are the wrong people giving their guns up though?

did you read the first part of my post? there is no wrong person when any person can criminally use a firearm.

the premise of the picture is that criminals use guns illegally and the ordinary law-abiding citizen uses guns legally. i reject this premise, because law-abiding citizens use guns illegally as well. this generalization completely ignores the situation when the law abiding citizen becomes a criminal because they commit their first crime by illegally using a firearm.

when we think of 'criminals using guns' its typically in the fashion of mugging a person or armed robbery, maybe gang violence/homicide-- the premeditated use of the weapon. but the typical law abiding citizen can commit a crime in the event they are carrying their weapon and are panicked, over-react, mis-read a situation or are just negligent and end up shooting someone when deadly force was not even close to necessary (and yes police do this too). fewer guns aught to reduce the frequency of this occuring

This post was edited by Kamikizzle on Jun 20 2013 02:29pm

We probably think of those situations because they make up the vast, VAST majority of gun crimes. Reducing other gun crime to zero would barely make a dent in total gun crime.

yep I agree, it's effective in reducing "accidental" crimes like you say and practically does nothing to stop criminals that use guns in violent crimes.

do you know the percentage of gun crimes committed by ordinary people that commit crimes unknowingly or accidentally with firearms?

This post was edited by lithfkn on Jun 20 2013 03:02pm

needs moar pics and less walls

i do not know this percentage, but if you do please feel free to post it.

postulating the ratio is low, i have 2 responses:
first, the picture we started with is demonizing gun buybacks, to which my response is this: gun buy backs reduce the number of guns in circulation which, in all likelyhood, lowers accidental / inappropriate firearm fatality. just because the ratio of these occurances to violent gun crime might be low, does not mean it is inconsequential; innocent lives are spared due to the voluntary sale and removal of firearms. i find it hard to believe that the last sentence needed to be said.
on a side note, it would be interesting to see the ratio of these occurances to the ratio of instances where firearms have saved citizens from violent crime because they were armed, thought with cases like zimmerman i imagine it would be murky at best.

second, the firearms used in violent crime have to come from somewhere. i find it hard to believe a majority of weapons used in violent crime are legally obtained from the local outdoorsman shop, though if you have a statistic to shed some light on this issue, i encourage you to post it.

No idea, it's why I asked, it's hard to find specifics on that.

Violent crimes committed with legally purchased firearms is a single digit percentage. I can't remember exactly but last I checked it was around ~6%.

So I'd be extremely surprised if a buyback even put a dent in firearm deaths. I guess a few is better than none right?

Gun deaths in australia have dropped drastically, and the few deaths we have now are drug dealers killing each other.