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Pasch's 2c
There are two primary issues with guns and gun violence in this country. The first, more than ANYTHING ELSE, is poverty. Poverty causes crime. It drives people into gangs, it drives them into black market enterprises, it makes people desperate. The single most effective way to combat crime is to combat poverty. You need to get people educated, employed, and middle class, and crime, especially violent crime, will go down. The only kinds of crime that aren't reduced by getting people out of poverty are crimes of passion, which really can't be prevented anyway.
Except maybe for the second issue. Anti-social attitudes. Extreme individualism and an "us vs them" mentality all contribute to violence. That is why the pro gun crowd is wrong. Even when they are correct, which they sometimes are, the violent and isolationist mentality that they espouse is dangerous to the safety of the country. Paranoia and distrust within a community make people willing to hurt each other.
Also, there is one uncomfortable truth that the pro gun group has to deal with. The real main cause of gun violence in this country is because of the proliferation of guns. That only happens because of the huge market for private ownership. If you guys weren't buying guns the way you do, there would not be guns for criminals to steal from you and use to hurt people. However, it's too late to undo that, unless the market disappears. Stop buying guns, stop being a market for guns to be made and sold, and they will disappear over time.
I was very VERY surprised at Joko's numbers about the number of gun uses to stop crime per year. I read the studies those numbers come from and while it doesn't take into account the problem that any number of the uses of guns may have been unnecessary. But I highly doubt that ALL of them were. So perhaps private gun ownership really is a deterrent to innocent people being victimized by crime. But it was private gun ownership that enabled criminals to get guns to violence the innocent with in the first place. But again, the guns are here, so we need to think about the future.
The way to reduce violent crime is by getting people out of poverty. That's all there is to it.
Poverty definitely is a MAJOR cause of crime and violence. Narcotics also is a cause including needing the money for the drugs - which isnt' really a poverty issue. Rape, of course, knows no economic boundaries or parameters.
Your next to last paragraph assumes that the only time a gun is needed for self defense is if the criminal/attacker has a gun. That is a false presumption - particularly in relation to attacks against women and the elderly.
It is impossible to know just how many violent attacks and crimes are stopped by the mere presense or suspicion of the presence of a firearm. However, a clue we have is in the statistics of the UK's level of violent crimes, which is consistently over 200% higher than in the USA, although murder and gun death rates are lower.