If you don't blame guns...what do you blame?

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Max, you misinterpreted my reason for posting that chart; I was using it to contradict the claim that all gun violence was caused by "bad parenting." Given the initial poster's prior posts, my impression was that he thought that parenting has gotten worse.

I appreciate you posting that chart, though - I couldn't find one that covered that span of time when I was looking. It's really fascinating; I can't think of any one factor that would cause that pattern (climbing before & during WWI; falling during WW2...). Without the dips on either side, it looks a little like Robert Reich's 'suspension bridge of inequality' chart.

Prohibition and gangster violence were probably the main causes from 1920-1933, the spike from 1966-ish up through the 70's, 80's, and early 90's can probably be attributed mostly to drug use and drug trafficking. I know the "War on Drugs" was officially declared by Nixon, and his term was early 70's if I remember correctly.

^interesting hypothesis!

I'm wondering if the initial jump in the early 1900's is simply due to record-keeping.

You can't find one, because the charts are handcrafted by the NRA to only show data favorable to their agenda. The dip on the chart I posted, can easily be matched to the National Firearms Act of 1934. Effective until the NRA got it gutted in 1968. Which once again proved that gun control can and does work to stop violent crime.

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/06/16/a- ... n-america/

Here's a few that I've posted before, along with the author's analysis.

As another poster suggested, the upticks certainly seem to coincide with the rise of prohibition and the war on drugs, respectively, which created huge black markets overnight, the later coinciding with the baby boom and societal upheaval that put a lot of young men, the primary criminal element, into circulation.

The suggestion that drop was due to the 1934 NFA and the rise related to the 1968 GCA is moronic for a variety of reasons, which I'll explain.

The NFA only affected a very small number of firearms, specifically automatic weapons, short barreled rifles and shotguns, explosives (not really a firearm, but whatever), and silencers.

Aside from the handful of well known high profile incidents, e.g. the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, I can't find ANY statistics on the criminal use of legally owned machineguns prior to the NFA, while I know for a fact that post NFA the number is essentially nil. Short barreled weapons were usually improvised via a hacksaw, and still are today, aside from the few people willing to deal with the paperwork and expense of legally acquiring one, and again, those legally owned ones simply do not get used in crime (too expensive and traceable). Silencers? Again, if they do get used they tend to be improvised, as they're no more complicated than a car muffler, and disposable ones can be made from PVC tubing, pop bottles, fiberglass insulation, etc, and the professionally made legal ones don't tend to turn up at crime scenes. In fact, the only reason silencers were even added to the NFA was out of concern that they'd be used by poachers for illegal hunting, not mob hitmen whacking each other, as the things are bulky and difficult to conceal, and thus impractical for most crime.

So, basically all the NFA did was to regulate an extremely narrow class of weaponry that was never particularly prevalent in crime in the first place, most of which wasn't even manufactured to begin with, but rather field improvised by criminals.

What happened in 1968 was that the SCOTUS (not the NRA) decided that failure to register an NFA firearm could not be prosecuted as a crime because of the Fifth Amendment protection against self incrimination, so the the statute was modified to meet Constitutional muster, and has remained in effect ever since, no "gutting" occurred, and even if it had, the rising crime of the 60s to the 90s was not carried out with weapons that fell under the NFA in the first place.

http://www.atf.gov/firearms/nfa/index.html

1968 also brought us the Gun Control Act, or GCA, which mainly had to do with establishing the FFL system and setting standards for who could and could not legally possess firearms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_Control_Act_of_1968

You'll notice that by 1968 the steepest part of the increase in crime was already underway, so nothing that happened that year could be said to have caused the swing, and that the adaptation of the GCA certainly did nothing to slow it down.

It would appear that you have a Scandinavian feminist in your boat.

I don't think this is quite at that level. :p

I blame idiots who don't respect guns or know how to handle them properly. I think that at least in Canada and the US, there should be mandatory gun safety courses taught in schools, that way, people will learn what kind of power firearms carry, and how to handle them in a responsible manner.

If someone passed a law making private arms ownership illegal... well, first of all it would be waaaaaay too late for them to do that, and secondly, the situation would just become like it is in a lot of other countries, where the only people who have guns are criminals.

One can never blame guns, they are simply a tool.
When you use a blank .22 cartridge to drive nails into brick, your using a gun as a different kind of tool, not starting to use guns as a tool.

You can pretty much blame all the choices except for the government.
The government isn't responsible for the things that go through peoples heads.
The greatest safety for guns is between your ears, not on the gun.

The fact is, you don't blame something that is inanimate, it is illogical.
Keep out of reach of children, something some people simply don't understand.
Keep out of reach of people who will use irresponsibly.
Keep out of reach of people who don't own it.

Last but not least, if someone flips a nut and kills a bunch of people, there is nothing to prevent such an event,

NOTHING.

My dad used to go to prison to fit some of the prisoners with prosthetic things and foot orthotics too.
He told me once a good majority of the murderers there weren't dumb, insane, or disturbed at all,
in fact, a good lot of them were smart and just up and murdered people.

You can't prevent crime through new laws, it just provides more laws to break, and those that break them, are going to keep breaking them.

[quote]What is the main cause of gun violence?[/quote
Why not just ask what is the main cause of violence regardless of the tool used?

Other people.

I'm neither pro, nor anti.

I think the impact of guns on crime is actually not that direct. If you take into consideration worldwide statistics the only conclusion you can draw is inclusive. As in there is no obvious correlation or obvious trend between either gun rights or gun restrictions on crime. It changes the nature crime somewhat, but doesn't really change violent crime.

I think poverty, sub-culture of crime, corruption, lack of rule of law are far bigger influences.

Quite frankly most of the arguments around guns and crime, are pure speculation, and hypothetical first person perceptions.

Bad upbringing, ostracism, bullying, neglect, sociopathy,...sometimes a mixture of those.