Not because of idiotic reasons as those I'm sure.

*triple facepalm*

That one is wrong in this particular case, though. Should be "affluenza, class and race privilege". Assface had all the money and all the mental health resources (luxury cars, designer clothes, gourmet food, private Hollywood parties, at least three years of shrink help), the problem was no one thought he was a threat because he was rich and [presented] white.

People called the cops on him re: murder threats on youtube, cops didn't even search his room. Would they have searched the room of a black teen? You bet! The actual lack of awareness and care for the underprivileged *is* a problem - the poor mentally ill people are getting abused, harassed, jailed and outright killed all the time. Compare and contrast:

to have a "well regulated militia"?


umm.... where is this militia?

I always find it interesting when people raise this. I don't have the latest statistics, perhaps you do, but:

In 2008, 2009 and 2010 rate per 100,000 population in Australia was 29.7, 29.0, 28.6
In the same period in the USA, the rate was 29.8, 29.0, 27.3.

2008 and 2009 are almost identical (USA being higher). 2010 is still close. Do you have stats from later years?

Do you really think that guns reduce the likelihood of rape? In Australia there is a big problem with sexual assaults being committed inside family units, particularly in regional indigenous communities. I'm not sure how giving everyone guns would assist with that problem.

That is not entirely true. In Swizterland, men who are part of the militia (usually aged 20 to 30) are required to keep a gun at home or in the local Zeughaus. After their period of service has ended, they can choose to keep the guns or not. Also, very few units actually have ammunition.

The handgun ownership rate is just over half of that in the US and the firearm ownership rate is about 2/3 that of the US. Admittedly their violent crime rate is very low, but having lived in Switzerland for some time, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with ownership of guns. Maybe your experience is different?

To the South. They are called rednecks.

Would be happy to. Perhaps it would be easiest if you read this article first: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21379912

To directly quote from the article:

'Prof Killias cannot hide his anger with those in America who use Switzerland to illustrate their argument that more gun ownership would deter or stop violence.

"We don't have a gun culture!" he snaps, waving his hand dismissively.

"I'm always amazed how the National Rifle Association in America points to Switzerland - they make it sound as if it was part of southern Texas!" he says.

"We have guns at home, but they are kept for peaceful purposes. There is no point taking the gun out of your home in Switzerland because it is illegal to carry a gun in the street. To shoot someone who just looks at you in a funny way - this is not Swiss culture!"'

I hope they are "well regulated" and consider the president their "Commander in Chief " :)

The underlying problem is mental health and the lack of mental health support. The parents of this kid knew something was wrong and informed the police department. The police either were not informed properly or did not do their job properly. I guess the parents were not concerned enough to check in on him themselves, though once the kid is an adult you can only do so much parenting.
The ship has sailed on the gun ownership debate here in the USA. We are proud gun owner's, but there should be more restrictions and training in place. Not that any of that would have prevented this.
Assault Rifles should be banned, Handguns and Shotguns should require licensing along with periodic safety training, Gun Trade Show loophole should be closed. Citizens should have to go to a local gun shop to sell a weapon to a fellow citizen where they can do proper background checks, transfer the license, and schedule/provide the training. Perhaps, even require periodic mental health evaluations for registered gun owners.

Yeah, I knew going in when I saw the headlines they'd find a way to blame video games. People have been killing people before gaming, before computers, before guns. People were going wrong in the head before the DSM and before Prozac. It's not a video game problem, it's a human problem. We can argue the "what ifs" all day long and look around for someone or something to point the finger at, but ultimately, the guy was mentally ill and he would have found a way to hurt people even if you took away his games and his guns and gave him parents who believed in corporal punishment and doctors who prescribed stronger drugs (or none at all, depending on where you stand on that one). Some tragedies can't be prevented because no one is holding all the pieces or even knows what the picture is going to look like until it's too late. A lot of people have the same things going on that this guy did and never hurt anybody and never will.

And yet, despite having easy access to firearms, they don't violate the law and don't shoot at people for no justified reason. That was the point I was trying to make.

Also, the claim that Texas is too wild is bogus. Texas has a lower violent crime rate than Chicago, IL; the city with the most authoritarian gun laws in the entire country and yet it has the highest murder rate, it has an active blackmarket of smuggled weapons along with narcotics, and the only reason there was any recent decline in murders per capita is because the biggest targets of gang members are other gang members.

People must be able to carry guns since criminals do not follow weapon carry laws.
The term "gun death" and "gun homicide" include cases of criminals getting killed so you can't depend on numbers alone. Also, the numbers are exaggerated. Last time I checked, gun-related death were below 10,000.

Following numbers alone will lead to wrongful conclusions.

An interesting article I read concerning the shooting, "nerd culture" and video games.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/27/your-princess-is-in-another-castle-misogyny-entitlement-and-nerds.html

Your question was as to why the UK has a higher violent crime rate than Switzerland. You then made the innaccurate point that Switzerland arms its people (as the article said, they do not. They are not allowed to use firearms for personal defense). You were almost certainly therefore making the inferred point that less control of guns reduces violent crime.

As for your stated question, the reason the UK's violent crime rate is higher than Switzerland is probably down to a number of social factors:

Firstly there are much more largely populated cities in the UK, from what I could tell on a brief search, the swiss only have at most less than half a million people in a city. When you start hitting into the many millions that London does, tensions increase, and violent crime will probably increase. There is also a gang problem in London that will affect the stats.

There may be some effect from migration, there's currently strong opposition to migration in the UK, and that might have an effect, though I suspect it's slim.

I think the main game changer on all this is alcohol, which we brits like to partake in to excess. So much so that alcohol related violence is a major impact on those figures. The more "continental style" drinking observed in Europe would mean that this effect will be much smaller.

There's also the Scottish, though I'm not sure how much of the brawling actually gets registered as a violent crime.

Overall, nothing to do with gun control.

I hope that answers your question.

heh, easy to see small difference in our thinking here.

To yours the "bad guys number" is apparently ok (or even good?) - while i personally think that the high figure is huge, whether "good", "bad", accidents or suicides. Its like screaming at me someone is doing something -very- wrong.

"People must be able to carry guns since criminals do not follow weapon carry laws. "

Lets just put it this way, i am happy that the gun culture around here is not like the one you have. For both criminals and citizens alike.

...just to make the point, i am not actually all that much against guns. But i am not seeing how guns are making for example USA more safe. I mean like how much more (legal) guns you think you need to lower your crime rate for example? I mean you do seem to think more legal guns should lower crime rate? Or i am just jumping to conclusions?

Well the basic idea is that if everyone is armed a person might think twice (or at least put a lot more thought into it) about performing a crime knowing that this is so since they now run the risk of being shot if things don't go smooth. In an ideal world, we could safely rely on police to handle the situations that arise at lightning. The reality is that it takes the police time to get to a given altercation and things can happen in a short amount of time quickly (remember the criminal is probably as nervous as the person they are performing the crime on and not quite the best person to leave your life in the hands of).

Now my personal opinion on firearm weapons is that it's more vital for say farmers out in huge farm areas to own weapons since the police may have a real time block to get to those people in the event of a intruder/robbery situation. Urban cities it's not quite a necessity but I won't begrudge those who want to own and carry their own weapons since some parts of big cities are real bad. Also I don't believe in escalating situations, if someone has a gun trained on you it would be silly to reach for the weapon. I also believe you have to be very careful if you live in an apartment and make sure the weapon will not fire through a wall.

I can't make a claim to know for sure that if more people own guns it would have stopped what happened in Santa Barbara, but I think there may have been a real chance for someone to stop him after he got out of his living quarters. In my state we have strict gun laws and have recently now allowed for carry concealed weapons (which of course have to be registered) so we'll see if anything changes.