gun illegally. Kip Kinkel was given guns by his parents, but also bought a gun that another student had stolen from a friend’s father.
the fact that the victims have been disarmed also means criminals don’t need as many guns.
If criminals, police and piblic are all disarmed, there’s just less bulletts flying around generally. There may still be plenty of crme, but there is a lot less homicide (suicide, innocent bystanders caught in corssfire, etc)
What is the evidence that 2 is out? Suppose there are five available effective means to some end. If I take away one of them, doesn’t that reduce the availability of effective means to that end? Is the idea supposed to be that the various means are all so widely available that overall availability of means to the relevant end is not affected by eliminating (or greatly reducing) availability of one of them? Seems contentious to me. Moreover, what you say after the claim that 2 is out seems rather to support the claim that 2 is basically correct: poison, bombs, and knives are either practically less effective for one reason or another (hard to use, hard to practice, less destructive—in the case of knives) or practically less available for one reason or another (poisons not widely available).
I think you have a point here, but there’s a more fundamental problem—there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that gun control affects the ability of criminals to get guns.
The problem here is similar to prohibition of drugs. Guns and ammunition are widely available in many areas, are relatively easy to smuggle, and are durable goods that can be kept in operation for many decades once acquired. Also, the fact that police and other security officials need them means that they will continue to be produced and/or imported into an area with even very strict prohibition, creating many opportunities for weapons to leak out of official hands.
So gun control measures are much better at disarming law-abiding citizens than criminals. Use of guns by criminals does seem to drop a bit when a nation adopts strict gun control policies for a long period of time, but the fact that the victims have been disarmed also means criminals don’t need as many guns. If your goal is disarming criminals it isn’t at all clear that this is a net benefit.
Mass murderers such as school shooters aren’t really typical criminals, though. They’re very unusual criminals. Do they have access to black-market guns the way that career criminals might?
Some school shooters (e.g. Wayne Lo, Seung-Hui Cho) bought their guns legally. Others (e.g. Adam Lanza) used guns belonging to family members. Harris and Klebold had another person purchase guns legally for them, but also purchased one gun illegally. Kip Kinkel was given guns by his parents, but also bought a gun that another student had stolen from a friend’s father.
If criminals, police and piblic are all disarmed, there’s just less bulletts flying around generally. There may still be plenty of crme, but there is a lot less homicide (suicide, innocent bystanders caught in corssfire, etc)