Gun control/rights debate, does gun control or gun freedom decrease crime? or is it an irrelevant factor?

I think gun laws should be looser in the US, but I actually want to clarify about Switzerland, and mention my thoughts on UK:

To buy a gun, you need Waffenerwerbsschein (permit). You cannot acquire a permit if you have history of mental illness. Buying from individuals requires that you follow a similar process.

Automatic firearms, etc are actually illegal. Some disabled automatic weapons are also illegal because they can be easily converted back to automatic fire.

Guns are plentiful, but we do have laws governing them. Regulation did not deprive us of weapons, and it is working for us.

I would argue the gun issue is extremely complex, and it can vary by country because of cultural and economic factors.

The shootings I see in the US are done by 1) the very poor who live in crime ridden areas and 2) the mentally ill who should be in a hospital, not society.

For the record, if guns were available in London or Glasgow, I think the UK would have big problems. Contrary to American belief, London and Glasgow actually do have a lot of crime... I can tell you from personal experience.

In Greece, I knew people who bought AK series weapons illegally... Greece's crime is among the lowest in the world. So this goes with your above observation, absolutely. There are a fair number of illegal weapons circulating around northern Greece, but shootings in Greece are extremely rare, even now in the middle of a depression. People enjoy guns there. I have a picture of my cousin next to a boar he shot dead.

I think more gun freedom in the US could actually lower crime. It is a huge country. Criminals will get weapons regardless of the law, as a consequence of size. But if more people have access to guns, criminals have higher risk of encountering armed "victims" who will fight back.

I think it's partly societal and partly gun proliferation. Switzerland is a small country with a higher standard of living and a lot less poverty than the US has so crime rates there are low. Britain is also small and doesn't have the violent crime rate the US has. The US has always had a violent society and when you combine that with easy access to guns it's a deadly combination. Prevalence of violence in media doesn't help either, as we've seen this as an influence in Columbine and Aurora. But the majority of violent crime here seems to occur in impoverished areas where drugs are also prevalent, so unless you can improve the standard of living and reduce the amount of weapons in those areas, you're going to have a lot of fatalities.

The fact that it is easy for a criminal to get a gun is the problem, so it is a gun control issue. There obviously isn't enough gun control. I don't think most of the Guns that criminals obtain are stolen from the factory, the distributor, the retail location, or the private owner. Therefore they are bought legal and some how end up in the hands of the wrong doers.

Why is this happening and how do we stop it?

America has had gang violence throughout it's history and race has nothing to do with it. Poverty, Corruption and Criminal Enterprise are at the roots. Allowing criminals to obtain guns easily allows them to keep communities hostage. You end up with a subculture of handling grievances with violence rather than the Justice System.

The blame for crime should be on those who commit them, not how they commit them. The UK achieves their low crime rate through force of government, where Switzerland does it through their unwritten rules of society. The Swiss may have lax gun laws, but strict unwritten rules on the acceptable use of their guns.

It's not about Gun Control, it's about society in America. Life is less than meaningless nowadays, it's cheap as bubblegum. All life is a collection of cheap thrills on the way to the bone yard, and after you've felt and done everything why not go out with a blast. People, need to feel that life is meaningful and that they can be part something meaningful.

The Forefathers, gave us the right to bare arms to protect us against the government if it ever became too big for our good.

Within the US, the states with the least amount of controls on guns also have the highest violent crime rates.

Whether it is relevant to crime increases or decreases is not relevant to the question of liberty....and here, specifically, American liberty. We have the right to keep and bear arms without the condition that it is good or bad for the crime rate.

maybe its not the laws but the people. ever think of that