T110's Season of Goodwill and Peace on Ea... Ah, who are we kidding?

The_Chieftain:   They don't.   By and large, American burglars tend to do their burglaring during the daylight hours, when folks are out at work and the like. Wheras in the UK, burglaries tend to happen at night. The 'Hot burglary' rate (percentage of burglaries that happen when the homeowners are around) in the UK is about twice that of the US. One explanation is that burglary can be a capitol offence in the US, if caught by the homeowner so the American burglars take efforts to avoid any chance of an encounter. Ironically, it proves safer for everybody.  

The_Chieftain:   I have one life. How much do I want to leave my continued current existence to "chance"? Most everything we do has some level of risk, and in most cases, we have some ability to mitigate those risks. Being unarmed isn't much of a mitigation, however.  

The_Chieftain:   Did it?   Here's the problem. Between before the gun buyback which left about a third of the firearms in circulation, and after the gun buyback, gun deaths fell. That's about as far as most people go, and they assume that the one led to the other. Lots of charts to that effect. The University of Melbourne took a crack at seeing if there was causation, as opposed to correlation. From the abstract https://www.melbourn...s/wp2008n17.pdf "The results of these tests suggest that the NFA did not have any large effects on reducing firearm homicide or suicide rates."   Or, in another manner, and I'm quoting from the record of an Irish government body on the matter of firearms: -------------------------- The head of the Australian Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Doctor Don Weatherburn, said in 2005:

“There has been a drop in firearm-related crime, particularly in homicide, but it began long before the new laws and has continued on afterwards. I don’t think anyone really understands why. A lot of people assume that the tougher laws did it, but I would need more specific, convincing evidence.”

“There has been a more specific problem with handguns, which rose up quite rapidly and then declined. The decline appears to have more to do with the arrest of those responsible than the new laws. As soon as the heroin shortage hit, the armed robbery rate came down. I don’t think it was anything to do with the tougher firearm laws.”

This view aligns with the scientific studies into the ban in the British Journal of Criminology in 2006 and the Justice Policy Journal in 2011. Even the rate of suicide by firearm in Australia was shown not to have been effected by the 1997 ban in a 2009 study in Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology. In short, this approach has been found to be one which sounds effective, intuitive and simple; but in practice has had no effect, and only well-funded, properly-directed police prosecution of criminals has shown proven results.