If you take the time to read the reports I posted (rather than just skim over them) you'd answer your own question. If my posted excerpts aren't enough, go to the site and read the volumes of essays there. There are literally dozens of supporting studies and pertinent resources linked into every report on the site, as well as charts, diagrams, and videos.
"Garbage in, garbage out"? I seriously beg to differ.
I remain entirely unconvinced and I would be able to take this piece of data seriously, only if countries in civil war are removed from the "rest of the world" category.
Whenever we throw into the "vs the world" equation countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, we get skewed results. Then we are comparing crime victims to civil war victims. Apples and Oranges. Your comparison to Switzerland was a great example. This "mass of countries including civl war and failed states" UN study is not.
I'd say that if we want to compare US crime (incl.Murder) statistics in a meaningful way, we should compare it to other large, rich countries that are not in a state of war. ie: (Japan, UK, Italy, Germany, Austria etc.) Feel free to refer to any "supporting studies and pertinent resources" that fulfill this criteria.
As for Mass shootings:
Mass shootings are skewed by single high-bodycount cases. Out of those 158 deaths in your France stats, 130 died in a single case of foreign terrorist attack. All in all, mass shootings are mostly unusual cases in taht they are mostly terrorism or acts by insane individuals. The underlying dynamic is entirely different than other forms of crime.
My argument was not that tight gun laws are able to prevent terrorist attacks by organized groups. They may decrease the amount of "insane guy take his brotehr's gun to school" mass shootings, but not eliminate terrorsim.
My chief argument was that tight gun laws help to decrease the rate of "everyday gun crime" - drug shootings, spousal murders, shootouts with police etc. This includes police homicide - if the criminal has a knife instead of a gun, the police will be more likely to subdue him without the use of lethal force.
The mass shootings are so statistically insignificant that they don't move the stat one way or the other with or without their presence.
Yep, entirely agree. Which is why I choose to use "general homicide" stats in these sort of debates, ratehr than "mass shootings".
"Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who do not."
~ Unknown.
I'm not saying we should disarm cops. I am saying we should disarm the public, so that the cops will very rarely find themselves in a situation that requires the use of firearms.
I enjoy the fact that at 2.00 AM, I can take a night bus from the city center to my own (rather rough blue collar) neighbourhood without having to be afraid of getting robbed, shot or mugged.
Only an armed citizenry can resist the oppression and murderous impulses of a rogue government. (...)
(...) You don't like guns. I get that. Heaven help you if you ever get your wish and your government goes rogue. You will wish to God that you'd never been so foolish.
As for the government, the US army is the best equipped in the world. Should the US decide to employ its full military firepower in a domestic setting, the "armed citizenry" would be crushed utterly. The pump-action shotgun militias would not be able to stand against drone strikes, tanks and cluster bombs. Not to mention chemical weapons or nukes.
The times when musket-armed farmers could fight musket-armed soldiers is long gone. That is precisely the sort of outdated enlightenment thinking that the constitution represents.
Of course, the US is far too big and stable to collapse into such insane domestic military deployment.
This is where all of the gun violence is happening in the United States. All of it. If just this was focused on it would fix. I'm willing to bet that zero amount of background check laws would alleviate it. I know for a fact that removing the NRA wouldn't scratch the surface of it. If we outlawed and took away all the guns it would still exist. Gun free zones don't fix it.
I think less guns in the streets would decrease the problem. If we turned 50% of these firearm incidents into knife-attack incidents, the bodycount would drop.
But I do strongly agree with your main point. Guns are not the only issue in America. Ethnic and racial violence in terms of social fission is a huge factor.
Thus every option to bring the nation from a state of fission into a state of fusion should be vigorously explored.