10-20-2015, 05:34 PM
(10-20-2015, 03:43 PM)Blindgreed1 Wrote: mass murder by definition is a multitude of people being killed right? So if your number of murders is the same and multiple people are not being killed at once it stands to reason that the number of murderers has risen has it not? So by eliminating guns, what did you actually accomplish? Is that deflective nonsense or is it a fact you choose not to acknowledge?
It's still deflective nonsense when we're talking about mass murders, and that's what we were talking about. What was accomplished was an elimination of classified "mass shooting murders" in Australia for almost 20 years.
However, I agree with you that people who are intent on killing others over money, jealousy, personal animosity... often use knives, their hands, poison or something of that sort to accomplish the goal. Some of them would likely have used a gun instead, had it been available. No argument there.
But, when we're talking about mass murders in public places where a different type of killer's goal is typically to take out as many people as possible, keeping guns from the would-be killers means they won't attempt to carry out their fantasies in many cases (don't have the fortitude for stabbing or batting, nor the knowledge for bombs or effective arson). I think this has been proven true in Australia.
For those would-be mass murderers who do have the fortitude to attempt to carry out their fantasies without guns, they will not be able to kill as many people as quickly with knives and bats as they could with guns, based on the additional effort and time required to stab and bludgeon people to death (vs. shooting them to death).
The same deterrents do not work equally effectively for all types of criminals and killers.
On a separate but related note, while homicide and attempted homicide rates (not specific to mass murders) have in fact declined in Australia over the past few years, the fact that they had remained steady for several years after the national gun laws were invoked does not render the elimination of mass shooting murders meaningless, to me. Preventing the mass killings of non-criminal victims is a worthwhile goal and achievement, even if it didn't have an immediate significant impact on general violent crime statistics. And, in my opinion, the homicide rates may well have increased over previous years if the mass shooting murders had not been stymied. I don't think it's logical to suggest that all would-be public mass murdering shooters in Australia went out and killed fewer people at a time in several incidents using other weapons instead (and there's no evidence to suggest that occurred).