Depends upon the person. When you can purchase guns at supermarkets, for instance, with no checks, then many people will own them. On the crime and mental spectrums you will have a percentage of the population who shouldn't have guns. And they will use them in harmful ways. This will drive more people to own guns to defend against mental and criminal elements. Add to this domestic violence and accidents and your statistics for gun deaths goes from zero to something like America very fast.
Japanese criminals can get guns - they choose to not get/use them because the penalties for doing so are extraordinarily stiff. If you loosen the restrictions on guns and retain these penalties, gun-related crime will not significantly change.
Such is the case regardless of whatever firearm-related restrictions may be in place. So long as firearms are available at all, they will be accessible to those who have no business possessing them, simply because there is no way of preventing such from occurring. The same point applies to illicit narcotic substances such as heroin, which are illegal under all circumstances, and yet the drug trade is thriving.
Worse is the fact it applies to both parties, across the entire political spectrum. One simply cannot hold office without adopting such an outlook on life, that their voting constituents are nothing more than commodities for their own benefit. The longer one holds public office, the more it becomes about benefiting themselves, not anyone else.
Sure, I accept your point. Handguns are smuggled into Australia. It's basically the only way you can get one now. But three points - handguns are still uncommon, police have a case against you if you have one and few mentally unstable people can get one.
Without pulling those numbers apart - there must be a lot of killing from just a few handguns! Sure, if I lived in America I would have a handgun, mostly because I love firearms. But there's still a lot of mental people, gang members, kids, criminals and other anti-social people with easy access to guns - and that's terrifying to people in most other countries.
Your quote - "America... where 99.99291% of our guns are not involved in killing anyone." That's to five decimal places! Over 100,000 people are shot every year in America. Not good at maths but wouldn't that be, like, a single gun doing all the killing?
Well yeah - the % if guns used to kill people in the US is -that- tiny. Note that 2/3 of those death are suicides. About 30k are killed. You apparently don't know how many guns we have in the US.
Firearm smuggling is in fact quite extensive in the nation of Australia, with border security indicating the numbers being brought in could be in the thousands, with them successfully intercepting only a fraction of the annual amount.
We ought to have laws like they have in Japan. Extensive jail terms if you are caught. Very few crooks want to be found with them - I suppose the penalties for the gun would be higher than for the crime. It works, going by Japanese statistics - in 2014 there were half a dozen gun deaths and half that number in 2017, compared to 35,000 in USA. Let those figures sink in.
Such a standard works only because of the society it is applied to. The people of the nation of Japan are the result of many centuries worth of the spirit of individuality being crushed under the notion of the individual owing everything to society. Individuality is frowned upon, and failure is seen as dishonorable, hence why their suicide rate is so exceedingly high. It is simply not a standard that can be made to work in any other location by mere virtue of implementing it into law. Laws must be tailored to the population in order to work.
Australia had a higher gun ownership per head of population than America back in the 1800's. We changed.
Because it's ILLEGAL to own a gun without a license in Japan. If it's illegal in America you could save 35,000 lives per year. One suggestion from an Australian if I may - make the ownership of a firearm contingent on being a member of a "well armed militia" as your constitution states. The "militia" must be approved - by those involved with guns, such as the NRA. And the licensing and ownership can be as stringent as it usually is for most other things in society, such as having a car. So to own a gun you must be approved by gun organizations - not so much the "government." And "militia" is carefully define and rigorously policed. Penalties for people outside of well-armed-militias having firearms need to be higher than the crimes committed with these guns.
In the US it is illegal to require a license to exercise a right. So, I ask again: Why should I go to jail if I am "caught" with a gun? Unsupportable nonsense. The US constitution states no such thing. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home In the US, we don't ask permission from the state before we exercise our rights. Your ideas do not reflect the political and legal realities in America, and thus, have no merit.
Rather than say 35k lives can be saved if guns are illegal, let's say these lives will be saved if guns vanish from American society. You DO ask the state for permission to drive, why can't you ask for permission to arm? In fact you ask the state for permission to buy a house, take a job... most things. On one hand people want "democracy" to chose leaders and on the other they won't have this elected "state" tell them what to do. In today's Wall Street Journal "Anthony Fauci said the U.S. is now recording about 40,000 new cases a day of the new coronavirus, and that “it could go up to 100,000 a day” if people continue to flout advice on social distancing and face masks." It's relevant to guns because of an attitude towards democratically elected governments. Doesn't your constitution speak of the need for a "well armed militia"? Aren't there more people KILLED at home by their own guns than from intruders? My uncle had a road rage incident with a bikie in Texas - both went for their guns. In Australia that is largely unfathomable.
This is as useful as saying (x) lives will be saved if (whatever is related to those deaths) vanish from American society - that is, not at all. Beyond that, it does not reflect the political and legal realities in America, and thus, has no merit. I don't have a right to drive on public roads. I -do- have a right to travel on them, and the state cannot require a license before I do so. The state can no more require a license to exercise the rights protected under the 2nd Amendment as it can the rights protected under the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th 7th or 8th. Or the right to have an abortion, which was created from whole cloth. Um... no. This was addressed, and thusly discarded. Are there? Show me. The tell me how this is a valid metric.
In Australia you are required to jump through a lot of hoops to own a house or drive a car. You have these things as a "right" but they are conditional. I am not familiar with US Constitution. I don't particularly like what I read of it. We see the US Constitution as a "dead constitution." That means people read into things it never touched up because it is so static. Example of this is the Row vs Wade abortion case. A "living constitution" changes all the time. We don't rely upon Supreme Crt judges to decide policies. I don't accept the widespread ownership of guns has merit, nor arguments that the argument has no merit. Australia changed - so can America.
Why is it that murder only matters to you people, in the rare case that the murder weapon into rifle (assault weapons are rifles) and in the very rare instance where more than four people are murdered by the same person? You people were less ridiculous when you're talking about banning handguns, some 50% of murders are committed with a handgun. But this bizarre obsession you have with rifles seems to be more politically driven. More people are killed with knives than with rifles.
then they aren't rights. In the US our rights are inalienable. by we I assume you mean Aussies. Yeah you don't understand the document. It is not a dead Constitution we the people of the United States can amended if we want to we have as recent as 1992. so if you see it is a dead document you aren't seeing it properly. Example of this is the Row vs Wade abortion case. A "living constitution" changes all the time. We don't rely upon Supreme Crt judges to decide policies.[/QUOTE] we don't rely on the Supreme Court to decide policies either. The judiciary is a branch of government that works as a media area to decide if laws are constitutional or not. This is why you have conditional privileges and we have rights. The legislative branch the executive branch in the judiciary all way in on the decisions of law. That's called checks and balances. Yes we could but we don't want to. in our country under the Constitution we get to make that call the government officials do not. That's what rights are. in all the time of our country's existence we could have done it at any time and we never have. It's less likely now than it ever has been. Due to the virus crap and the riots more people now own guns than ever before.