>”and really dried up the supply, sure, you might still be able to buy an assault rifle from the criminal underworld.”

Might still? It would kick the underground firearm economy into overdrive. It’s also the case that the United States has a mind boggling amount of guns, more than any forced confiscation program could hope to put a noticeable dent into. “I lost my gun in a boating accident” is already a meme in gun culture. The black market would be well supplied.

That’s not how gun buy back programs work. Hint they don’t and never have. It’s the same as what happened to that town that tried to solve their rat problem by paying people to bring rat heads. Some enterprising townsfolk started breeding rats.

Gun Buybacks were incredibly successful in Australia after the Port Arthur Massacre and now we have f*ck all gun violence. Funny that.

My home country has scrict gun ownership laws. It is almost impossible for a citizen to get a gun and even when he does other rules applies to carrying and loading.

Last time I've checked we had around 60000 gun related deaths every year.

If you were less obscure about which country that was maybe we could probe into why those deaths happen but you weren't so we cant.

It's Brazil, no other country in the world has more than 40,000 firearm deaths per year.

Yeap. News about people getting killed during a robbery even after passively handling out their belongings without resistance are common occurrence.

Criminals still with plenty access to guns after 20 years of strict control regulations are emboldened by the fact that nobody can offer resistance.

It seems obvious that firearms deaths are a multi-cause issue. If you have a highly developed country (Finland, Iceland, Switzerland...) you can also have lots of firearms without fearing also massive killings. But if half your society is born and raised under violence (El Salvador, Venezuela, Honduras...) + easy firearms + raging black markets operating freely, it's a recipe for disaster. I wouldn't expect less deaths in Brazil by getting more guns in the streets and encouraging resistance: Venezuela is already there (more than twice the guns of Brazil, handguns and semiautomatic are more or less allowed, you only need a license), and their death rates are the worst in the world.

> I wouldn't expect less deaths in Brazil by getting more guns in the streets and encouraging resistance

in this sort of situation, i'd rather die resisting than die placid and unable to fight.

Gun violence from criminals can't be solved via gun control.

You're deeply wrong about that. Gun buybacks have worked and do work everywhere that they've been conducted.

It's not a buyback since the government never owned it. It's coerced confiscation.

So if you sell your house, or sell your car, or sell a loaf of bread, is that also coerced confiscation?

If the government says "we're taking your house for %x percent of the value" then yes, it is.

Is extremely disingenuous to suggest that a gun "buyback" is voluntary. You either do it or you're a felon.

You have to ban them _and_ buy them back at the same time. You make them illegal to have, then you compensate people for the economic value of the property they now need to surrender for destruction.

That is in fact how buyback schemes work in countries that aren't totally irrational about guns.

I clearly should have clarified. They don’t work in America where private gun ownership does not look like it’s ever going to get banned.

Also America isn’t land locked like Australia. The black market will have an easier time transporting the goods through South America. If that wasn’t the case, then drugs wouldn’t be as accessible here. And given US is the arms capital of the world (American manufacturers supply a significant amount of the arms used in conflicts), those guns will inevitably find their way back to America (conflict stops, owners need money more than weapons, etc). The bigger the conflict the cheaper the guns become.

Finally, Australia had a national moment of unity when they banned guns and so giving up your guns was a collective activity. That’s not the case in America.

It's quite difficult to breed guns.

Guns, but only for criminals and rich people? No thanks.

Better than having guns for criminals, rich people and unhinged teenagers looking to shoot their school.

The largest demographic (hundreds of millions of people), which you seem to have left out, is law abiding citizens looking to protect themselves and their families.

Protect themselves from what? Unhinged people with guns? Seems like recursion.

People in other countries where guns are illegal seem to do just fine without having to protect themselves using their own firearms.

People in unarmed countries get stabbed/beaten/shot if their attacker is larger/stronger/younger than them. Here, older/weaker people have a chance to protect their lives. Firearms are frequently used defensively to stop attacks.

Here's a couple from the past 2 weeks:

https://abc7.com/moreno-valley-intruder-shot-homeowner-inves... https://www.wfla.com/news/pinellas-county/man-fatally-shot-a...

Anecdotal evidence is great for appeals to emotion, but the data tells a different story[1].

[1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-thr...

I can show you hundreds of news stories of defensive gun use from the past 6 months, or you can be satisfied with a single study, which also claims:

>women never use guns to protect themselves against sexual assault

I don't know why anyone would choose to believe something that is so easily falsifiable with a 2 minute google search[0]

0. https://www.kfvs12.com/story/9273275/accused-rapist-shot-kil...

As the saying goes, the plural of anecdote is not data. It's great that you read the page I cited, but you cherry picked your quote. Here's the full section:

> 11. Self-defense gun use is rare and not more effective at preventing injury than other protective actions

> Victims use guns in less than 1% of contact crimes, and women never use guns to protect themselves against sexual assault (in more than 300 cases). Victims using a gun were no less likely to be injured after taking protective action than victims using other forms of protective action. Compared to other protective actions, the National Crime Victimization Surveys provide little evidence that self-defense gun use is uniquely beneficial in reducing the likelihood of injury or property loss.

> This article helps provide accurate information concerning self-defense gun use. It shows that many of the claims about the benefits of gun ownership are largely myths.

> Hemenway D, Solnick SJ. The epidemiology of self-defense gun use: Evidence from the National Crime Victimization Surveys 2007-2011. Preventive Medicine. 2015; 79: 22-27.

Emphasis added.

>(in more than 300 cases)

Yes, this shows the bias of the authors. They come to a conclusion that is only supported by undersampled data, yet their language is strongly biased towards that specific conclusion ("women never..."). Unbiased language would not read that way. I suspect the language flies under your radar because you seem to agree with the conclusions. But its a huge red flag that the authors are not approaching the subject in good faith.

Studies on DGU is an oft-treaded subject. I've looked at quite a bit of data, and if you have also, you would also know how and why it is so difficult to compile reliable data on the subject. Which is why I find it nearly futile to throw studies at each other.

>Protect themselves from what? Unhinged people with guns? Seems like recursion.

Protect themselves from larger people with other weapons. Protect themselves from unarmed people who want to kill them. Protect themselves from crazy guy who made home-made shotgun with home-made gunpowder and home-made projectiles. Protect themselves from cartel members who smuggle weapons channeled by foreign militaries. Protect themselves from wild animals, including grizzly bears that inhabit the US and Polar bears that inhabit places like Svalbard. Protect themselves from rabid or poorly trained aggressive domestic animals, such as the many dogs that attack and even kill children annually.

I've never seen anyone argue against this that wasn't essentially, "oh well, deal with it I guess." The police can't make it in time, and have no duty to protect you. Any other weapon that doesn't provide distance and lethal force is a liability. So what is the expectation for innocent victims, especially the smaller or weaker ones? Just get beaten/killed? I've never seen a real answer to this.

> So what is the expectation for innocent victims, especially the smaller or weaker ones? Just get beaten/killed? I've never seen a real answer to this.

Pepper spray is pretty great. You don't have to worry about killing someone, so you can use it with a lot less hesitation. I've been in a situation where I was in physical danger, but from someone I didn't want to kill, and pepper spray immediately ended the danger for me and allowed me to get away. A gun would not have done that because I wouldn't have used the gun.

I agree there are situations where nonlethal force is appropriate, and it sounds like you were in one of those situations. There are other situations where someone wants to and is trying to kill you, and pepper spray does not incapacitate that kind of aggression reliably. It also does not work well on drunk people or people with a high pain threshold tolerance.

In my case, the person was drunk, very strong, very angry, had quite a high pain threshold, and the pepper spray was shockingly effective. In about five seconds they went from screaming threats and swinging a 2x4 at family members to crumpled on the ground crying.

>Protect themselves from what?

Bears, wolves, mountain lions, elk, moose, bison are some of the things.