In fact, why not eliminate all the laws altogether? To see what that's like just go live in Somalia for a while and join a pirate ship. Laws are there to regulate society and the Police are there to uphold it. Just because different 'sin' cimes are more common than others, it doesn't mean you vote for the silly position of eliminating laws, or stopping new ones in order to better regulate society. Laws help to define a culture and shape society. That's why America has had what, say thirty-forty mass shootings in the last decade, whereas Norway has had what, about one? I think i'd take new laws over less if that's the net result.
Well, Burnt State, I'm not saying eliminate all laws. That would, indeed, be a silly position. My opinion is, rather, the tendency to quickly push through more poorly thought out laws at a problem can often do more harm than good. I am, actually,
for laws against piracy and murder. I remain skeptical about the mad rush to ban the social evil of the day, be it guns, gambling, drugs, or alcohol. I mention the 'sin' crimes, because they are pertinent. Each of them has helped to build and establish organized crime. Having an entrenched organized crime system in the U.S. means that you create yet another source of revenue for these groups. They already have the transportation network. They already have the chaotic inner cities to use.
You mention Somalia. I'm trying to locate information on their gun laws. All I could find was that fully automatic weapons are illegal for citizens, and that handguns may be owned with a license. So, should they pass another law against automatic weapons?
Guns in Somalia: Facts, Figures and Firearm Law
But Somalia's a pretty extreme case. Let's look at something in Central America, say, Honduras. Honduras has a murder rate of 91.6 per 100K.
List of countries by intentional homicide rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Honduran gun laws:
Assault weapons
In response to the high level of crime and violence experienced in Honduras, in 2003, the government passed a law banning several types of assault rifles from private possession. Legislative Power Decree 101-2003 gave a 90-day grace period to surrender all weapons prohibited under Article 8, along with weapons described in the new law, without fear of criminal or civil prosecution and provided an incentive of 1,000
lempiras (US$52.92) per weapon surrendered.
By definition, assault rifles are illegal in Honduras if they are capable of fully automatic fire or they fall under the make and model or caliber restricted under Article 2 of Decree 101-2003 which states:
...AK-47 rifle in all its versions. FN FAL and [Argentine] FAP 7.62mm, UZI sub machine gun, M-16 in all its versions, M60 machine gun. Sniper rifle 5.56mm in all its versions. IMI Galil rifle, Heckler & Koch G3 rifle, Beretta 5.56mm in all its versions. M21 for sharpshooters, homemade firearms, and other weapons of war the Secretary of State in the Office of Security and National Defense may consider as such.[22]
Possession of any weapon and ammunition as described above carries a sentence of eight to 10 years in prison and a fine of 5,000 to 10,000 lempiras (US$264.62-$529.24)
Gun politics in Honduras - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
But, all right, the argument is usually that the is the fault of the U.S. because guns are driven down from the U.S. Fine. Let's look at a country that doesn't share a border with the U.S.
Jamaica
Murder rate: 52.2 per 100K
Gun laws:
The goal was to expedite and improve enforcement of the 1967
Firearms Act,
[4] which imposed licensing requirements on ownership and possession of guns and
ammunition,
[5] and prohibited
automatic weapons entirely.
[6] Firearm licences in Jamaica require a background check, inspection and payment of a yearly fee, and can make legal gun ownership difficult for ordinary citizens.
[7][8] The new judicial procedures of the Gun Court Act were designed to ensure that firearms violations would be tried quickly and harshly punished.
[3]
Gun politics in Jamaica - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Again, the argument is that the guns are smuggled in from the U.S. Fine. But say all guns of interest were banned in the U.S. Organized crime, like all big business, is multinational. Do you think that another market would not step up to fill the breach? Unless a country can control the laws of every other country, would it make sense to pass more laws we cannot enforce?
My opinion is that the tendency to look at a single cause and solution for a social problem is short-sighted and often diversionary. There is often a rush to ban guns or violent video games or whatever people find offensive. We have a school shooting and we only talk about having more gun laws, diverting us from several topics worth discussing, including the possible role of pharmaceuticals in producing these killers, the role of violence in autism spectrum disorders (rare but relevant in these cases), and the failure of mental health services to provide effective treatment or show accountability. We talk about guns in urban crime and we talk about more gun laws instead of discussing the crushing array of problems facing U.S. cities. By mistaking one symptom for the disease, we fool ourselves that we are doing good for society.
Why has Norway (population 5 million) only had one mass shooting while the U.S. (over 313 million) has had 30-40 mass shootings? I don't entirely know. We could talk about population size, which might have something to do with it. And we could discuss the relatively lower crime rate across the board in Norway. Generally, they seem to have a more cohesive society than the U.S. But if you think that simply adopting Norway's gun laws would solve our violence problem, I'd bet against you. We're very different countries. I mentioned the Norwegian shooter because I thought it illustrated a point that more laws won't always help society, and in some cases may make it more vulnerable.
This just takes the cake...