It did point out that I was wrong about no mass shootings (p57):

"In 2010/11, the police provisionally recorded 642 offences of homicide, which includes the 12 people killed by Derrick Bird in June 2010. Homicide offences increased by four per cent (24 offences) compared with 2009/10 (Table 2.04).3 Caution should be taken in looking at short term changes in the number of homicides, as they can fluctuate from year-to-year. For example, the rise in homicides this year follows a fall the previous year"

But the dead giveaway is buried in a footnote on p58:

"As measured by the Homicide Index. The number of currently recorded homicides peaked in 2001/02 at 794. There are more currently recorded homicides for 2002/03 (943), but these include the 172 victims of Harold Shipman, which were all recorded in 2002/03 but took place over a number of years."

Harold Shipman was a doctor who spent a large part of his career murdering elderly patients with medication. The huge spike in John Lott's graph is almost entirely due to this one set of crimes being recorded in 2002/03.

There has been a general downward trend in police recorded homicides over recent years. If the provisional figure of 642 homicides is confirmed when the final figures from the Homicide Index are published, then this would represent a fall of 19 per cent in homicides since 2001/02."

and

"The BCS shows that the number of violent incidents increased gradually through the 1980s and then increased sharply after 1991 to reach a peak in the mid 1990s. The number of incidents then showed steep decreases in the late 1990s. Since then, despite non-statistically significant year-on-year changes, there has been an overall decline."*

The decline in violence is actually somewhat global and not really anything to do with firearms either way. What the gun ban does unambiguously reduce is the opportunity for mass shootings.

(Did you mean compare rates within the same country, or rates between the UK and US? The UK's overall murder rate is comparable to that of two or three US cities. Sadly this PDF only goes back to 2000/2001 and doesn't cover the 90s.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Martin_(farmer)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...

Please explain the lack of correlation between gun murders and gun ownership. Even when controlling for density, there is still no correlation.

Further, crime rates need to be adjusted for poverty or they become meaningless.

My point still stands below, despite that spike, the overall trend is still very much downwards. People just don't read charts very well.

The UK had a spike in homicides in 2003, so what? The overall trend is clearly downwards. The 2009 firearm homicide rate is less than half the avg. rate for the 90's and I believe it has only gone down further since (cherry picked date ranges).

Ireland had an increase in homicides following gun bans in the 70's? And it was the gun ban that caused it, not the Troubles? Likewise Jamaica - nothing at all to do with the massive increase in drug trafficking flowing through the Carribean, following the start of drug-prohibition in the 70's?

EDIT: It turns out the data is dodgy as well. The spike is due to all 170+ of Harold Shipman's murders being recorded solely in 02/03

Clearly laws are useless.

Licensing rules were already very stringent at the time - you just can't compare it to the US - and Dunblane was a feak incident. I'm not aware of one like it before or since in the UK.

And Dunblane wasn't a freak incident here's one from 1987: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerford_massacre

Here's some data. Very clear downward trends since 1997.

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/192/rate_of_a...

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/192/rate_of_g...

Here's the Australian chart just for good measure:

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/10/rate_of_al...

Not to mention that of course "gun crime / illegal possession" went up. We'd just made it all illegal by definition...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9UFyNy-rw4

I'm actually fairly pro-gun (for the UK at least), I think we're quite restrictive on the type of guns allowed (eg. larger calibre rifles would be fun down a range). But at the same time I'm very pro gun-control; they should be licensed, inspected, restricted in type and how/where you're allowed to carry, etc.

Overall I'm happy with how it's worked out, I'd rather not have guns than have the problems of mass gun ownership.

You're completely overlooking (dismissing ?) animal husbandry and predator control for livestock, etc.

Depending on your location, a rifle (or three) is absolutely necessary to protect animals.

On our ranch, we have a herd of sheep that we need to protect from heavy fox and coyote and bobcat predation. We also have to trap raccoons that go after our flock of chickens, so we have a .22 to put them down (no reason to wake up the whole valley with a larger caliber just to kill todays raccoon).

Remember that next time you're at the farm to table restaurant eating the local lamb or the free range chicken - "your farmer"[1] uses firearms and considers them essential tools.

[1] Popular in the US is a bumper sticker "Know your Farmer, Know your Food" ... or ... "I know my farmer"

However, the vast majority of firearms sold are not for farming purposes. Agricultural jobs make up ~1% of the US workforce, yet there's over 1 gun per person. It's a bit of a red herring to talk about it though; no-one is advocating complete gun bans, but sensible gun control.

Not really. Farm workers in Australia are allowed to own "class C" firearms which are "Pump-action or self-loading shotguns having a magazine capacity of 5 or fewer rounds and semi automatic rimfire rifles" ...

I wouldn't really characterize a rimfire weapon as a real rifle and I am not really sure how useful that is, other than the raccoon work that I mentioned above. I wouldn't attempt shooting foxes or coyotes with a .22.

The Australian gun laws are amazingly restrictive for a country that large and wild and varied. I would feel quite hamstrung as a farmer (or even simply a resident) in a remote, rural area with only a shotgun and/or a .22 (the typical rimfire weapon) ...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia

"Fuck off. I like guns!"

Here's another graph showing the same thing, and another one below showing a correlation in the reduction of gun crime to an increase of policing resources.

http://crimeresearch.org/2013/12/murder-and-homicide-rates-b...

    Not to mention that of course "gun crime / illegal possession" went up. We'd just made it all illegal by definition...

It's not irrelevant as a large number of firearms were unlicensed. There were a ton of old service guns lying in peoples attics completely unregistered. It takes time to enforce a law.

    It's not irrelevant as a large number of firearms were unlicensed. There were a ton of old service guns lying in peoples attics completely unregistered. It takes time to enforce a law.

As far as handguns that were in active use - i.e. the ones relevant to this conversation - they had to be (and were) handed over to police within the year iirc. It was done quickly and efficiently.

The licensing laws are and were very strict. Anybody who had a handgun was required to have a licence for it, for which good character references and criminal record background checks were (and are) required, and they had to renew it every year. They also had to be an active member of a gun club (the only place you were allowed to use a handgun), and that membership was also reviewed every year.

So it's difficult to imagine how banning handguns would have much of an effect on handgun crime in the first place, unless you want to argue that licenced gun owners were committing crime and getting away with it, which I don't.

But still, I'm willing to be convinced with evidence. A graph that doesn't show gun crime increasing after a ban would be a good place to start.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox

The chart is very clearly downward, with a couple of upward slopes in the middle. If you cherry pick the evidence like that crimeresearch.org link does, you'll get the upward slope. If you look at the data as a whole, you get the long term downward trend. This is pretty much the definition of Simpson's Paradox. The downward trend is the correct one.

Another interpretation of the data, also just a theory but no less valid, is that handguns rose in popularity as the weapon of choice within gangs, and the police responded by targeting gun crime. Again, I wouldn't want to state it as fact, but it would be a useful starting point for additional research.

The reason frankly why I would need so much convincing that banning hand guns had any effect gun crime rates in the UK is because I just don't think there were enough gun owners to be statistically significant in the first place. Handgun shooting was a niche sport - a very niche sport.

As for cherry picking: right back atcha. But even that doesn't work for the Ireland, Jamaica, DC, and Chicago graphs.

As for Ireland and Jamaica, the increase in homicides are very explainable given the Troubles and rise of Carribean drug trafficking in the 70s.

I think I found the problem.

Dunblane was a freak incident in the UK, but would be a regular occurence in the US. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/02/mass-shooting...

The mass shooting phenomenon seems to be a side effect of US culture's relationship with violence, and especially "righteous" violence.

But again, a lot of my understanding on this subject comes from the media, so you can take it with a pinch of salt if you like.

E.g. take this article: http://crimeresearch.org/2016/01/compared-to-europe-the-us-f... . They're mentioning:

- 303 deaths in the EU. This is simply an incorrect result, it counts victims from Norway, which is not an EU member.

- Only 4 mass shootings in the US in 2015. I don't live in the US and I can name at least 6 that made the headlines over here in Europe (e.g. the Harris County mass shooting isn't included).

- Hundreds of victims in France -- which is correct in terms of numbers, but most of them were victims of terrorist attacks, not mentally-deranged students who bought a rifle one sunny morning and started firing around. Most of those incidents barely match their own definition: "four or more people killed in a public place, and not in the course of committing another crime, and not involving struggles over sovereignty".

- A high number of victims for Norway, all of which are due to the Breivik incident. Limiting the debate to the Obama administration has the convenient consequence of keeping Norway's figures high. It would literally be twice as low if it were to include the Bush administration as well; I suspect the figure for the US wouldn't be twice as low in that case.

Besides, the conclusion is highly debatable. It tries to obtain that "US becoming safer compared to Europe" but:

- It does not include data from all European countries

- It "statistically" (i.e. incorrectly) conflates countries with widely differing legislation and enforcement status. This is very blatantly wrong: Serbia, second in that list, has a very strong gun culture and very liberal gun ownership laws compared to other European countries. My Serbian friends can carry guns that are only issued to members of the police and military where I live.

I don't know enough about how things are in the US to challenge that institution's opinions on the US, but their analysis of the European landscape is shaky at best, betrays a very obvious cluelesness about European laws and Europe in general, and frankly, I think the numbers are nicely tuned to give useful statistics.

I've heard of crimes with that damned pocket knife but never a gun.

Also it looks like you created a throwaway to say this. It says a lot about your conviction on what you're saying.

This does not mean data is irrelevant, but it is quite important to know who collected it, following what procedure, and with what goal in mind. Not sure that study above is the most unbiased, for instance.

If you like, take the time to go through the data and understand why it does not actually fit the reality of the situation here. Don't expect other people to disprove shit data.