I heard a statistic the other day that there are something on the order of 300+ million firearms in the United States. I have no idea whether this count includes military and police weapons.

Passing a ban on firearms is a long shot. I think a much more realistic situation is a ban on ammunition & reloading supplies or else a sky-high tax (think "fee") on the same.

The guns won't be very useful if ammunition is hard to come by.

I don't know much about the United Kingdom or Australia, so hopefully someone can chime in here. Is outright ownership of a firearm illegal in and of itself? Or can folks own firearms but keep them in their homes for sporting purposes (target shooting, hunting, etc.)?

If I understand the question my answer would be they (the Gov. or local authority) Will get my wepons when they come to the door and ask for them. BUT they won't get all of my wepons, there are some they know about and some they don't and not all are at my house.
With a law like you are talking about, all you are going to do is to Make a lot of armed criminals. California tryed to make a gun law stick and they have a bunch of armed criminals walking around right now.

Um, right now I think Iraq would have to take first place for crime rate in the world, wouldn't you agree?

Yes, the crime rate in Iraq certainly appears to have increased quite considerably in the last 4 years.

I would say that our crime rate has more to do with our social dynamic than with the prevalence of firearms. Other countries like Canada and Switzerland do not have any of the social issues we in the US have to contend with. It is true that by limiting freedoms in general there is a greater propensity for social limits, and the mindset of most of the citizens of these much more PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. countries are much more subservient than ours is.

In Australia, there are quite a few people who are legally registered to own certain firearms, and there are quite a few more who own them illegally. Gun crimes still occur regularly here, perhaps not to the same proportion as they do back home, but most of the more seasoned Aussies I deal with admit that it is still quite easy to acquire a firearm here if you want one. I've had the opportunity in the 6 months I've been here to buy a gun if I wanted to. The gangs here are well armed, and drug crime here is not much different epidemiologically than it is back home.

As for whether diminishing the supply would have any impact on violent crime back home, I doubt it. Just this last friday, some idiot lit off two bombs at my daughter's high school, one equipped with C4 that failed to go off fortunately. Where there's a will, there's a way, and the last group in a society to be disarmed would be the criminals.

If the criminals here can't get their hands on firearms, then they use knives, or clubs, or whatever they can make work. Knives are also outlawed here, yet it is becoming the weapon d' jour for the gang kids.

It isn't the tools they use, it is the will they have, that will make people a threat to each other. We'll kill each other with sticks and rocks and even our bare hands if that's all we are allowed, but the killing will continue nonetheless. Doesn't seem much point in outlawing one if you aren't going to outlaw the lot.

Compare the gun control of today to the gangster days of the thirtys. We've gotten much more restrictive, yet the crime rate today towers over what it was back then. Obviously it isn't the prevalence of the weapons, but the willingness to use them that is the problem.

1.The law abiding citizens would turn there guns in
2.Some former law abiding citizens would be turned into criminals because they were forced to choose between protecting their families or breaking the law(I pray that I am not faced with this decision)
3.Violent criminals would not turn their guns in and they would become more active knowing that their victims were unarmed(hasn't anyone seen the John Stossel jail house interviews)
4.Crime rates would skyrocket
5.Deer and moose populations would increase causing more accidents
6.The various varmint populations would increase causing numerous problems for farmers and ranchers
7.Eventually chaos would take over and the laws would be repealed after it was too late.

I'm sure that I haven't even scratched the surface.

Ammunition and powder have a long shelf life when stored properly, and there is a fairly large amount on the streets. I just don't see people freely giving up their guns. If they (the gun control nuts) get the Second Amendment struck down they should be prepared to strike down Posse Comatatis (sp.?)as well. A lot of previously upstanding, law abiding, tax paying citizens will undoubtedly become guilty of a crime greater than a minor traffic violation. I will certainly be counted among that number. It will take military action to remove all the guns, as the police are already overburdened trying to take "real"criminals off the street. Additionally, I would offer a question for the readers to ponder. If they get our guns, whats next?? Think about it folks. This is a FREE nation and the Second Amendment is one of the reasons why it has remained so. Except for the current problems with illegal border crossings, how many other invasions have ever been successfully mounted against the U.S. on our soil? Ever stopped to think why?

benjammin

I don't think it is the crime rate in Iraq, as mush as it is the death rate.

No, we have the highest per capita incarceration rate of the industrial world with the exception of the People's Republic of China. Then I would invite you to look at the driving factors in the majority of those cases- narcotics. I hate to say it, it feels like betryal, but we are loosing the Drug War, have been since the 1960s.

Actually, the sources used when discussing the UK crime rate come from Her Majesty's Government. And those figures do show that you've had a massive jump in your violent crime rate in the past decade, regardless of category.