Quote from: PopoJeff on October 13, 2019, 11:00:55 PM

Quote from: tvbcof on October 11, 2019, 01:35:10 PM

Not exactly. Back in the 1980's when the FBI was less corrupt and people sometimes did real science, they did a study to try to come up with an effective way to address the 'gun problem' since shootings were getting more common.

The study basically showed that criminals NEED guns in order to protect themselves against other criminals who they come in contact with frequently in their line of work. For this reason they will never be dis-armed, and if their weapon of choice was somehow rendered unavailable they would 'upgrade' to a more deadly one.

The common sense solution was to make it very much more costly for criminals to use guns against non-criminals in the course of committing a crime. The idea is that innocent bystanders will be at less risk and they getting shot will be more rare.

This policy went into effect and gun related crimes have been declining ever since (with some minor blips corresponding to general economic conditions.)

In my area, breaking into a house and stealing an ATV won't probably even land you in the country jail for more than a few hours. Breaking into a house at stealing a gun will get the entire law enforcement spectra to go after you and if they catch you you'll do years in the pen. This because the criminal touched a gun in the course of committing the theft.

Most criminals in my area are smart enough to leave their guns behind when they go out to burglarize. And, since probably 90% of homeowners are armed and ready, they are also super careful to only break into houses when the owner is not home.

Sorry, but this made no sense to me. What study? What policy?

I cannot find the study now. Lots of stuff is being memory-holed off the internet. Earlier in this thread I have at least once put a link to it, but the search functions on this site are dismal.

The policy is to reduce the amount of gun crimes by criminals against non-criminals by making the penelty very high for comiting a crime using a firearm. Much higher than doing the same crime without using a firearm.

The policy is pretty common sense, and it worked will since it was implemented. As a consequence gun related crimes have dropped for 20 or 30 years.

Again, the main findings of the study were that guns are a MUST HAVE for criminals to protect themselves against other criminals. As a consequence of this, outlawing guns is utterly futile for removing guns from the hands of criminals.

Of course if your goal is to remove guns from the hands of NON-criminals, which I strongly believe is the driving force behind the political push for gun control, then the above study should be minimized and the policies which fell out of it should be deprecated.

As I see it the main reason to get guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens is NOT for fear of revolution or whatever. What it would do is make it less possible for communities to police themselves from within. That would make people dependant on the state for security.

Quote from: PopoJeff on October 13, 2019, 11:00:55 PM

FBI less corrupt than now? I highly doubt that.

When the study was done it was clearly done by serious professionals at the FBI who wanted to understand the problem and come up with workable policy input.

Now, 30 or 40 years later the FBI is a very different organization. Highly corrupt and beholden to their political sponsors.

Quote from: PopoJeff on October 13, 2019, 11:00:55 PM

The only thing changing over that time frame was local laws. Not federal gun control acts. Some sates have implemented stronger sentencing if a crime was committed with a deadly weapon.... not just guns, knives too. Bombs, grenades, nerve gas. Etc... And thats on a state prosecution level, nothing to do with federal gun regulation

My point is that laws generally did change. And thus so did policy. And thus so did behavior.

We now live in a time when most laws, policies, and behaviors are specifically engineered to make more problems. The driving force behind it are people who have some ideas which they might be able to sell as 'solutions'. Classic Hegelian dialectic.

An alternate but related hypothesis is that the controllers simply wish to destroy the society and don't really care so much about the minor details. More and more I am leaning toward that one.