Semi-automatic Guns: Deserve to be Banned? 2 - Page 18

I mean largest by population. The link you provided is per capita not totals. This might be the link you where looking for http://www.statemaster.com/graph/cri_hom_tot_num_of_vic-crime-homicide-total-number-victims and yes, texas are 2nd.

And surprise surprise, California isn't no.1 in that list and Vermont is above California. Case closed.

It depends what you mean by more gun crime. If you mean total number of murders with guns then yes, more people means more gun crime, it should be obvious that a state with 36,000,000 people is going to have more murders then a state with 600,000 people. Per capita is a better way to look at it because it takes the number of gun murders per 100,000 people so you can compare them fairly and accurately. Per capita (the fair comparison) California is no where near the top, so the theory that California is the worst place for gun crime is void, its rate is nearly identical to Vermont in fact, California 9.8 per 100 Vermont 9.6 per 100.

I'v never tried to claim that Vermont is the worst place for gun crime, just that California is no worse then Vermont (which was dinosoids claim).

I completely agree with that Justin Time, but if that population has easy access to guns as a pose to an equally violent population that doesn't have access to guns then one one with guns will have a higher murder rate because its a lot easier (yes ok, not impossible, we don't need another 5 pages of how you can still kill with a knife, its easier with a gun!) to kill with guns.

quote Justin Time

quote styot

I completely agree with that Justin Time, but if that population has easy access to guns as a pose to an equally violent population that doesn't have access to guns then one one with guns will have a higher murder rate because its a lot easier (yes ok, not impossible, we don't need another 5 pages of how you can still kill with a knife, its easier with a gun!) to kill with guns.

I think since pretty much most murders only involve killing one or two people, and usually take place at point blank range, I do not think it really matters if it takes you a quarter second more to fire a second shot.

I think I'll take that as a grudging acceptance that the availability of guns impacts negatively on serious crime statistics. But I would have thought that it was self-explanatory that having a faster rate of fire substantially increases the severity of instances of gun violence.

Besides not all incidences of gun crime are homicides and not all murder is premeditated or even intentional. There are around 50'000 Americans injured by gun crime every year, of those around 10'000 are killed outright. With this in mind it seems odd to view a large majority of incidences of gun crime as inevitably ending in murder regardless of the lethality of the firearm used.

The bullets aren't necessarily any more lethal but crucially there're more bullets being fired. Shootings involving semi-automatic firearms result in more shots being fired, more people being hit, and more wounds inflicted per victim than do incidences of gun violence with other firearms.

No, they just typically fire more bullets in an incident of gun violence.

Has the pro-gun argument really run out of steam so fast here that you're asking for proof about what is essentially common sense?