As I mentioned in an earlier diary this week, discussions on gun control and modifications to the second amendment tend to be hijacked before any meaningful statements are made.
There exists a group within DKos that are strong supporters of the "Right to Keep and Bear Arms", and they make their voice heard either through their own group diaries, or by turning up en masse in diaries on the subject offered by other people.
Sometimes their contributions are interesting, sometimes they are embarrassing. Either way, friends will pile on to rec their buddies and seek opportunities to diss or hr their foes.
The only way I can see to get a discussion going of the alternatives is to write a diary. At least, they have to listen to the arguments before flinging the donuts.
So today is a tale of two cities.
According to to our friends from the Daily Kos Gun Club. New York City is the pits when it comes to being a gun owner. The mayor, Bloomberg, neither repub nor dem, is against having so many guns in his city, and has been at the forefront of trying to close the "gunshow"(private sale) loophole. He even made a video about it after an undercover investigation.
"Don't care about the background check?" "Nope wouldn't pass it myself."
So with a city that is so anti gun, you would expect to see homicides falling right?
ABSOLUTELY FUCKING RIGHT!
Homicides in NY City have fallen from a peak of 2245 in 1990 to 516 in 2008, a fall of 73%.
But so the argument goes, gun crime/deaths is falling everywhere as gun laws become more liberalised so this is just part of the trend - WRONG
During the same period, the total number of homicides in the USA fell from 23440 to 16442 a decline of
30%.. So where there were strong gun controls homicides fell by 73%, and for the whole country the fall was only 30%..
So Kudos to New York City and its finest - they have really made a difference. But this a tale of two cities, and the second is London.
New York and London have many similarities - population around 8 million, extensive extra urban development, high immigrant populations, built on a river, with traditional "tribal" rivalries, and despite DC effective capital status. So you would think that the crime rates would be pretty much the same.
Well not exactly, even after New York;s splendid efforts, its homicide rate was still 3.2 times higher than London
And what might be the reason? Could it possibly be that that guns are strictly controlled (not banned) in the UK?
I wouold love to hear your opinions, and will stick around for a couple of hours to respond