Originally Posted by
Novine
"Most gun crimes are not committed by people who are otherwise obeying gun laws. I have never heard of a gang member or carjacker registering his gun and submitting themselves to a background check."
The problem is that most gun deaths aren't from gun crimes, they're from accidents and suicides. As someone else pointed out, the percentage of people who are the victims of random crime is minimal compared to those who are killed by people they know or die from gun accidents or suicides.
"But I suspect if you lived in a neighborhood where a great many of the residents were armed, and if those residents were somehow able to make it broadly known that this was so, the crime rate in such a neighborhood would be relatively low.'
Even if this was true, which there's no stats to back up this idea, this neighborhood would also have higher incidents of gun accidents and suicides, both of which are statistically tied to higher rates of gun ownership. How many dead kids from gun accidents are acceptable to create an atmosphere of fear for criminals?