Neither is being a drug trafficker or manufacturer. Alcohol and drugs are far more widely used recreationally than physical dependence, yet prohibition did way more harm than good. Similarly guns are far more widely used for hunting and recreation, so how will more gun laws prevent gun crime?

Lol at the irony of you wanting to avoid false equivalency with your thread title, ducy?

The logic is the same. How do laws prevent crime?

Indeed. I assume you're from the UK, right?

Wrong. Explain to me please how laws prevent highly motivated people from committing crime.

You could make an argument that no access to assault weapons would eliminate assault weapon crime, but clearly gun control laws will not eliminate gun crime because highly motivated individuals will still find a way to acquire them (and gun traffickers will make money providing them) just as highly motivated drug addicts find drugs (and drug traffickers make money providing them) despite myriad laws and control mechanisms in place.

They don't. Too bad the US contains a higher proportion of highly motivated people than the UK, I guess.

Certainly it would though. It has a land border and is in close proximity with the largest illegal drug manufacturers in the world, has the largest military industrial complex in the world, is the richest country in the world (more access to profit from illegal activity) and produces more firearms by far than any other country in the world. So how will access to gun laws prevent access to guns for the purpose of violence in a country with by far the most guns?

If the point of gun legislation is to ever increase it to the point that gun manufacture all but stops in the US, that is one thing. I'm just confused as to how people think more laws will change anything in the short to medium term in the US.

Laws, rules, regulations inform what to expect if you do something.

So a hypothetical law concerning how firearm storage is to be expected as "legally done" informs what happens when you don't store your firearm according to the law's terms.

Prevention from doing anything does come from being informed of what potentially to anticipate if doing it. That's fairly obvious, huh?

That's not the case though. The death penalty has been proven beyond all doubt not to be a deterrent. If you can't prevent people from committing crimes with the threat of death, how are more laws a preventive measure against gun violence?

Furthermore, how are laws preventive when applied to someone whose goal is murder-suicide?

I wasn't referencing deterrence. I explained how a law is informative towards making decisions that prevent foreseeable outcomes.

A law against deterrence might explain that it doesn't prevent anything so as inform that breaking that law may lead to preventable do- nothingness.

If possessing, manufacturing or selling an illegal firearm got you life in prison, and if bringing in an illegal gun gave you a large reward, no questions asked, the only people who would want to hang on to their guns would be people who were more afraid of being defenseless than of spending life in prison.

The less guns their are floating around, the less anybody has to worry about themselves being unarmed. While, as an individual, you are usually safer to be armed whether or not anybody else is, the more people around you are armed, the less safe you and everybody else becomes. It's like the tragedy of the common's in that what benefits the individual is the opposite of what is good for the collective and the worse that things get, the more tempting the destructive behavior becomes to each individual.

Everyone wants drugs, not everyone wants guns.

In economics research it's pretty widely accepted that if people want something, they will find a way to get it.

You're not going to prevent drug crime until you lower demand and you're not going to lower demand because drugs are awesome.

Edit: even the most powerful propaganda tools in the world couldn't lower demand for drugs. In fact, demand has continued to rise. Real testament to the inherent awesomeness of drugs.

I don't believe you can lower the demand for guns either, considering it's instantiated in the constitution as a protection against tyranny. A lot of people take that seriously. Very seriously. Like they see the attempt to limit their access to guns as tyranny. And they will use their guns to prevent it from happening.

Is there even a single law that never gets violated no matter the severity of the penalty?

I'd suggest having a look at most other developed countries in the world and their efforts with this, except the suggestion would fall on deaf ears.

I have no suggestions.

The question is framed poorly. DODN is trying to say that more gun laws wouldn't prevent gun crime bec drug laws don't prevent drug crime. The real question is whether or not more gun laws would reduce gun crime as it is supposed that drug laws reduce drug crime which may or may not be true (legalization might lead to more drug use or it might not).

The two things are also not similar in that there are profit motives behind drug crimes and not (outside of trafficking) behind most gun crimes.

You just mentioned the media.

I don't think anyone on either side argues that gun control will eliminate gun crime, just that it will reduce it to lower levels than it is now.

And not all gun crime involves highly motivated individuals who are buying a gun with the intention of using it to commit a crime. Most of the time it's just everyday bad situations that get made 1000x worse by there being a gun present, for example: domestic violence, road rage incidents.

This is why you fail.

I merged the "Gun" threads to the one started by Mat. There will not be two threads on a singular subject that could belong elsewhere anyway. The merger may cause some discontinuity in the posting history/discussion so be forewarn.

Decision of Mod is final, I rule by fiat - any whining shall be addressed to the Mod by PM. If you whine in the thread it will simply be deleted.

Carry on. Concealed carry is best.

Lol. I was on a table that discussed this at length.
Right after a guy threw a chair across the room and was kicked out.

I experienced an active shooter drill at an elementary school yesterday from the vantage point of being in a stand-alone library building with no way to lock entrance door. My imagination is still generating possibilities of circumstances and decisions of what may have happened if it weren't a drill.

did it make you wish you were carrying a gun?

No, not all. That would go against known best safety practices and data.

I did imagine that some of the library books would make for novel improvised weapons. A thin, hard cover book in the throat seems like it could be at least stunning.

"He brought a library book to a gunfight" would at least be a good lede.