I was told with sincerity, after Australia confiscated all their guns, the crime rate soared for personal violence such as rape and murder. No gun to protect yourself and other people means that only criminals will have guns and the public at large is in danger for those animals. The thought occurred to me, that if there were no more guns then there would be no guns for a criminal to steal and then turn on people, so I explored the stats to find out that…  dramatic pause clearly stolen from Monty Python “The Adventures of Ralph Mellish”… And nothing happened. Seriously, nothing happened. No spike in crime, No pile of dead bodies. Nothing. Could the same happen in the USA? Well why not study the matter. Oh wait. Sorry, The NRA allied with politicians to legally restrict all funding for anyone study gun crime and or gun violence. Why would they do that for? Well so they can pass off anecdotal evidence as their version of scientific fact. Gun owners are a single issue voter. Just tell them anything about guns that they feel is a threat and they will go nuts.

So what limited research we do have shows a lot of things but most of it bad news. So is there a correlation between gun laws and a lower crime rate? No. Why? Not all gun laws are equal. Just cause there is a law does not make it a good law, an effective law or an enforced law. So a straight count of the number of laws gives no clear indication. What about a reading of the law? Would that help the matter? No. That would allow in subjective criteria to play a role. What you see as being harsh, I see as lenient. In fact, we could list any number of possible criteria and they would all fail due to the same flaw of being subjective. All except one. There is a direct correlation in the number of guns around and their use. Make sense. If you do not have a gun, you cannot use a gun.  For the most part, usage of guns is a crime of passion. Whether it is to harm yourself or others, any time to reflect would drastically give different result. That would, in turn lower violence in all forms. Simply put, to lower gun violence and thus the number of mass shootings, simply make it harder and harder to the point of restricting gun ownership. The key problem being the NRA effectively targets anyone who dares stand up to them. Or at least they proclaim themselves to be that powerful. Imagine this, if 40 years ago the tobacco industry was able to outlaw research into smoking. Where would we be today? Everyone is smoking and people dropping dead from cancer and no one knowing why. Leading to perhaps the most incredible of conclusions; the tobacco industry is more ethical then the gun industry. How incredible is that? That or the gun lobby was smarter then tobacco in any case in their lobbying efforts. In America, it is so nice to know that people are being slaughtered in the name of gun industry profits. 90% of Americans want some greater form of background checks. The NRA says no. Thus the politicians say no. Best of all? You cannot sue a gun manufacturer for their actions in selling a gun as it is a legal product. So sayeth the congress, bought and paid for by the NRA.